This case study is addressing several concerns from stakeholders and the concerns were as follows:

• Drop in organic traffic without any changes to the website
• Majority of the drop is mainly for one specific region
• A significant drop in conversion rates
• The drop is across all channels and comparatively higher drop is from organic channel

Organic Traffic can narrow down for a myriad of reasons, sometimes it could be for some major reasons and predominantly due to the implementation of errors and sometimes due to some external factors, which again might impact to a greater proportion or nothing at all.

Below is such an instance where one actually isn’t oblivion about any particular reason of the sudden drop in Organic Traffic, this becomes an even greater problem especially since the organic channel is the biggest source of traffic and the revenue is completely dependent on the Organic Traffic.

I am presently dealing with an account which has a widespread global presence whose revenues are stratospheric and any minor problem can affect largely on the overall revenues for the month, it’s a trying time for the sales and marketing professionals when there are a few predictable cases and many unpredictable ones those which are impacting the organic performance of a website.

Let’s get to the root on what is currently happening on the account:

• Duration: August 1-20^{th 2018}
• Drop in Traffic- 10%
• Drop in conversion rate by 17.5%
• Transactions by 27%
• Revenue by 16%

I reckon the following reasons for the depletion:

1. Since the major drop is from India, it could be a seasonal effect.
2. Drop in Traffic due to the fall in the average position of keywords.
3. Drop in traffic that comes from the brand terms, as paid marketers are bidding for it and take some of it.
4. Any technical glitches/blunders either by the marketing teams or development or both on the systems.

Anything else?

The product availability for the considered duration:

If the product availability is displayed as out of stock, of course, there will be a drop in CTR and in turn drop in the traffic to the website. The product availability snippet can be replaced with the schedule snippets for training, the entertainment industry, rating and reviews for other industries, and something else for some other industry, and its absence will impact the CTR (Click through rate) and in turn the traffic. Anyways, let’s not get into it! Let’s leave the matter to the respective product owners or inventory managers or operation teams to dig into it.

Note: With the drop in CTR search engines push your website down and later it would take some time to retrieve it to its actual positions despite the availability of the product.

Talking about the 4 reasons for the major drop in Traffic:

1. Since the major drop is from India, it could be a seasonal effect:

August is the month of Independence for India, and along with that the land of diverse festivals is also celebrating Bakri- Eid, both the occasions fall in the mid-week and ergo there is a high possibility of techies/professionals planning their weekends and festivities, that could have been the reason for the drop in searches on internet or on search engines like Google, Bing and more.

Let’s dig a bit deeper and understand if our presumption is true:

Week 2 Vs. Week 1

Some sample data from the webmaster tools

Some noticeable dip in the horizontal lines exactly the day of Independence day, and it’s not a sharp dip, it’s actually linear over that week. Let’s go a bit deeper to that date, I also observed the Avg position of keywords has come down by 3% and this would have been the actual reason for the drop.

Week	Impressions	Clicks/Traffic	CTR	Avg Pos
Week1 Aug	319539	9463	2.96%	24
Week2 Aug	283033	8541	3.02%	24.6
Diff	-36506	-922	0.0006	0.6
%Change	–11%	-10%	2%	3%

2. Drop in Traffic due to the change in keywords SERP and CTR:

Case1: No Change in Avg position of keywords but a gradual drop in impressions:

This clearly implies that the number of searches has come down from the region which is prominently contributing for impressions, here, in this case, India is the major contributor and hence there is a seasonal impact.

For Data Privacy reasons the numbers are alerted in the table and across the article, the altered number has a proportionate difference across the complete set and dimensions,

Queries	Week2 Clicks	Week1 Clicks	Week 2 Imp	Week1 Imp	Imp Diff	Week2 CTR	Week1 CTR	CTR Diff	Week2 Avg Pos	Week1 Avg Pos	Avp Pos Diff
SEO	10	14	1582	1627	-45	0.63%	0.86%	-0.23%	6.2	6.2	0
Email	6	4	911	1177	-266	0.66%	0.34%	0.32%	11	11	0
adwords certification	11	5	986	1047	-61	1.12%	0.48%	0.64%	13	13	0
hubspot certification	5	2	641	765	-124	0.78%	0.26%	0.52%	8.8	8.8	0
business analyst course	17	25	632	735	-103	2.69%	3.40%	-0.71%	13	13	0
certified business analysis professional	4	4	354	337	17	1.13%	1.19%	-0.06%	9.3	9.3	0
Analytics certification pune	9	10	207	249	-42	4.35%	4.02%	0.33%	3.5	3.5	0
change management training	2	3	246	235	11	0.81%	1.28%	-0.47%	29	29	0
soft skill training	2	6	188	220	-32	1.06%	2.73%	-1.67%	12	12	0
Analytics certification bangalore	12	12	231	210	21	5.19%	5.71%	-0.52%	3.7	3.7	0
big data training in bangalore	1	2	123	196	-73	0.81%	1.02%	-0.21%	10	10	0
financial modelling course	5	4	133	169	-36	3.76%	2.37%	1.39%	17	17	0
Analytics certification chennai	12	15	196	166	30	6.12%	9.04%	-2.92%	2.9	2.9	0
hubspot foundation certification	6	23	101	149	-48	5.94%	15.44%	-9.50%	3	3	0
frm course	4	3	162	147	15	2.47%	2.04%	0.43%	17	17	0
pmi acp training	4	3	103	113	-10	3.88%	2.65%	1.23%	19	19	0

