Why is My Website Losing Traffic and How to Restore it

Any blogger who has a website and losing traffic know what I’m talking about.

It’s really very disappointing and frustrating to see your website losing traffic and can’t do anything.

You create quality content, put effort and time into it and see no rankings, no traffic, no engagement.

You create content day after day, month after month and see no impressive results.

But traffic drop can be for a number of reasons. Sometimes it can be one or two reasons and sometimes it can be a long list of reasons.

When you see it you want to find a quick solution and recover your website traffic. The quick answer is: To change your content strategy.

The problem with website traffic is that you are not alone. Almost all bloggers that I know get affected by Google algorithm update.

Updates happen a few times per year and your website must follow new regulations to avoid either Google penalty or losing traffic.

Because you can lose traffic even without penalty.

Search engines like Google or Yahoo always look for ways to improve their algorithm to provide better experience to searchers like you and me.

This update is not always positive to most of us.

The main goal of my post is to find out if we can do something that could recover our traffic from Google update.

Because I know that as a blogger you want to know if there is a way to change the situation with your blog.

I think I can help and give some very solid recommendations as to what to do to improve the situation.

This is based on my research and practical recommendations from other successful bloggers. This recommendations is absolutely free.

Because from my experience I see that paid recommendations work only for some bloggers and don’t work for many others.

Because so called gurus promote their recommendations through their paid courses.

First they give you some free advice and promote the rest of the info through a paid course.

I believe my solid recommendation will work for many bloggers and once you start to apply it to your blog the situation will change.

The main goal of this recommendation is help you recover your site traffic through first page rankings. Because second page rankings won’t help.

Only 20% of searchers view second page of Google search results. 80% view only first page.

There are basically three ways to recover your website traffic:

1. Follow a guru’s strategy through a paid course. Such a course usually focuses on one strategy. This strategy may work for your website or may be completely useless. Such courses are very expensive, such as a course by Brian Dean from Backlinko. The result is not guaranteed.

2. Hire a SEO company that will analyze your website and determine the strategy that will recover it from traffic loss. This may include several strategies and such a service is very expensive, very often implies monthly payments. Result is not guaranteed.

3. Do it yourself. This will include a lot of efforts, time and patience. Result is not guaranteed but it’s free. You don’t lose anything. Plus you are the one who is the most interested person in recovering your site. Other companies, gurus mainly want to earn money from you.

How to Recover Your Website From a Ranking Drop and Restore Your Site Traffic

Let’s talk about ranking algorithm to understand how the system works so we can understand what to do.

Imperfect Ranking Algorithm

First of all, let’s admit that Google is a billion dollar company investing lots of money in all its projects including ranking algorithm.

Google has already made hundreds updates and still counting. Google tries to improve it to make searchers happy by giving them the best search results.

But still we have to admit that ranking algorithm is not perfect, far from being perfect. I recently made a research and showed proofs of my statement.

I will try to explain it in a few words. Very often you can see websites with ugly design, no back link profile, no comments, outranking your or another solid blog with two, three paragraphs of content.

I’ve seen it many times and I see it to this day. This only proves that Google ranking algorithm is still imperfect.

It’s painful to see your site losing rankings and traffic especially when you see other blogs outranking you without any obvious reason but this is the reality.

Backlinks Won’t Help

Many bloggers believe backlinks are powerful and can help your website get rankings much faster than without backlinks. I have to admit that it’s true.

Backlinks from solid blogs are really powerful especially from edu and government sites. But let’s find out if backlinks is really a universal method that can help any blog.

Yes, backlinks are important but we have to admit that many blogs get high rankings without any backlinks even in competitive niches, such as MMO (Make money online) niche.

I’m living proof of it. I had multiple high rankings on my blog and still get them from time to time.

I know bloggers that get a lot of traffic through SEO and have never done any backlinks. All they have done is high quality original content.

They have done it for years and are still doing well. Some of them were affected by Google rankings in some way or another.

Some lost a significant part of their traffic while others lost some traffic but it was not critical.

Yes, backlinks are important but it’s not a universal method that will solve all your traffic and rankling problems.

If you don’t have original, high quality content backlinks will NOT help.

If you have high quality, original content some of it will get ranked over time without any backlinks. Other blogs will link to you and you will get links naturally.

But you can do well without links too. I’ve seen it many times on my and other blogs.

We don’t have to underestimate of overestimate the importance of backlinks and we must know when they can help and when they are useless.

Other Reasons to Lose Rankings

I have to discuss other reasons because of which your blog can lose rankings and traffic.

I will mention only main reasons briefly because I already covered this topic here 

Among main reasons are:

• Slow website
• Not mobile responsive website
• No SSL (HTTPS) certificate
• TOO many affiliate links
• TOO many broken links
• Duplicate content
• Manual actions

If you have issues listed above your website can be affected by algorithm and as a result you can lose both rankings and traffic.

There are way more things you need to know, but these are the main issues that can ruin your website easily and quickly if you ignore them.

How to Recover your Site Rankings and Restore Traffic Through a New Content Strategy

Finally, let’s talk about one single method on how you can recover your site rankings and restore your website traffic.

As I mentioned above, ranking algorithm is not perfect and very often you can see other blogs outranking yours with a very mediocre content.

But does it mean you can’t outrank them and writing content is a waste of time?

I contacted friends of mine who are successful affiliate marketers and during my research found out some very interesting and valuable information.

Many of them complained of a serious traffic loss and ranking drop though before that they had no such issues.

All of them are now more focused on Youtube video marketing rather than writing content for their blogs.

But I noticed that those of them who write content similar to what all other blogs are doing only those bloggers see traffic loss and ranking drop.

Many such bloggers lost a significant part of their traffic.

Those who try to be different in their writing style still get traffic however they see some traffic loss though not catastrophic.

The more original content you produce the less traffic loss you see. Those blogs that try to be different those still get a lot of traffic.

This means you need to change your content strategy. For example, most blogs focus on wiring product reviews.

If you write product reviews, you need to do some research and write your reviews in a different style than other blogs.

Change the whole structure of your review, don’t be afraid to experiment with your blog. This will allow you to find the structure that both users and Google likes.

Remember to be different from others. If you are different from others users and Google will notice it.

This will make your ranking chances way higher than writing standard reviews that are hundreds on Google.

Change your content strategy and write on topics that cover various topics, such as evergreen topics, top products list, best affiliate programs in your niches etc.

In short, choose topics covered by few bloggers. This will make your competition challenge easier for you and will increase ranking chance.

Remember, content is ruling online and will be so for years to come. Change your content strategy and this will bring to a much better ranking result.

Users search for content and Google does the same and delivers that content to those searchers.

Before writing content an in-depth research required to determine the best topics for your articles. Compile that list and follow your content plan.

About the Author: Adam

My name is Adam. I'm the founder of Your Income Advisor. My goal is to help others succeed online, by exposing scams and reviewing top rated products. I can help you start your own business online