Some products and topics are naturally seasonal, and websites that provide these products, or information on these products, will see different levels of traffic at key moments throughout the year. Some examples of websites that will be subject to significant seasonal fluctuations are gardening blogs (more popular in summer, less popular in winter), ski blogs (more popular in winter) and travel booking sites (most popular in spring and summer). Sports sites will also receive more traffic when a season is in session, or close to the end of a tournament. Corporate sites tend to receive less traffic during weekends and holidays. Seasonality is a normal and predictable aspect of many websites and businesses.
In the age of AI Google is turning to credibility markers enshrined in E-E-A-T to validate content authors' contributions. If your traffic suddenly drops, first ensure all your content is attributed to a real human. Ensure that human has a very deeply detailed biography on your site that outlines exactly why they are a credible topical authority. Link that deep biography through direct mentions to all of the sources across the internet where their work can also be found, other biographies, social media accounts, websites, everything. Consider this project like building out their entry for Wikipedia on your website so this page becomes the most robust source of truth for the individual available. Then don't forget to list all their content contributions to your site beneath like blog cards. Truth, transparency and clarity will win every time.
Redesigning your website or implementing other on-site changes can be beneficial for long-term SEO success, but it can also lead to a temporary drop in traffic. Search engines like Google need time to re-crawl and re-index pages after changes are made, which can cause a delay in your rankings. Additionally, if changes are not made carefully, it can lead to technical errors, broken links, and other issues that negatively impact user experience and search engine rankings. Make sure you stay on the same page with design and development teams to ensure SEO remains a priority during these projects.
User intent is one of the most critical elements of SEO and UX. You can have the catchiest headline, the slickest web design, and the most convincing CTAs in place, but if your content doesn’t satisfy intent, searchers will bounce. Now, sometimes intent changes over time. It could be that the term you once ranked for no longer has the same intent. When that happens, you’ll drop rankings in the SERPs and lose traffic. Analyze the SERPs and use your favorite keyword tool (like SEMrush) to identify the intent of your target keyword and the content that satisfies that query, and ensure your content satisfies searcher intent.
Neglecting your old blog posts may signal to search engines that your content is no longer relevant or up to date, especially as newer posts from your competitors get noticed. Always go back to your older blog posts every few months to give them a nice facelift with new imagery, updated information, and fresh copy. Make sure to check out your Google Search Console analytics to see what keywords you can add or optimize to the article, and always make sure you include the date of your latest revisions in your article. Once your updates go live, submit the URL to search engines so they can see that you have refreshed your content.
This happens quite commonly to sites (e.g. online publications and e-commerce sites) with large amounts of content. Businesses need to be very strategic with their content and shouldn’t be publishing any type of content they want just because they want to, or just because others are doing it. When too much content is published without intent, it becomes easy to lose track of what topic has already been covered. As a result, you end up with multiple pieces of content that target the same keyword. Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on a website target identical or closely related keywords, leading to internal competition that negatively impacts the site's organic performance. To avoid this, markers need to use a detailed content calendar to keep track of the various topics they will be covering, as well as the keywords each page is targeting.