Website Traffic Down: Here’s What to Do Next

Seeing your website traffic down can feel discouraging, especially if you’ve been putting in a lot of effort and work. Now what?

The truth is, traffic drops happen. And while it may feel a little scary, it doesn’t mean you’ve messed things up. It just means something needs closer attention.

We’ve been through this ourselves, and the good news is there are things you can do to save the situation. It starts with understanding what might be causing the drop, then making a few smart changes.

This guide will help you figure out your next steps, based on real experience, not just theory.

What is Organic Traffic Drop?

A traffic drop happens when your website sees a noticeable decline in organic visitors over a specific timeframe, like a day, week, or month. 

When we say “organic visitors,” we mean those who find your site by searching on Google or another search engine, not through paid ads or direct links.

The more organic traffic you get, the more chances you have to improve online visibility, authority, engagement, user experience, and conversions. 

So, if you notice a sudden drop in traffic, it’s a sign that something is off. The faster you understand why, the quicker you can fix it and prevent bigger problems.

Why is My Organic Traffic Down?

Drops in traffic usually result from a few common reasons. Let’s break them down.

• Technical issues: Your site’s technical SEO is about how well your website is functioning. It’s easy to overlook things like slow-loading pages, broken links, canonical issues, or server errors. However, if left unnoticed for a long time, these issues can become real problems, negatively affecting your organic traffic.
  
• Weak or outdated content: Search engines aim to show people the best and most helpful information. If your content is old, too thin, or just not answering your target audience’s pain points, Google may rank other sites higher.
  
• Google algorithm updates: Nothing sends SEOs into panic mode faster than a Google update. A page that ranked well yesterday might drop after that, even if nothing major on your end happened. What we recommend is to stay updated with the latest changes and adapt your strategy accordingly.
  
• Your competitors are using better strategies: It won’t be shocking news if I say you’re not the only one trying to rank. But what can surprise you is the strategies your competitors are using. They might be using tactics you’ve overlooked or underestimated.
  
• Website changes or redesign: If you’ve recently redesigned your site or moved to a new platform, your traffic might drop. Improper URL redirections or structure can easily confuse search engines and lead to a decrease in traffic. So, make sure to involve both your SEO and development teams to handle these changes without causing a disaster.

Now that you know the possible reasons behind the traffic drop, let’s move on to exploring some tools that allow you to check and analyse website traffic.

How to Analyse Website Traffic: 2 Handy Tools

There are two tools we use to check and analyze our organic traffic: Ahrefs and Google Analytics. Here’s a closer look at each with a simple walkthrough. 

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool that allows you to check and analyze traffic. 

However, it has its own traffic calculation system, so if you find that your Ahrefs and Google Analytics traffic are different, don’t be surprised. 

Ahrefs shows an estimate of the search traffic of a website, whereas Google Analytics shows total traffic (direct, paid, social, etc). So, it’s normal for these two to show quite different numbers. 

Even though Ahrefs shows an estimated number, it’s still a useful tool for understanding how well you are doing in terms of traffic compared to your competitors.  

Here’s how to check your organic traffic.  

Step 1: Type in your domain into the “Site Explorer” and click “Organic traffic.” 

Step 2: Review which pages bring in the most traffic to your site.

Step 3: Compare to a custom date to see how traffic has changed over time. You can also see keyword number changes.

Step 4: Check all the keywords you’re ranking for. Maybe a few of them have dropped in position recently, which also could lead to noticeable traffic loss.

Now, let’s understand how to analyze SEO traffic with Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 is a free tool that allows you to easily check not only traffic but also what users do after they visit your site, like behavior, demographics, and more.

All you need to do is get an Analytics Property ID and add it to your site. It usually takes 24 hours for data to show up in Analytics. 

Here’s how to find and analyze this data. 

Step 1: Sign in to your GA4 an, and go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition.

Step 2: Review the total number of sessions (which is the same as the total number of visitors) and sources your visitors are coming from (organic search, referral, direct, etc.). 

Step 3: If you want to check which pages on your site bring the most visitors and check some other engagement metrics, go to Report > Engagement > Pages and Screens NEW. 

For example, here I typed /blog to get information about well-performing blogs. 

So, if you regularly check website traffic, you will get a basic understanding of whether your content is working or it’s time to change something. 

How to Fix Website Traffic Drop: Our Experience 

If anyone understands the pain of going through the “website traffic down” phase, that’s us.

But that drop turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons we’ve learnt. Without it, we probably wouldn’t have taken a closer look at what wasn’t working. 

It made us change our entire content strategy and build something more sustainable in the long run.

Now let’s talk about what actually happened and how we recovered.

We started actively working on our blog in 2022. By regularly publishing useful content, we reached almost 2,000 monthly organic traffic by June 2024. Things were going well.

But then Google updates came, and our traffic started gradually decreasing. 

By December 2024, our traffic dropped to just 218 visitors. It was discouraging, to say the least.

Here’s what went wrong:

• We were focusing so much on SEO optimization, sometimes even overoptimized content.
• Our content lacked depth and originality, which is something Google pays close attention to. 
• We didn’t update or improve older content, so some posts became outdated or irrelevant.
• We relied too heavily on a few top-performing blogs, which made us vulnerable when those rankings dropped.

What helped us recover:

• We started writing articles that meet Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, which is all about people-first content (aka content that adds value).
• We’ve changed our research methods. Now we rely more on interviews and surveys to get real insights and original data from experts.
• We started focusing more on quality rather than quantity. Now, we publish once a week, but make sure that each piece of content stands out.
• We rewrote and improved underperforming or outdated content, concentrating more on depth and usefulness.
• We stopped keyword stuffing and started writing naturally again, with the reader in mind.
• We continued building backlinks on a regular basis (20 backlinks monthly) to enhance our efforts. 

The results:

Thanks to our new strategy, we’ve achieved these numbers in just 7 months:

• Organic traffic: 218 > 1100
• DR: 53 > 60

If you want to achieve similar results, we’re here to help. Want content that ranks and brings traffic? We have your back. Want non-shitty backlinks to push your content even further? We got you again.

Conclusion

Website traffic down? Don’t worry, even Google has bad days.

Track important data, fix what’s not working anymore, and get back to creating content that actually helps people. Traffic will improve eventually.

And if it’s not working, no matter how hard you try, contact us. We’re one call away.

FAQ about website traffic drop