What do/will you do if your blog traffic noticeably decreases? What SHOULD you do if it does?
When I first experienced this problem I found that my first response was emotional: I got frustrated and discouraged. There’s nothing wrong with that unless you let it get to you and end up quitting. I can’t tell you not to feel discouraged but what I can help you with is to be prepared to take proper steps to address the issue.
After giving yourself a few minutes to wallow, the next step is to check whether you are experiencing a sudden drop in traffic or if it is a slow and steady decline. The reason for this is that it will help you determine the reason behind the decrease in traffic.
If you experienced a sudden drop in traffic I would advice that you do the following steps:
Check whether your stats tracker (i.e. Google Analytics) is having issues – It might actually be that you don’t have any problem and will get the right feedback as soon as they get things back in order.
Check whether your blog is having any technical difficulties – Your hosting service might be having trouble in which case your blog can’t be accessed properly, leading to the noticeable drop in traffic.
Look at the calendar – The drop in traffic might be something as simple as the holidays. Though I end up spending even more time in front of the computer you (we) have to realize that lots of people actually spend their vacations doing something other than surfing the internet. In this case I advice you to just sit tight and wait to see if things go back to normal when the holiday’s over.
Check your search rank – In cases when you suddenly drop in rank getting less traffic from searches you need to go a further step by finding out what affected your SEO. I recently wrote about Search Rank Drops and False Alarms but will be writing a more in depth post(s) on the topic.
On my next post I will be writing about the possible reasons for a slow and steady decline in your blog traffic.
Originally posted on January 2, 2010 @ 6:26 pm
