Google Search Traffic Drops: Why it Could Happen and What to Do 

“When you join our web design in Los Angeles, your Google ranking will increase overnight! It’ll only go up and up for as long as you’re with us!” 

There are plenty of digital marketing companies that tell clients something like that. 

We certainly aren’t one of them. 

It’s perhaps the hoariest cliché to compare any long-term endeavor to a marathon. But, in terms of your Google Ranking, a marathon is an excellent analogy. 

The task is long, it can be arduous, it is competitive, you may pull ahead at times, you may fall back at times, but as long as you’re continuing to move forward and keep pace, you have a genuine chance to win. 

A marathon is perfectly analogous to your Google Search ranking. 

That said, the keywords in that long sentence above are “keep pace.” 

If you fall too far behind, you may struggle to win the race or even to stay competitive. 

So, that means, when your Google Search traffic does drop, you have to do something about it. You don’t want to overreact, or “do something just to do something.” Rather, you want to look at the data and figure out the best path forward. That’s just one of the ways that we can help. 

Thoughts from Google: What You Can Control

Recently, Google put out an excellent blog on how to address this very topic. 

“Analyzing Google Search traffic drops” covers quite a bit. Of particular interest, I felt, was the section “Main Causes for Drops in Search Traffic.” 

Of the five main causes listed, three of them you can respond to right now. 

“Technical Issues” basically means “there’s some kind of error with your page that keeps Google from actually being able to do anything with it.” Maybe Google can’t serve your page for users, perhaps Google can’t crawl it or index it. That’s something that should never happen (or be fixed immediately). 

The same goes for “Manual Actions.” We’ve had clients ask us “well, what are Google’s guidelines?” While much of online media can seem opaque, here, Google is quite transparent about what they’re looking for. 

These are the kinds of things that your page should have taken care of already. Indeed, over the years, we’ve helped so many of our clients to have this foundation taken care of as their site is launched. For all intents and purposes, these are to web design as having a storefront without a working door would be to your business. With these, your business can open and thrive. We can help. 

What You Can’t Control (But Can Respond To) 

That being said, there are other main causes that require the business owner/developer to respond to something external. 

For example, “if your site is affected by a security threat, Google may alert users before they reach your site with warnings or interstitial pages, which may decrease Search traffic.” 

As you might imagine, that needs to be rectified immediately. That’s something else that we help our clients with as soon as it happens. 

There are always new trends. What’s popular in December may not be popular in June. Maybe something else new has come out then, or perhaps folks just aren’t looking for holiday decorations in the summer sun. When this occurs, we’ve helped our clients to better “surf,” so to speak, the “result of external influences.” 

Google is always looking for a better way to offer Google users more. So, that means Google goes through many algorithmic changes. When those changes occur, it can cause some pages to drop in the rankings. Thus, it’s important to go with someone who knows how to respond properly to these. 

When your Google Search traffic ranking drops, it can be bad for your business, certainly. However, it doesn’t have to be catastrophic. With the right foundation, response, and team by your side, you can keep pace and pull ahead in the marathon that is online marketing. 

For more help with this and so much else related to growing your business, you can reach our web design team in Los Angeles at (888) 477-9540.