Losing Google Traffic: How to Find Out The Cause?

Are you a website owner curious about the causes of your loss of organic traffic from Google? Are you blaming Google, Panda or both for the drop? Are you not sure what causes the drop, exactly? Well, you are not alone. For many of us, it’s all guessing game. So, before you do anything to fix the problems, read this blog post first – I bet you will be glad you did 🙂

I understand that we are all anxious when it comes to Google updates. We want our website to recover quickly – so some of us (including me!) try to do what’s suggested by the SEO experts on the web, with our fingers crossed, hoping for the best.

If you panicking and are about to do anything to fix things, I suggest you to stop right now. Why? Because doing the right things for the wrong reasons won’t recover your website; even doing things recklessly will negatively impact your website.

Just like a good doctor, you need to diagnose the cause of your Google traffic drop. Before you give any medications, you need a diagnosis; a strong and convincing one.

So, before you remove that seemingly bad backlinks, asking people to change the keywords linking to your website, changing the layout of your website, and so on, you need to determine what the cause of your traffic drop is.

For that purpose, you need a tool. To help you in your investigation, I strongly recommend you to use Panguin Tool.

What is Panguin Tool?

Quite simply, Barracuda Digital’s Panguin Tool lets you see which Google algorithm updates impacted your website. It’s done by overlaying your Google analytics graph with Google algorithm updates.

Pretty smart, eh? Now you can see a better picture on how a certain Google algo update impacts your website – for better or worse.

From the graph, you can click on a particular Google algo update and get more information about it, as well as a link to the coverage on the update.

How to use Panguin Tool

It’s easy to get started:

• Firstly, you must have Google Analytics code installed on your website and have your site stats tracked for a while.
• All you need to do next is to log in to your Analytics, authorize access and choose the Google Analytics account you want.

That’s all – now the graph is ready for analyzing.

Verdict

Some report that the data is inaccurate, but I can’t find anything to justify that; What Panguin Tool does is actually overlaying your Google Analytics with the official Google algorithm updates, I think…

Also, be sure you understand that what Panguin Tool does is to give you the big picture of what Google algo updates might cause the issues with your site; it’s not offering any deeper insights on the problems, as well as offering solutions on how to fix things up.

Once you are more certain about which Google algorithm updates hit your website, then you can start working on a fix on the problems.

Now, what if your traffic graph seems to have no relation to any Google algorithm updates? Well, there are some reasons for that, such as the changes in your backlink profile, less updated pages, and so on. Remember, algorithm change is only one of many factors contributing to your Google ranking and traffic…

So, don’t panic; stay calm, and start wearing your investigative hat… use tools like Panguin Tool to detect the issues with your site, and once you have discovered the culprit(s), start working on the fixes (or hire someone who understand how to fix things for you.)

Ivan Widjaya
Founder/Editor AsepOnde.com