What To Do If Your Site Traffic Drops (Hint: Don’t Panic)

We’ve all been there. I don’t think there’s an expert out there in the world of site building that hasn’t had to face it. I’m of course talking about having to watch as your site declines in performance. It’s a tough thing to witness, especially if you’ve been updating it frequently, and doing all the steps you’d been told to do. Yet, your site’s performance continues to drop.

Your first thought might be — ‘Hey, I’ve been doing it right all along..why is it dropping now?’. That’s a very good first instinct to have. Stay calm though, there’s no need to panic. Websites like most things have a natural order of being. Meaning that there’s a chance that nothing you did caused the effect of your site. And if it’s something you haven’t caused, then worrying too much isn’t going to help — right?

I find that many people who have sites that begin to tank should begin looking in one place — links. As you’re updating content it’s easy to lose track of your links. Whether it’s a link campaign that you started to boost awareness, and drive up page rank. Or you started utilizing a lot of intra-site links and haven’t been doing so lately. Links are one of the most important facets of your site, but many times you just naturally begin to forget about them. Try and drive the inbound links to your site up, and start to link to relative intra-site content whenever possible. More times then not this can solve your problem.

I stated earlier that the reason your traffic has gone down might not even be your fault. It’s very much possible that it’s someone else fault. And by someone else I mean competition. The word itself can do so many things to different people. Some are driven by competition, and love to see someone try and come around their block. Others become apprehensive, and tuck back into their corner. You really don’t have to be either. Just take a look at their site and do some analytic work on it. You could find that what they’re trending for their site is taking some of your traffic away. If so, put your creative hat on and get to work. Sometimes you’ll find that competition will break you out of the mold you’ve been in. Which can then lead to even greater numbers than you had before.

Whatever the reason for a drop in traffic, just don’t panic. Worrying doesn’t stimulated anything productive. Being aware, on the ball, and creative is how you want to approach the situation. Many times when your site drops and you change things you’ll find it performing better than ever. Just try not and lose any sleep over it..

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