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Have you recently noticed a drop or major change in your website traffic? There are a multitude of reasons, both external and internal, that may impact your website traffic.
On one hand, Google Search Console (GSC) has critical data to analyze organic website traffic and understand your online presence. On the other hand, GSC can also be confusing and overwhelming to navigate. Learning which features best explain traffic data will ease your ability to understand the changes in your organic traffic.
While there are a multitude of features available to analyze website traffic on GSC, there are a few that should be your go-to ways of checking in on your traffic changes. These features will specifically help you understand what pages or queries are causing organic traffic loss.
A display graph will automatically be populated under the “Performance on Search Results” tab in GSC. It is important to start with a search for long term trends by setting the date range (found above the graph) to the last 12 months. Continuous, gradual slopes on the graph will indicate a long term trend.
To analyze short term trends, adjust the date range again. Choose the “Compare” tab option on the date settings to be able to compare specific periods of time. A commonly used comparison is the last 28 days to the previous 28 days.
Scrolling past the graph, you are able to click the Pages tab to access a report. This report contains information about the number of impressions and clicks that occur on specific pages of your website. To find the pages with the largest decrease in activity, start by ordering the “Clicks difference” category from smallest to largest. The arrow next to “Clicks difference” should be facing up and the top numbers will likely be negative. A negative number indicates a decrease in activity.
In this step, also make special notes of the pages in which activity has gone down to zero. Zero activity is a flag that there may be a larger issue at hand, such as a URL error or an accidental deletion.
When trying to determine what has caused decreases in website traffic, investigating the pages with the highest decrease in activity will help. You can further analyze pages by clicking on them and accessing the Queries tab. These queries are the unique Google searches that include your website in the search results.
In the Queries tab, order the “Clicks difference” category from smallest to largest. Focus attention on impressions and average position to complete comparisons from the last 28 days to the previous 28 days. Impression decreases imply that less users saw your website appear in their Google search. This correlates with average position, which shows the average ranking of your website in relation to a specific query. For example, your website may have changed from the third to the seventh search result for the query “DC personal injury lawyer.”
The final step to pinpoint the reason for your website’s organic traffic changes is to do a Google search of your own. Using an incognito tab, copy the queries that showed the largest changes in impressions and/or position. Observe the search results to find where your website ranks. Look for details on the search results that may have impacted your website rank, such as new feature websites or Search AI.
Again, there are many reasons that organic website traffic could change. The most common reason is decreased search ranking. The lower your website appears in a search, the less likely users will find or click on it.
Causes that may threaten average search rankings can also directly cause decreases in organic traffic. New search result features threaten the attention on your website. These features may be the inclusion of images, Search AI, or even newly sponsored websites in search results. Currently, search AI is proving to have major impacts on the ranking and display of Google search results. Poorly phrased titles can also decrease the amount of users drawn to your website. It is important to compare your website page titles and URLs to competitors to ensure your pages can grab the attention of your target audience.
Decreased impressions, although the least common, can significantly hurt website traffic. This likely occurs when website content or keywords are targeting a query that is no longer trending. For example, content relating to the Covid-19 pandemic has decreased in trending popularity since 2021.
Being aware of these common causes combined with the understanding of how to determine failing pages or queries will best equip you with the skills to protect your website’s rankings.
Completing an analysis of organic website traffic at least once a month will better enable you to understand and pinpoint why your traffic may be changing. However, knowing the pages and queries that may be seeing activity decreases is not enough to combat traffic decreases. Knowing the “why” behind the traffic decreases will help you determine the “how” of improving traffic levels to a satisfactory level. Consider partnering with industry professionals like the team at MedShark Digital for a better understanding of your traffic data.