From the above date we understand the seasonal drop is literal and the drop in average position by 3% could have been for some reason and meanwhile there will be an impact of that Avg position drop which we will be figuring out in the other three reasons of drop in organic traffic.

Case 2: Improvement in the Average position and drop in traffic.

This is the case when the CTR is low and this usually happens for the following reasons:

1. Illegibly written titles and descriptions
2. Product availability as discussed above
3. The brand value
4. External factors such as paid marketing and advertisements can consume the traffic.

Queries	Week2 Clicks	Week1 Clicks	Week 2 Imp	Week1 Imp	Imp Diff	Week2 CTR	Week1 CTR	CTR Diff	Week2 Avg Pos	Week1 Avg Pos	Avp Pos Diff
search engine optimization	34	41	2904	3392	-488	1.17%	1.21%	-0.04%	10	11	-1
SEO certification	22	20	1799	2047	-248	1.22%	0.98%	0.24%	7.8	7.9	-0.1
Adwords expert	10	13	738	876	-138	1.36%	1.48%	-0.12%	7.8	10	-2.2
Analytics	3	3	918	867	51	0.33%	0.35%	-0.02%	9.3	11	-1.7
Analytics certification cost	5	9	538	640	-102	0.93%	1.41%	-0.48%	9.6	9.8	-0.2
six sigma certification	7	4	390	509	-119	1.79%	0.79%	1.00%	10	11	-1
cspo	12	10	450	507	-57	2.67%	1.97%	0.70%	6.9	7.3	-0.4
Analytics training centre cochin	0	1	0	448	-448	0%	0.22%	-0.22%	0	2.3	-2.3
agile certification	0	3	0	438	-438	0%	0.68%	-0.68%	0	11	-11
project management certification	4	11	383	430	-47	1.04%	2.56%	-1.52%	13	15	-2
hubspot training	13	7	462	388	74	2.81%	1.80%	1.01%	39	45	-6
itil foundation certification	9	4	452	387	65	1.99%	1.03%	0.96%	23	26	-3
digital marketing course	7	2	435	360	75	1.61%	0.56%	1.05%	41	46	-5
simpliearn pune	16	12	314	343	-29	5.10%	3.50%	1.60%	4.7	4.8	-0.1
scrum master training	2	7	282	329	-47	0.71%	2.13%	-1.42%	22	27	-5
agile search engine optimization	8	6	311	323	-12	2.57%	1.86%	0.71%	9.5	9.6	-0.1
simpliearn solutions	15	11	227	281	-54	6.61%	3.91%	2.70%	1.3	1.6	-0.3
safe training	11	10	256	259	-3	4.30%	3.86%	0.44%	9.2	9.5	-0.3
pmi acp	3	4	237	244	-7	1.27%	1.64%	-0.37%	8.5	8.7	-0.2
safe agilist	3	2	222	242	-20	1.35%	0.83%	0.52%	9	9.3	-0.3
adwords foundation	4	3	250	231	19	1.60%	1.30%	0.30%	16	18	-2

