Why Is My Organic Traffic Declining? Here’s How to Find Out (And Fix It)

Organic traffic: What is it and how do you analyse it?

But before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s cover exactly what organic traffic is and how you can keep tabs on it.

Put simply, organic traffic is all traffic that arrives on your website via search results on sites like Google and Bing. Every time someone clicks on a link to your site through an unpaid search result or AI citation, their visit is an ‘organic’ one – not a paid one.

By contrast, paid traffic includes all visitors that land on your site by clicking on an ad (this could be a Google Shopping ad, a social media ad or any other paid piece of content you’ve put out there).

The main drivers of organic traffic are SEO and content marketing, which work hand-in-hand to boost your site to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

How to track and analyse your site’s organic traffic 

Tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics are SEO go-tos, allowing you to keep a close eye on hundreds of different metrics. As well as allowing you to study organic traffic (and compare month-on-month and year-on-year performance), they allow you to track everything from conversions through to bounce rate, search engine rankings and so much more.

Google’s own analytics tools are essential for all eCommerce businesses, but third-party offerings from the likes of SEMRush and Ahrefs allow you to go even more in-depth. Which tool you choose is up to you – but always double (and triple) check that your site’s tracking is set up correctly. If you’re struggling to get started, we can help with that!

Why did my organic traffic drop? 

So, now we’re clear on what organic traffic is and how you can track it, let’s get to the meat of this article. Below are some of the main reasons for a drop in organic traffic​, some of which are quick fixes and some of which… aren’t.

There’s been an algorithm update

On the subject of quick fixes, they don’t get much simpler than this. Often, search engines like Google carry out algorithm updates, allowing them to provide more relevant, specific results that answer users’ queries and save them time.

If you’ve noticed a drop in rankings and traffic, it could be because of one of these updates – rankings often fluctuate each time the algorithm gets tweaked. There’s nothing you can do about this, besides revisiting your SEO strategy to make sure you’re checking all of the boxes Google and Microsoft want you to check. With a bit of luck, the fluctuations will end next month and your site will climb back up the rankings again.

Once the update has finished rolling out, monitor your rankings and organic traffic for a few days; if things don’t pick up again, further investigation is required.

There are incorrect readings in your analytics platform

Besides algorithm updates, this is the first thing you should check for when you notice a decline in your organic traffic. If you have access to any other platform, cross-reference the data to check if there’s a discrepancy. If your other tool says everything is normal – and there’s no other indication that anything is amiss (like a drop in revenue), you’ll know the issue is with the tracking tool.

Tracking tools like Google Analytics also depend on people accepting cookies on your site (unless you have server-side tracking). If they don’t accept cookies, their data won’t appear in Google Analytics, as per GDPR rules. 

You’re ranking for a lot of zero-click searches

With the rise of Google’s AI Overviews (and AI mode), zero-click searches are becoming far more common – particularly for informational keywords. If your site ranks for a lot of informational keywords, it may be that users are getting their questions answered in the AI overview and aren’t clicking through to any websites, hence the term ‘zero-click search’.

If your content is appearing in one form or another in the AI overview, it might not be getting many clicks – but you’re still winning from a brand awareness perspective.

Your SEO strategy is failing and you’re being outranked

This is pretty much the worst case scenario for SEOs – and the one thing that nobody wants to hear. Unfortunately though, it’s one of the main reasons for rankings trailing off over time.

The reality is that SEO and content marketing move fast, and if you haven’t been adapting your strategy to keep pace with your competitors, you can easily get left behind. Once you’ve ruled out some of the other potential factors listed here, it might be time to give your strategy a second look.

There’s a tech issue with your site and it’s not indexable

If your rankings take a nosedive seemingly out of nowhere, it could be because there’s something wrong with your site from a tech perspective. Search engine rankings depend on bots being able to crawl your site and digest the content that’s on there – so if they can’t crawl it for whatever reason, your content won’t appear in the SERPs.

You’ve been penalised by Google for using ‘black hat’ SEO 

This is a little less common nowadays, but it still happens from time to time. If you’ve been caught using so-called ‘black hat’ SEO techniques (things like keyword stuffing or hidden text), there’s a chance your site has been penalised by Google. If you’ve noticed a sudden drop in rankings and you’ve got some outdated, spammy content on your site, this could be why.

Your site contains poor quality content

SEO isn’t just about keywords and technical optimisations any more: a site can’t rank consistently well on Google or Bing nowadays without good quality content. Successive Google algorithm updates have rewarded great content (and punished poor quality content) more and more as time has gone on, so if your rankings are gradually dropping, it might be time to get rid of some old content that’s no longer up to scratch.

To turn things around, focus on creating relevant, well-researched and well-written content that showcases your brand’s expertise and comes across as trustworthy and authoritative.

You’re up against increased competition

Remember when the only thing on the SERPs was a list of 10 blue links? That was a long time ago now, and gradually it’s become more and more tricky to get clicks even if you’re ranking at the top of page one.

With the prevalence of Google Ads, the creation of featured snippets and now AI Overviews, the SERPs are more competitive than they’ve ever been. You might have multiple position one rankings, but you’re now up against stiff competition from paid ads, AI and more. If you’ve noticed your rankings dropping gradually over the last few years, this could be why.

You’ve recently completed a site migration

Website migrations are an absolute minefield from an SEO perspective, and it’s common for rankings to falter after the migration is carried out. If you’ve recently moved to a new website and your rankings have dropped, go back and make sure that everything has migrated across correctly – and verify that there are no technical issues with the new site that weren’t present on the old one.

Your site has lost some backlinks

If your site relies heavily on backlinks to bolster its position in the SERPs, losing some of those backlinks can have a dramatic impact on rankings. If you’ve recently changed your site’s URL structure (or the site that’s linking to you has been taken down or altered), this could be why your organic traffic has dropped.

Seasonal fluctuations or changing trends are having an impact

The internet never stands still. Trends come and go day in, day out, from brands falling in and out of favour through to new products taking the spotlight and old ones going out of production. Throw seasonal fluctuations into the mix and it’s easy to see just how many variables there are at play here. 

This is where year-on-year comparisons come in handy. If there are historical peaks and troughs from season to season, there’s a good chance history is repeating itself once again.