I've moved the site (in the US) from pos 6 - 8 to 3 & 4 for our top four keywords (webmaster tools tells me that's over 70% of our google search traffic). That should be great news, but actual traffic numbers have dropped close to 20% ever since. Webmaster tools tells me that search volume is the same. The title and description (snipet) hasn't changed. Any thoughts on why traffic would drop when serp improved? Thanks!
how long has the change been? how long have you been monitoring? have you taken into account seasonality? recently most american schools are spring break/vacation plus Easter Holiday. what was traffic like last year this time? when you say dropped close to 20 percent - how much is close...and is it a 20% drop or dopped to 20% (has the actual traffic gone from 70 to 50 or 70 to 20?) And what does that relate to in actual numbers? if you are normally getting 100 visitors and you drop from 70 to 50 in a week or even 70 to 20...that is not as significant as say 7000 to 5000, or worse, 7000 to 2000 is.
We made the change this past Sunday. Google indexes the site very frequently, I've seen content affect serps within 2 hours. These changes seem to have taken hold about 2 or three hours after we published the changes. Re: Seasonality. I just checked google analytics, and it shows a minor increase in traffic during late march/early april in both 2008 and 2009. After checking actual numbers, 20% drop is an exaggeration. On that site, we get about 2,000 - 3,000 visitors per day, we're about 300 or 400 visitors per day shy comparing the same day one and two weeks back. So, Monday we usually see about 2,000 visitors, and we saw about 1,784 this past monday. Any thoughts? What position do we show up where you are? Thanks!
for me you show up as 3 or 4, depending on how you count. The first 2 are the same site, with #2 being an indented sub listing for pogo. If you are talking a couple hundred, off of a few thousand, and just one week...i would chalk it up to normal search patterns give it a few months and see how it looks before getting concerned. Tons of reasons why it would drop (or increase) a few hundred. And since you were already top 10, for this particular category i wouldnt expect a HUGE fluctuation. Another great example why SEO is dead and Saturation is in.