Have you recently been experiencing a slower than expected month in traffic?
Google is at it again and has been changing how the algorithm works in rankings and they have more releases planned for 2018 that might find you all of a sudden unnoticeable on the web. The most recent past update in December 2017 has people just now feeling the effects, while others felt it immediately. There can be a lot of factors on why your traffic has experienced a drop but if you rely on Google rankings this is just some of the things that have been changing.
What were some of the changes?
In December Google released an update that in short order penalized websites that did not have Schema, changes to mobile SERP, and essentially downgraded “doorway” pages. Google warned back in May of 2017 that they would start down ranking companies that used doorway or did less than quality SEO tactics like link building; with non related quality links, writing keyword articles that made no sense, hiring professional writers that wrote articles that showed they lacked an understanding of your product or service, and articles that were just keyword stuffed. While the algorithm weeds out rankings that fit this criteria it has caused traffic to become erratic, as well as rankings.
More Changes are on the horizon
With more people relying on their phone than a computer Google is starting to look to the future and wants to enhance the search experience a user has on their phone. There is plans to merge their two search indexes into one; right now there is a mobile and a desktop. The merge will mean mobile will be first priority. They will be looking at websites that provide better mobile user experience, which means that website speed will now also become more of a factor, especially on mobile devices.
What can I do?
If you have already been hit with a down turn in your traffic the best course of action is to fix any issues that may have you in the penalty box. Fix your schema, have a deep SEO analysis of your website to find any anomalies that may be bringing your rankings down, have a speed test performed on your website and fix any issues that result from that test, and make sure that your website is mobile responsive and gives a rich mobile experience. The last thing to do is make a plan going forward and not procrastinate on executing it, why wait to be on fire when you see the smoke?
We are here to help
JS Web Solutions has experience with deep web analysis and has the tools to give you the most out of your SEO. We will consult with you and give you suggestions to make the best decisions for your website. SEO takes planning and is not a quick fix bandaid, it takes planning and having an experience SEO Web Presence Company makes all the difference. Contact us today to schedule yourself a consulting session where we will deep dive into the analytics of your website and give you experienced based advise on how to move forward with those results.