Our SEO Tool website has stopped getting visitors overnight! How come?

Question

A mate and I have created a web SEO tool to help people optimise their sites, find easier terms and keywords to target and find competition figures etc:-

dawjee.com

It's been steadily gaining momentum for a few weeks now but today it's completely dead... Our unique visitors:-

Wednesday 7th May 2008 - 63

Tuesday 6th May 2008 - 3,610

Monday 5th May 2008 - 3,490

Sunday 4th May 2008 - 2,613

Saturday 3rd May 2008 - 2,188

Friday 2nd May 2008 - 2,274

Thursday 1st May 2008 - 2,078

Wednesday 30th April 2008 - 2,049

Tuesday 29th April 2008 - 1,858

Monday 28th April 2008 - 1,744

Sunday 27th April 2008 - 1,429

Saturday 26th April 2008 - 1,282

We're still listed on Google, we have plenty of backlinks and we're not doing anything naughty at all so what gives? :(

Answer 1

Google just recently did a PageRank update. When that happens, some sites also get re-indexed. This can happen for a variety of reasons but the most common are duplicate content, spammy activity on your site or your anchor text is too narrow.

If it is just a update related shift, there is a good possibility your rankings will return. Give it a few days.

Answer 2

Hopefully, you are merely experiencing a minor hickcup during one of many Google updates.

Good luck!

Answer 3

your mother is unique

Answer 4

Have you upset any of your competition lately?

http://www.brickmarketing.com

Answer 5

Without any valid data,  I can't really comment on this... we should first analyze the previous traffic and then compare that with the traffic we get now.

Please analyze your traffic sources and compare it with the present traffic source. You can then know the difference. Once, you know from where the traffic decreased, you can go deep into that and analyze the problem.

One more possible reason might be, server down... yes, its true in many cases. But, we cant conclude without a valid data or information.

Johnny

http://www.trafficassistants.com

Answer 6

Page rank with google varies on a daily basis. For one of our top searches, we rotate between 1st and 4th placement on page 1. For another term, we've remained in 1st position without ever moving (knock on wood).

To have such a significant drop overnight tells me a server was down so don't change any of your keywords. It could have been the server for your counter or the company that hosts your website.

Many technology companies do upgrades late at night when traffic tends to be slower. Check their sites for any announcements pertaining to maintence upgrades. I'll bet this is the reason for your decrease in traffic. Good luck in your business!

Answer 7

It could be a number of factors:

1. First, lack of new content. Visitors won't return to see the same old stuff. They also won't tell their friends (word of mouth marketing) to visit your site. You also lose Google points for dated content. Start a blog for user-generated content, as in free.

2. Visit Google Diagnostics at Webmaster Central to make sure something isn't broken. This tool helps you see the site the way Googlebots see it. It will identify coding errors, re-directs and other things that make access to your site difficult.

3. Are you blogging other sites, syndicating content, answering questions on Yahoo Answers (like this)? All of these activities create more and more back links.

4. Visit Alexa.com to analyze traffic rank - exactly how much your site has slipped in TR and when.

5. Do keywords in HTML code synch up with body text? If not, they sould.

6. Are you sure you haven't been hacked? If you're using a shared hosting account, you're on the same server as 1200 other site owners. Cross-side (X-side) server attacks are common, especially when you start eating a competitor's lunch.

7. Use Google Analytics to generate a picture of site activity over the past few weeks.

8. Did you employ a PPC program? Competitors may have committed click fraud to inflate your numbers and blow the ad budget out the back door.

9. Check both the presentation layer and the HTML code. The problem can be in front of or behind the curtain.

10. Start guerilla marketing. It's free and it employs the resources of other businesses to your benefit.

It's a jungle out there. Hope you find the problem. Please drop me a line when you do. Just curious.

Best of luck,

Paul Lalley

[e-mail]