Strong organic website traffic is a gift that keeps on giving. Until one day, it starts to slip away. But, this decline is rarely an accident. It is usually caused by one or more of these correctable problems.

4 Things that Cause a Drop in Organic Website Traffic

1)      Your domain or webpage doesn’t have enough authority

Domain authority is a measure of the strength of an entire web domain or subdomain. It is based on many factors, including the quantity and quality of inbound links. Page authority is a metric that gauges how well an individual webpage is likely to rank in Google’s search results.

When these two factors are low, organic traffic suffers.

What you can do:

• Search engine optimization
• Create share-able content
• Develop an internal linking network
• Remove spammy backlinks
• Remain patient

2)      High competition

With more than a billion websites worldwide, competition is fierce in just about any niche. Very often, organic website traffic slips because of increased competition for relevant keywords.

An unusual drop in traffic is a red flag, which means it’s time for a strategy adjustment.

What you can do:

• Perform a competitive keyword analysis
• Focus on keyword search frequency

3)      Your content is not organized, helpful or user-friendly

Search engines are getting smarter and smarter. They regularly crawl the web to find the most helpful content to display on search engine results pages. Content that is informative, search-able and easy to read usually earns the highest rankings.

4)      Your site is slow or not mobile friendly

Websites now may lose organic website traffic opportunities, because of long load times or a lack of responsive web design. This change to SERP rankings occured when search engines began prioritizing the user experience.

For example, Google’s “Mobilegeddon” algorithm adjustment reduced the domain authority of websites that were not mobile friendly.

Since a slide in organic rankings may happen to any company, it’s important to regularly monitor your search pages to determine if SEO strategy adjustments are necessary.