Case3: Drop in traffic due to drop in the average positions of keywords

Queries	Week2 Clicks	Week1 Clicks	Week 2 Imp	Week1 Imp	Imp Diff	Week2 CTR	Week1 CTR	CTR Diff	Week2 Avg Pos	Week1 Avg Pos	Avp Pos Diff
Analytics certification	68	78	3200	3589	-389	2.12%	2.17%	-0.05%	7.8	7.5	0.3
project management courses	49	61	768	749	19	6.38%	8.14%	-1.76%	6.3	5.6	0.7
project management course	23	19	209	242	-33	11%	7.85%	3.15%	4.8	4.2	0.6
Analytics training	18	25	358	507	-149	5.03%	4.93%	0.10%	7.5	6.6	0.9
safe agile certification	17	19	704	800	-96	2.41%	2.38%	0.03%	8.6	8.3	0.3
Analytics certification cost in chennai	13	9	71	42	29	18.31%	21.43%	-3.12%	2.8	2.5	0.3
safe certification	11	14	549	578	-29	2%	2.42%	-0.42%	7.4	7.1	0.3
project management courses in mumbai	11	3	62	50	12	17.74%	6%	11.74%	1.9	1.8	0.1
primavera p6 training	10	11	114	145	-31	8.77%	7.59%	1.18%	13	11	2
pgmp certification training	10	4	60	65	-5	16.67%	6.15%	10.52%	3.9	3.4	0.5
Email certification	10	9	757	785	-28	1.32%	1.15%	0.17%	9	8.9	0.1
agile training	10	18	529	692	-163	1.89%	2.60%	-0.71%	20	17	3
Analytics course	9	14	425	485	-60	2.12%	2.89%	-0.77%	22	21	1
project management courses in bangalore	8	6	67	51	16	11.94%	11.76%	0.18%	2.4	1.8	0.6
Analytics certification in delhi	8	16	65	86	-21	12.31%	18.60%	-6.29%	2.2	2.1	0.1
Email training	8	11	268	273	-5	2.99%	4.03%	-1.04%	4.7	4.4	0.3

This case as well is true, there is a drop in the position and hence there is a drop in CTR and eventually a drop in traffic.

No, getting to the logic of what causes a keyword position drop?

There is one single metric that’s the root cause of the drop in SERP and that’s due to the drop in crawl stats such as crawl frequency and crawl rate,

But how can this Crawl rate or Crawl frequency come down?

• When the load times are good?
• When the file’s sizes are small?
• When the servers are good?
• When there is no change in the backlink profile?

These are not the only problems that impact the crawl stats, there are many more and they are as follows:

a. Server errors- Header status 500:

This is one of the common issues when the hosting is on shared servers.

The 500 status header will be served when the server is busy and not be able to handle the request and this happens for the following reasons,

• When there is an enormous traffic to the website, as a result, the servers won’t be able to handle a large number of demanding requests and that when they show a 500 server error either to the user or to the bots or to both.
• Lots of bot traffic to the server and servers won’t be able to handle the requests and in turn, shows 500 server error.
• There is a possibility of the confirmation files going wrong at a moment or sometimes the commands handling the instructions itself might go wrong.

b. Soft 404 errors:

Soft 404 errors are those cases when the bots find a status code other than 404 for the non-existing file on the server. In simple words, if the requested file is not on the server, a server is supposed to serve a 404 (Not found) message/status header and instead if it’s servers serve some other status header instead of 404, it will be considered to be as the soft 404 error, this would impact the crawl rate of the website at a significant level.

c. Access denied- Status header 407:

Servers are denying the bots crawling the content and this usually happens when,

1. Users compulsorily need to login to access content, there will not be an issue if the actual intended pages are denying the access, but if in case the organic performing pages denies access then this can be considered as a huge problem.
2. Server setting may need proxy authentication and in that case, servers would block the Google bot that is crawling the website.
3. In case if any of the valid content or URLs are blocked under robots then the” access denied” error is a tremendous error to be handled on priority.

Just to figure out what actually went wrong I cross-checked against the three reasons I found,

Everything is perfectly alright against the points 1^st and 3^rd,and I could only suspect the new implementation done in the recent times,

The issue is with the rounded content, the recently updated privacy policy could be the reason for it as everything else remains the same including the server setting, the same can be seen in the first image of the server denied section as the errors appeared only in the recent times

d. Not Found errors- Status header 404:

As seen in the above image the errors have increased by a significant number in the recent times and these 404 errors will impact the crawl rate to a significant level and in turn impacting the avg positions of the keywords on SERP.

3. Drop in traffic due to paid marketing:

Drop in traffic that’s coming through the brand terms, and major revenue driving terms as paid marketers bid on it and take some of the shares,

Here are some steps in understanding how to find it,

Brand Organic Search Traffic Drop with the paid marketing:

In the recent times we have launched paid campaigns, as some of the competitors were bidding on our brand terms and were taking off most of the converting traffic from us and ergo we considered launching the paid campaigns:

I have also gone through the brand keywords of the webmaster data and I was able to figure that there is a drop in CTR of many of the traffic driving keywords, the keyword data with a drop in CTR can be found below.

