When you see a dip or decline in your website’s traffic or search rankings, it can be worrisome but you don’t need to panic. You need to take a deep dive into the pages that are declining and diagnose what is happening. That is of course easier said than done because there is a multitude of potential issues. It can be especially confusing if you see inconsistencies, with some pages on your site improving ranking-wise and some faltering.
Take a Step Back
It’s crucial to remember the purpose of your website. If you provide a service, you likely want visitors to contact you or book an appointment. If you have an e-commerce site, you want visitors to buy your products. The type of business that you have should impact the pages that are most important on your site. Remember your goals and objectives you set out. You may have pages dropping in ranking but are they pages that are valuable to your site? If so, it’s important to address them.
What are the Sources of Loss in Rankings?
Sometimes it isn’t completely clear why a page is declining in rank, but if you’ve been tracking your keywords, you should see which have been impacted. If the volume for a search is dropping, it’ll have an impact on pages using those keywords. You should still look for technical issues on these pages and make sure they’re properly optimized to take advantage of the search volume that is there.
Include Calls-to-Action
For most websites, many visitors will be entering from the homepage, but not all. Sometimes you’ve got a blog or service area page that ranks really well and creates a lot of impressions. There is nothing wrong with this at all, but you’ve got to make sure that this page is optimized to convert. It’s awesome that the page is relevant to so many, it likely means that some are in need of your products or services, so create an easy journey for them to get there. The pages with the most visitors should be the ones you put the most work into optimizing for.
Page Speed
On the web, site speed has a huge impact on Google and user experience alike. Slow ranking pages see bounce rates skyrocket typically because people don’t want to wait to see the content. Your website becomes more trustworthy the faster it is as well, users expect it as the norm and industry leaders always focus on speed. Speed is a ranking factor that can make or break your website because it has such a strong impact on users. With more people bouncing from your site, it’ll surely drop in rank. Don’t forget about the mobile website speed as well, more visitors are coming visiting using their phones than ever before.
If you’re a small business owner interested in improving your website and digital content strategy, contact Boston Web Marketing. We’re excited to help with SEO, Content & more.