7 Reasons Why Your Organic Traffic has Dropped! And Yes, It’s Not Google’s Fault!

With a huge change in the field of SEO landscape in the past few years, the organic traffic of a website may appear and then disappear. This has made many website owners think about reasons for organic traffic to drop? Here are some reasons the organic traffic has dropped:

1. Search Behaviour and Trends Changes

Sometimes, the drop is simply not related to content or external links. It may occur for reasons beyond one's control. Algorithms for Google are constantly changing which invite additional changes in the manner search results are returned to users. However, this is not out of control for the owner of the site completely. Ignorance to the latest trends will have a huge influence on your website’s search visibility.

A decline in traffic and rankings have got declined for your website's key landing pages, refreshing  keyword targets will make sure you are up to date with what people are searching for. The Google Trends is definitely a great place to start. It will help you measure targeted sharp decline or gradual fall in key phrases. You may also refer to Search Console Search Analytics data of Google to achieve recent snapshot of things users are currently searching for to find your services and products.

2. Uninformed Changes in Site

Apart from search marketing fundamentals, some developers like to make changes to your website sans giving any prior information to stakeholders and the marketing department. Hence, any drop in organic traffic should be dealt with a super quick catch up with developer or even senior colleagues to determine any dramatic changes that have been made to the site. Thereafter, you may place a request for another crawl of the domain with the help of tools like Screaming Frog to identify pages marked as 'no-index' (stripped off) content. Reviewing of new content is crucial.

3. Indexing Sans Content Pruning

One of the major reasons there's a drop in your organic search traffic is indexing of all pages without pruning content. Google makes dedicated efforts to improve the search algorithm and detecting high quality content. No wonder it has rolled out the Google Panda 4.0 update. It deranks very low quality content and then boosts those of high quality. A website with evergreen content tends to attract organic traffic. However, some pages act as deadwood. So if you are serious about not getting search traffic dropped in the Google Index, include the pages that you are interested in ranking.

Polluting traffic of your website with overloading unnecessary pages makes no sense. Remember that pages having poor quality or obsolete content is of no use. This do not interest the visitors. Hence, these must be pruned to ensure good website health. Poor quality of pages will affect performance of the entire site.

4. Penalties - Manual or Algorithmic

A dramatic drop in organic traffic may be because you have been hit by algorithmic or a manual penalty. When a site is flagged for not adhering to Google's quality norms, a manual penalty is issued. As a result, your rankings will be penalized. It is easier to spot manual penalties. A notification is sent through messages from Google in its Manual Action section of your Google Search Console account.

5. Search Console Manual Actions

As mentioned above, manual penalties are visible in your Google Search Console account. However, this is not the case with algorithmic penalties. These are more common and occur naturally. Google issues an update to their search algorithms and sends penalties wherever applicable. Hence, it can be hard to know if you’ve been hit by an algorithmic penalty. No notifications will be received here as in the case of manual penalties. So if you have noticed a drop in organic traffic, audit your website for harmful backlinks that it has recently acquired. You also need to identify any duplicate or poorly written content. Some of the Crawl tools such as Screaming Frog are quite helpful in pointing out pages on your site with low word counts. The Ahrefs can identify external links (spammy or irrelevant to the  content) acquired recently.

6. Redesigning Your Website & Not Doing 301 Redirects to Old Pages

It is possible to lose any traffic to your site when migrating website from one domain to another. And the worst part is that all of your new visitors will be greeted with a 404 page. All organic search traffic you enjoyed will be a memory, especially if you fail to do 301 redirects. However, it is possible to transfer all of the organic search traffic to another domain with only a few lines of code!

301 permanent redirects a visitor (including search engines) to your new website. Everything from direct traffic to authority, age, and reputation of your old website will get transferred to the latest web address.

7. Ignoring Technical SEO

Most individuals get caught up in the practice of churning out fresh content for their websites. However, they simply end up neglecting technical aspects of SEO. There are certain things to look into so that the organic traffic for website doesn't drop. First, you need to check if robots.txt file is blocking some of the pages from being crawled by search bots. Also assess if there are pages on your site marked up with the noindex tag.

Having multiple pages covering similar themes or targeting the same keywords is also a problem. You need to canonicalise these pages appropriately to refer the original page that you wish search engines to return.

Make sure the website is mobile friendly. This is the major ranking signal of Google. Get rid of pages that are slow to load.

Summary

Keeping tabs on the above listed points will help you know about the exact reason behind drop in organic traffic and search engine ranking. Good Luck!