Queries	Week2 Clicks	Week1 Clicks	Week 2 Imp	Week1 Imp	Imp Diff	Week2 CTR	Week1 CTR	CTR Diff
simpliearn	2160	2435	32383	33729	-1346	6.67%	7.22%	-0.55%
simpli earn	655	809	10138	10803	-665	6.46%	7.49%	-1.03%
simpliearn SEO	68	111	1726	1696	30	3.94%	6.54%	-2.60%
simpli earns	54	59	851	907	-56	6.35%	6.50%	-0.15%
simpliearn pune	52	36	1213	717	496	4.29%	5.02%	-0.73%
simpliearn solutions	50	76	932	1261	-329	5.36%	6.03%	-0.67%
simpliearn solutions pvt ltd	34	33	613	534	79	5.55%	6.18%	-0.63%
simpliearn bangalore	32	41	1028	875	153	3.11%	4.69%	-1.58%
simpliearn solutions pvt. ltd	27	26	419	341	78	6.44%	7.62%	-1.18%
simpliearn solutions private limited	25	17	396	271	125	6.31%	6.27%	0.04%
simpliearn solutions pvt. ltd.	25	28	324	282	42	7.72%	9.93%	-2.21%
simpliearn reviews	25	45	485	558	-73	5.15%	8.06%	-2.91%
simpliearns	24	30	343	356	-13	7%	8.43%	-1.43%
simpliearn careers	22	30	70	71	-1	31.43%	42.25%	-10.82%

Paid Campaigns effecting the Non Brand Search Traffic (Hit on CTR due to paid search marketing)

To understand this let’s consider some of the products/services that satisfy the following conditions,

1. The course which has active paid marketing campaigns
2. The search volume has no change
3. The Avg position has no change
4. All the competitors ranking and brand value remain same
5. Our brand value to is same
6. There are no changes in any of the external factors except the paid marketing

Now consider all the above, in absence of paid marketing the CTR’s and traffic coming from the specific keywords should be same, but then there is drop in traffic despite no change or improvement in the average position of the keyword on the SERP as depicted in the below table,

 

Queries	Week2 Clicks	Week1 Clicks	Clicks Diff	Week 2 Imp	Week1 Imp	Imp Diff	Week2 CTR	Week1 CTR	CTR Diff	Week2 Avg Pos	Week1 Avg Pos	Avp Pos Diff
project management courses	49	61	-12	768	749	19	6.38%	8.14%	-1.76%	6.3	5.6	0.7
search engine optimization bangalore	4	8	-4	90	88	2	4.44%	9.09%	-4.65%	3.7	3.5	0.2
digital marketing course berlin	3	4	-1	9	8	1	33.33%	50%	-16.67%	1.1	1	0.1
safe agile certification chennai	3	4	-1	9	8	1	33.33%	50%	-16.67%	2.1	2	0.1
Analytics certification training	2	3	-1	148	136	12	1.35%	2.21%	-0.86%	26	24	2
safe training in pune	2	3	-1	6	5	1	33.33%	60%	-26.67%	1.3	1	0.3
quality management certification courses	2	3	-1	48	36	12	4.17%	8.33%	-4.16%	6.4	6.1	0.3
scaled agile certification	2	7	-5	184	183	1	1.09%	3.83%	-2.74%	8	7.8	0.2
p6 primavera training	1	2	-1	19	17	2	5.26%	11.76%	-6.50%	8.5	8.2	0.3
business analyst course in hyderabad	1	2	-1	51	44	7	1.96%	4.55%	-2.59%	8.5	7.2	1.3
online safe training	1	2	-1	7	5	2	14.29%	40%	-25.71%	3.3	3.2	0.1
scrum master training dallas	1	3	-2	6	5	1	16.67%	60%	-43.33%	2.7	2.4	0.3
leading safe	1	4	-3	208	207	1	0.48%	1.93%	-1.45%	8.8	8.7	0.1
Analytics certification hyderabad	1	6	-5	53	45	8	1.89%	13.33%	-11.44%	2.3	2	0.3
agile search engine optimization in chennai	1	3	-2	21	15	6	4.76%	20%	-15.24%	2.6	1.4	1.2
togaf training	1	2	-1	101	90	11	0.99%	2.22%	-1.23%	51	37	14

4. Any technical glitches/blunders either by the marketing teams or development or both on the system.

This is one of the most common issues we come across and impacting greatly but least noticed. There is something similar that occurred with our website as well, there were around 2000 web pages which got blocked for search engines crawl and index due to the improper communication between the technical team and the marketing team and this has led to a drop in traffic coming from those web pages,

Below is the table which clearly depicts the above statement,

Queries	Week 2 Imp	Week1 Imp	Imp Diff
Analytics training centre cochin	0	448	-448
agile certification	0	438	-438
agile project management training	0	230	-230
Adwords expert training	0	225	-225
big data hadoop training	0	209	-209
business analyst training	0	207	-207
cissp training	0	199	-199
digital marketing course in indore	0	172	-172
project management institute	0	168	-168
iiba	0	162	-162
digital marketing course in chandigarh	0	151	-151
pgmp	0	150	-150
hubspot training in chennai	0	139	-139
digital marketing training in indore	0	137	-137
six sigma course	0	132	-132
safe agilist certification	0	130	-130
agile courses	0	118	-118
business management training courses	0	116	-116
simpliearn address	0	113	-113
certified scrum professional	0	112	-112