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Compared to the last year I can see that we get less traffic from the search engines, roughly 30-40% prosent less. Huge drop.

 

How about you?

 

I have heard rumours that Google has changed their algorithms and this is the reason for this decreasing traffic. If this is true is there something we can do, or Insided can do to improve SEO?

I do not see this trend across the communities where I check the data (probably more than a dozen in the last few months). Maybe just a note for you, but I want to be sure:

Often we only look at the % of traffic that comes via a channel, but you also should look at the total numbers. Imagine you have added many links to your product / website, which results in much more users coming in from this channel. This naturally would decrease the % of organic traffic coming from Google and others. This is why I usually start searching here if we see bigger changes.

I wonder if you have checked also in Google Search Console? There you could see how your SEO performance has changed over time, and could be an interesting indicator.

Outside of this, I learned that Google is continously adjusting and improving their algorithm. Sometimes there are bigger updates, like last year in may. You can check there an in-depth analysis that I have performed to figure out the impact:

One year later, I can tell you two things which I feel are at the core of this:

  • Googles improvements usually aim to show more relevant content to users. In consequence, the total amount of impressions (how often users saw search results that include links to your community) might go down, but the overall traffic generated should be more valuable (for the end user). Think about old / incorrect content not being indexed any more, but relevant content being highlighted.
  • While you can do much to optimize the performance of your community, we also always make steps to have better performance. However there are limits to that, Google search performance is quite hard to manipulate, for obvious reasons.

Let me know if there are more questions here, also curious to hear how others look at this. :)

 

Often we only look at the % of traffic that comes via a channel, but you also should look at the total numbers. Imagine you have added many links to your product / website, which results in much more users coming in from this channel. This naturally would decrease the % of organic traffic coming from Google and others. This is why I usually start searching here if we see bigger changes.

 

This is very good note and I have looked our total numbers as well :)

 

 

I wonder if you have checked also in Google Search Console? There you could see how your SEO performance has changed over time, and could be an interesting indicator.

Thanks for this, I have totally forgotten the Search Console. I have to look what I can find from there.

 

 

Outside of this, I learned that Google is continously adjusting and improving their algorithm. Sometimes there are bigger updates, like last year in may.

Yeah this is true, I have forgotten to mention that I understood about the rumours that algorithm changes have effected especially for the forums.

But those are the rumours, we have to study this more and it would be nice to hear from other users as well, have you seen any changes :)

I just compared the Google Search Console Numbers of the last 6 months with the previous 6 months:

  • +10% impressions
  • +10% clicks
  • slight drop in CTR
  • slight drop in average position

On Google Analytics the organic search share was constant.

So, no indication about losing traffic through Google here. The absolute number of users coming to the community via Google even improved.

 

So, no indication about losing traffic through Google here. The absolute number of users coming to the community via Google even improved.

I think this is good news, meaning that there are something we still can do. Everything is still in our hands.

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