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Social Media Resume – Top Ways to Make it Look Awesome & Get Hired!

With increasing use and popularity of social media among World Wide Web, a remarkable change has been observed in the way organizations companies brand and promote themselves. A dramatic transformation has also been seen in the field of customer service.

Paid social was a huge success in the past. It is still growing. However, organic social media management still holds prime importance. According to studies, it has been revealed that jobs in the field of “social media” has gained immense importance and fame since 2010. Within a short period of time, the requirement and importance almost tripled.

Looking forward to bag a job as a social media manager? Well, this certainly calls for some detailed knowledge and expertise. You should be capable of doing much more than just friending your classmates on Facebook, following celebrities on Instagram and tweeting cute videos.

The key is to create the perfect social media resume. Here are some amazing ways to make your social media resume look impressive enough to get hired:

Communication Skills are Important

Of course, social media is all about establishing communication and making connections. Since a lot of companies use social platforms for branding, customer service, and influencing, it is of prime importance that you are capable of presenting a branded persona to find solutions to problems and communicate for the company. Communication is also very important for being part of a team! Being a social manager means that you will most likely be a member of a marketing team that demands you to effectively communicate what you require from them. You must also be very clear on the way you can help them achieve goals.

Remember that your social media resume must clearly highlight your skills to select a social platform for customer service effectively, especially for certain posts like Facebook for press releases and images of large corporations, Twitter for queries related to customer service, LinkedIn for job openings and conference news.

The best and easiest way to state this on a resume is to place right below “Skills” section. You can mention that you are 'Proficient in Social Media Targeting and Communication' and can 'Engaging customers and target prospects on social platforms'.

Show Off Your Copywriting Skills

Knowledge of grammar and spelling goes a long way in any profession. And if you make a living with it (a social media professional), you better get a strong hold over these! Errors in typing and grammar mistakes are very embarrassing. Grammarly is the best option. It is a free plugin. It spell checks as you go. Additionally, copywriting needs to create some excitement too. Remember, you  will have very limited space to communicate an offer. So brush up on your vocabulary. You must also be well prepared to pose yourself as the Hemingway of social media! On your resume, under “Skills” section, mention about your brilliant copywriting and editing skills.

Creativity is Important

Social media will be very boring without the creativity juices that make your posts gain an edge over the crowd. It should also be able to attract a lot of clicks and likes and retweets. So make your resume stand out! Add your creativity in it.

Display Past Successes

This is the best way to make your social media resume stand out. So focus on showcasing your past successes. You may use metrics, graphs, etc. for the same. This will help you show a potential employer what a great social media manager you can be. For instance, your Facebook likes have grown by 300%, the most popular tweet of yours was retweeted around 150 times, and periscope received over 4500 views. The idea is to show you have created and engaged a community successfully on various social platforms. In your resume, you need to show it something like 'Increased social media engagement significantly by increasing Facebook likes 300%.'

Analytical

Once you have identified your success, you already know your way around Twitter Analytics and Facebook Business Manager. So make sure these shows right at the top on your list of skill set. Showing that you can effectively manage social media and how good you are at it will have a positive impact.
If you add tracking from Google Analytics to your links, simply add that to the skill set list. You need to let your future employee know your efficiency at judging the success of your campaigns and the most important metric in this regard. Also mention how did you find it.

Your social media resume should include things such as fluency in Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, Twitter Analytics and experience in identifying trends, analyzing metrics, and optimizing performance.

Social Platforms

A social media manager must gain proficiency in the basics:

- Facebook
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Pinterest

However, it is also important to be well versed with HootSuite and IFTTT.  A dedicated social media is fully aware of the importance of planning. Without planning, it is not possible to set up posts in real time. Hence, it is very important that a potential employer sees this listed on the resume. This will make him/her feel that you are the real deal. You should also emphasise on various ways of using platforms to strengthen your strategy. For instance, you can include some of the related platforms such as SEMRush or Buzzsumo. Also plan at least 10 posts each week through Buffer and set up 4 applets through IFTTT.

Image Formatting

If you have not been using Canvas, start trying your hand on it. Experienced social media marketers are aware of the importance of posts with images. They know that posts with images perform way better than those without one. Images are a crucial element for driving positive brand sentiment. It also helps with developing a branded persona. You should focus on showing this skill off on your resume! Do not hesitate to showcase the most creative and best-performing posts on resume.

