Why is my SEO traffic stagnating?

SEO is a crucial factor in your website’s success on Google and can help you gain a high level of traffic and visibility. SEO consists of all the so-called “free” techniques that can improve the efficiency of your website and help you reach the top positions in Google search results for the keywords that match your offer.

Unfortunately, seeing your SEO traffic stagnate after several months of work making your site as attractive as possible to search engines is common. This phenomenon is generally reported after 6 to 12 months of traffic growth following significant SEO improvements. SEO is a multi-faceted domain where developments are based on multiple and varied factors. Traffic stagnation can result from different causes that we will attempt to determine so that we can solve them.

Example of SEO traffic that stagnates after 9 months of effort

You don’t offer enough fresh content (or your content is too old)

The most common problem when SEO traffic stagnates is the lack of new content. On the web, as in all other fields, you need to offer new content on a regular basis in order to stay up to date. A good SEO strategy is therefore defined as much by the frequency of content publishing as by its quality.

Various SEO factors

All the new improvements to your site, in terms of content, technical improvements or links, help optimize the SEO of your site and increase your ranking and your traffic.

Moreover, some keywords are less competitive than others and consequently easier to position. While you can quickly capitalize on the traffic received from keywords with easy positioning, some keywords require more SEO work to position themselves and therefore more time spent optimizing them to compete with the search results of the most popular sites.

Adding new content also helps you build loyalty from users who regularly visit your site and encourage them to come back. You should also keep your content up to date. Outdated content may give inaccurate information, no longer be topical or no longer sufficiently comprehensive in the current state of knowledge.

My Little Big Web’s advice

Publish content and add links on a regular basis, based on the pace of your strongest competitors, including targeting your potential customers and being careful not to compromise on quality. Furthermore, be careful about the links you add to your site, avoiding deleted links or links to questionable sites. Most SEO tools (such as the Google Search Console) allow you to identify defective links.

Your site is too slow

One of the problems with adding new and detailed content is the weight of the content, which can impact the speed of your site. Website loading speed is one of the main factors impacting the user experience, so don’t neglect it. The speed of the site has a direct effect on your ranking on Google, which is very concerned with the user experience. It doesn’t matter if you have high quality content or links if your site doesn’t load. Moreover, increasing the loading speed of your pages will decrease your bounce rate and improve your conversion rate.

Conversion rate variation based on page loading time

My Little Big Web’s advice

Some SEO tools like Google Page Speed let you analyze and optimize the loading speed of your web pages. Also, compressing some images or content will reduce the weight of your pages. The caching of some pages may also cause a slower page loading. Compare your loading speed with your competitors to see where you stand in relation to them and see if you need to improve your loading times.

You have aggressive ads

Google’s algorithms are quite critical of sites that display ads too conspicuously. Aggressive ads damage your site’s user experience and are devalued by Google, including pop-ups, full-screen ads and audio or video ads.

 

My Little Big Web’s advice

Whenever possible, avoid overly aggressive advertising if you see that your SEO traffic is declining. Try to focus on other forms of more discreet advertising or a total absence of advertising on your website. A good solution might be to use native ads, i.e. ads that naturally integrate into the design of your site.

Your site isn’t mobile friendly enough

Since 2015, Google has prioritized mobile-friendly sites, which are websites that adapt to navigation on mobile devices. Your site needs to be adaptive so that it can be displayed on all the different screen types and ensure the best ranking. Since mobile search overtook the number of searches on other devices, the mobile format has become a priority. While it is not absolutely necessary to have a site created specifically for mobile searches, working on your responsive web design, i.e. on the adaptability of your website to all screen formats, is now an essential factor in your SEO.

Responsive web design

My Little Big Web’s advice

Make sure your site is responsive and adapts to all screen formats. To do this, a simple phone search of your site’s url will allow you to see the display it offers for mobile searches. In addition, make sure that your site is in “mobile-first indexing”.

An increase in competition

Positioning on certain keywords, and therefore, the increase in your traffic is also influenced by certain external factors like the competition you have to face online. Search engine optimization is a highly competitive space and all your competitors have the same opportunities as you to occupy the best positions that attract the maximum amount of traffic. Technical optimizations on your website need to be closely analyzed and updated regularly to make sure you don’t get overtaken by your competitors.

Moreover, position 0 for some simple questions reduces your chances of being at the top of the search results. Position 0 refers to when a page appears at the top of the search results when it directly answers a simple question asked by an Internet user.

My Little Big Web’s advice

Look at the important searches that your site has lost traffic for, and identify which ones are affected by results in position 0. Attempt to position yourself in the first 5 positions to limit the loss of traffic. You can also target more specific searches to make it easier to reach the customers you are targeting.

If some of your competitors are very well positioned on the keywords you want to be positioned on, analyze the content that they offer and compare it to yours to strengthen your SEO on these searches.

You bet everything on SEO

SEO is an excellent way to promote yourself online at a lower cost, but relying on a single marketing action is a risk, and even more so for SEO, where the rules change and are beyond your control. Boosting your online presence also means using other communication channels to reach as many users as possible. Google offers some ways to reach new audiences, and also to have a more direct impact on your traffic. One example is Google Ads, which allows you to appear at the top of search results on certain keywords overnight for a small budget. This is also the case for social media, which can be an excellent vehicle for communicating and promoting your brand image. Don’t neglect offline marketing actions either.

My Little Big Web’s advice

Build your digital strategy using all the means at your disposal to boost your visibility. The more varied the channels, the more likely you are to reach a wide range of users and boost your traffic. However, be careful because some of these channels require a strong knowledge of the tools to get the best results, especially for Google Ads.

So how can you prevent your SEO traffic from stagnating?

SEO is a tremendous asset for the visibility of your site and for your website traffic but you need to carefully follow certain methods to truly benefit from this advantage. Moreover, despite rigorous and high-quality SEO work, your traffic growth can still slow down after a few months of optimization. This makes it essential to look for new ways to optimize your site and content so you can retain your users and attract even more of them. Competitive performance analysis is a good indicator for determining the quality of your SEO work online, but many other technical or external factors also impact your site’s reputation with Google.

At My Little Big Web, we can analyze your SEO free of charge with the help of an expert in order to offer you the most effective solutions to boost your online visibility. Contact us!