One of my sites is around for over 2 years with a PR3 and has generally had between 200-300 visits a day for the last year or so. I don't really do too much work on it but it's been fairly stable traffic wise. Last Dec. there was a bit of a drop but it picked up again after Christmas to the usual levels, and it even started getting a bit more traffic; then this: Jan1. 227 Jan2. 309 Jan3. 72 Jan4. 52 Jan5. 14 [as of 1pm] I've had some drops before but not this low, I've only done directory and article submissions, though last month I subbed an article to a blog network rather than the usual article directories. I'm hoping it's just a temp thing but does anyone know what happened here or if I might've done something?
I have a similar problem from early December that I haven't recovered from yet. Still trying to find some answers so hopefully some possible reasons get posted here
Not really sure without knowing exactly what you ahve submitted to, but chances are it's just a blip, albeit a bigger one than normal. Is it that you appear lower/not at all in the search rankings? Have you looked at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34444&topic=15253 Might be a good place to start...
You should install Google Analytics if you haven't done so already. Then you can keep track of where your traffic is all coming from. You can pinpoint exactly where the drop in traffic is occurring. Perhaps you got penalized by a search engine or you dropped in rankings for some specific keywords.
Could you describe your SEO strategies so that we would be able to at least "think of" what went wrong??
vansterdam makes a good point. You could of lost rankings for a few good keywords which were pulling in lots of traffic to your site.
Your niche may have gotten more competitive and if you were not gaining very much backlinks you may have lost your placement in the serps.
vansterdam makes a good point ... if you are able to provide some more information about where your traffic was coming from or your SERP changes maybe there are users here that have had similar experiences. Could be related to the recent Google update.
I just signed up for Google Analytics, but I do know that all my traffic comes naturally from search engines. I've only done manual directory submission and had a few articles submitted. I do think it has to do with the google update, I just checked and it dropped to a PR2.
The world does become more competitive every passing day. Might be that more people have taken up your keywords and are working harder at them. Regards, RightMan
try to analyze your keywords again as to how competitive they have become throughout the period when you dont often update your site...the huge Google Update has an effect to the sudden drop try to pump some more SEO oils, your competitors could be working thrice your effort
try to analyze keywords that have or gained higher ranks, it will help you more on link building since your going to use those as anchors...
What I feel, you've changed your article submissions strategy to blog network from the usual article directories. And you notice the drop in traffic. It just gives me an insight that: 1. Some of your traffic was coming from directories because they have good readership and most of blog networks are used for link building and not much for traffic. 2. Just check out with the blog network if all the blogs are well-indexed and have quality backlinks themselves. Because if they are not of a good quality themselves, they tend to gift you a drop in rankings rather than boost. And thus, you lose organic traffic from search engines too. If a good blog network can do wonders to your rankings and traffic, a blog network will do blunders. I'd suggest you should get back to quality article directory submissions. Make good use of Digg, Reddit and Propeller and I hope it'll help you to work out the issues. Cheers!
But i have experienced a drop in traffic too. That drop in traffic was very significant: Search engine traffic got a huge drop.