Following the above listed resume guidelines will help you get hired as a social media manager with a reputed firm. All the best!

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5 Best Ways Landing Page Optimization Tips to Lower Your CPC

Have you been looking for a Google AdWords campaign that's high-converting and costs less? This means, you require a very well-structured campaign that targets the right number of keywords and ensure relevance for the searcher. Generating magnetic ads is a must for increasing CTRs. Also bid the right amount so as to increase spending.

To start with, you need to emphasise on landing pages. Remember that relevancy and quality of your landing pages have a direct impact on Quality Score. This also directly affects cost per click (CPC). Hence, optimizing landing pages saves money and improves conversion rates.

Here are 5 amazing ways that help you to lower your CPCs with landing page optimization:

1. Relevance of Landing Page to Search Query

Quality score is of utmost importance for Google AdWords. All accounts with quality scores of 6 or above are granted a 16-50% decrease in CPC. On the other hand, accounts having 4 or lower Quality Score get 25-400% increase in CPC. A significant part of high Quality Score measurement is comprised of the landing pages. As per experts from the field of AdWords, irrelevant landing pages rarely get a quality score higher than 3. Connect landing pages with buying intent of ad groups as well as their respective keywords. Keywords have different intent. According to a theory, keywords are separated into three buckets. This categorization is made as per their intent:

- Informational keywords – These perform searches for answering queries or learn something.
- Commercial investigation keywords -  These perform searches for researching about a product or service.
- Transactional keywords – These perform searches for buying a certain thing.

2. Keyword Intent Funnel

Segmenting keywords into the above three intent levels is a common practice while doing keyword research. This helps with creating ads and landing pages perfectly adapted to these intents. It also increases Quality Score (and conversion rate) due to higher relevancy. For instance, when a visitor searches for "top foundation creams to look for 2017", the query intent falls into the commercial investigation. The query will help you create landing pages that successfully features an ebook or a special page dedicated to the best foundation creams to look for 2017. The landing page must emphasise on providing information to visitors, not selling. When this landing page matches the searcher's intent, it benefits from higher relevancy and Quality Score which automatically lowers CPC.

3. Quality Score

A lot of people tend to ignore quality score. Once you have followed and implemented the first tip here, you will be happy to see the side effect. This side effect is pleasant and delivers you exactly what you expected. The higher quality score is the side effect you receive for relevancy. Once you start creating highly targeted ads to a specific keyword, the click through rate (CTR) goes up. With this, the CTR goes up and quality increases. Once the landing page has its quality scores going up, it helps ad rank move up. The CPC lowers.

4. Emphasise on One Thing

Nothing can be worse than expecting a visitor to do all of the guesswork. People do not have time to keep guessing what they have to do with the landing page. They don't want to waste time understanding what a page is about. Also such situations will deter your landing page from making any sales. The best landing pages focus on a single thing - one problem, one solution. These pages also have a unique value proposition and a single goal. So make sure you focus on one thing at a time. You need to focus on one of their problems and then the solution. Let the page discuss how can you help them and what do you have to offer them.

The unique value proposition is equally important. Let your target audience know the 'unique' thing you offer them and why should they spend valuable time visiting your page. If you are serious about making them buy from you, add one CTA.  This is an “Add to Cart” button. In case, you want them to mail you, add, “click to mail” button. Similarly, if you wish them to call you, add “click-to-call" button.

5. Click Through Rate

Speed is the best thing about pay-per-click marketing. The results of efforts can be seen very fast. This helps the user determine the best direction to take. Here, it is very important that you create brand new ads to compete against all of your winning ads. In short, do not stop after a CTR of 6 per cent with a single winning ad. You need to make constant efforts to improve it. At last, even if you reach 10/10 quality score, keep making efforts on finding better words to use, using better call to action to implement etc. You can also find out more beneficial offers for visitors. Make sure you keep testing them all.

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Understanding Social Meta Tags – Simple Yet Easier Ways to Control the Way Your Content Appears in Social Media Shares

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A Guide to SEO for E-commerce Websites

Organic traffic is very crucial in the world of online business and eCommerce. However, it is getting tougher to rank higher these days. A huge variety of eCommerce platforms are out there and anyone can start a copy-cat store! SEO for e-commerce site will help. Here's how you go about it:

Focus on URL Structure

Page URL should have a profitable structure. The best strategy to follow for URL structures is:

'KISS' = Keep It Simple Store-Owner

The structure needs to be very simple, highly relevant and understandable by humans as well as search engines. Remember that a number of things may go wrong with this URL structure. One cannot get an  idea about a product just by looking at the URL. Now this can be very confusing for humans. If it does not contain relevant keywords for search engines, things are bound to get tougher.

The idea is to place keywords you want search engines to pick up on, right after your domain. This helps search engines understand what the page is all about. Once your product shows up in search results, Google will bold the keywords in the URL Hence, searchers know precisely what to expect when they click on your link.

Trust Breadcrumbs

These are navigational links that appear near the top of a page. Breadcrumbs help customers figure out where they are in your store. You are actually strengthening your SEO strategy by enabling them. These links build internal links to other pages on your website which further define your link architecture.

Boost Relevancy with Title Tags

This enhances relevancy to humans and search engines. A title tag is a brief description of product page  content. Main keywords need to appear at the start of the tag. This the acceptable title tag formula:

'Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Brand Name'

You can add brand name to secondary keywords if applicable. This will add uniqueness to each product page title tag. It solves the problem of having multiple products of the same type. You can add unique words describing your product to each product title tag. Also try considering other words that customers may search for.

Optimize Product Page

Focus on optimizing titles for product page. The title should be very descriptive and well optimized for search engines. Make the product / service obvious to anyone who sees it. Also try including keywords in H1, H2 and H3 tags. Although termed as weaker signals, these do count. Use of header tags in page content breaks it up and simplifies reading.

Description of Product

The product description is usually underestimated. This is a sales pitch and the best way to give your store an edge over copycats. Understand that there are too many eCommerce stores having product descriptions written by manufacturers. Using manufacturer written product description can play negative in most situations. For instance, descriptions get distributed to all of the other online stores selling similar products. This makes search engines see multiple websites with similar content. Duplicate content will invite penalty by Google. Also manufacturer descriptions are written in a fashion to sell the product. These simply describe the product specs and are extremely boring to read. Search engines likes unique and interesting content. Make it descriptive enough to help your customers while making a decision on a product. Lastly, use 'rel=canonical' tag to convey Google that a specific content is not duplicated.

Product Reviews

According to studies, it is revealed that over 70 per cent of individuals look forward to online reviews prior to making a purchase. In fact, they base maximum part of their decision on reviews. So if your eCommerce store does not have product reviews, just add them. Your target audience is hungry for product reviews. Additionally, search engines love product reviews!

Product reviews help your site get updated with fresh and unique content. It is free user-generated content and makes for a very affordable way of adding new content to product pages. These are also very effective in optimizing your product page for long tail keywords. Remember that customers leaving reviews may use similar keywords consumers are searching for! This will work for your advantage.

You can optimize reviews for product page SEO. Reviews add micro-data to a page. Micro-data gets displayed as a line of text under each search result. This ensures more context to your content. It helps customers decide if they should click on the result.

Social Media Buttons

Distracting customers from buying a product is the worst thing yoou can do to your site. So make your   customer first buy a product and share it later. Social shares send signals to search engines about the  popularity of the products. Each share is like upvote and an indication that your product is interesting enough for people to refer to their friends. Lastly, each share may bring back additional traffic to your site!

Product Images

Product images can help improve conversion rates for your online store to a significant amount. However, you need to optimize these well for search engines. So start off via using descriptive image file names and Alt tags. Make sure these incorporate important keywords. The alt text is alternative text used by browsers when they cannot render the image. A keyword-rich description is helpful for both search engines and humans. The image file sizes shouldn't be large enough to take a long time to load. This slows down page speed and make your customers drop off. The search engines will ultimately lower your ranking.

Product Videos

Did you know a video enhances understanding of your product among consumers? Also these videos drive viewers to actually try out / buy the product! Product videos make for an amazing tool for conversion rates. Also, these help you create a unique place in search results. No wonder millions of users flock to YouTube to know about a product, its uses and other demonstration related queries.

Uploading product videos to YouTube will work! Make sure titles, tags and descriptions are well optimized for your keywords while uploading. This is important to make your videos searchable on YouTube. When optimized well, these may even show up on a Google search!

Once your product is up on YouTube, imply embed it on your site. Also allow others to embed it. The more number of people embeds your video, more it will get ranked higher in Google.

Summary

Well, you won’t start ranking on the front page of Google, immediately. The process takes time. However, once you are successful in integrating SEO into your website smartly, your store will start emerging higher for some specific keywords. This will also help you beat your competitors. Good Luck!

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