In previous articles, we have explored some of the benefits of Google Analytics 4 (GA4). As an analytics service, GA4 allows us to see how users experience our websites and what makes visitors become customers. One of GA4’s key features is its ability to show traffic both in real-time and over specific periods of time. However, what do we do if we open GA4 to see that suddenly, our traffic has dropped?

First, Are you New to GA4?

While the question may sound silly, the switch from Universal Analytics to GA4 can lead to visually less traffic. This is not because your traffic truly dropped, but because GA4 collects data differently from its predecessor.

 In Universal Analytics, users couldn’t be identified specifically, which means that if they were a reoccurring user, their interactions counted as different users visiting your site. In GA4, users are tracked more efficiently. If a user, for example, visited your page online, and then on their phone, they would still count as one user. Thus, your traffic may appear to drop if you are still getting used to GA4.

Next, Check if the Data is Accurate

Technical Difficulties & GA4 Settings

While seeing a sudden drop in traffic can cause panic, the drop could be inaccurate. These inaccuracies could be cause by incorrect settings in GA4, as well as outside difficulties with technology. Check that your pages are live and running. If it’s not a technical issue, review your date settings in the right-hand corner of your “Report Snapshot” page. If the date is inaccurate, such as spanning to days that haven’t occurred, your data may just be incorrect.

The Day and Date

Another thing to check before diving further into diagnosing your loss of traffic is to note the day. Is it the weekend? A holiday? A drop a traffic could be a normal occurrence in context. One way to check this is to compare your current data to past data. This can be done by clicking the “Add Comparison” option located under the title of your “Report Snapshot” page.

Unexpected Events

The drop in traffic could also be due to something completely out of your control. For example, if you get the majority of your users from a specific region and your traffic drops in that region suddenly, it could have to do with a real-life event. A special holiday, a natural disaster, a power outage, or even shifting political climate could affect people’s access to your website.

Using GA4, we can visit the “Demographics” tab under “Users” to analyze where our traffic comes from in terms of place of origin. “Demographics Overview” shows us the top countries that our users reside in, as well as offers more granular data, such as top cities. More data can be found in “Demographic Details.”

We can use these tabs to see if certain countries have suddenly dropped in traffic. If so, checking the news or the state of your website for those countries can help identify if something beyond your website has impacted your user activity or not.

Using GA4 to Diagnose your Traffic

If your change in traffic is still unclear after initial diagnostics, we can use GA4 to explore more internal issues that may be affecting our website. We can start this by looking into the reports under the “Acquisition” Tab.

“Acquisition Overview”, “User Acquisition”, and “Traffic Acquisition” can help us understand where users are coming from over time by specific categories. The default categories GA4 illustrates are Organic Search, Direct, Organic Social, and Referral. A drop in traffic within one of these categories can help guide us to what we should do next to improve site engagement.

Diagnostics & Types of Traffic

Organic Search Traffic

Organic Search traffic are users who arrived at your site from search engines such as Google. Techniques like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) directly impact this category of traffic, and thus a drop in Organic Search may have something to do with SEO.

While you can find some data about the keywords you are using to bring people to your site as well as your actual ranking in search queries by using GA4 or Google Search Console, it can be hard to track SEO related information. Your drop in traffic could be something as serious as a Google Penalty to something more organic such as a shift in audience preference. Your users could have started using different terms to search your products and services, or even be looking for something entirely different now. More internal, your SEO titles or descriptions concerning your pages in search queries may be irrelevant or inaccurate, causing users to click less on your pages.

Next Step: Improve SEO

There are many avenues that you can take to improve SEO. From technical SEO to on-page SEO, there is a lot of ways you can optimize your site’s searchability. Key factors that determine your rank are your keywords, content quality, and overall user experience. Keeping up to date with the keywords in your industry, creating relevant and readable content, and maintaining the health of your website are all beneficial to increasing SEO.

Direct Traffic

Direct Traffic contains users that arrive to your site by directly using the URLs of your pages. These are users who may be reoccurring visitors who are already interested in your products and services. When Direct Traffic drops, it is time to check on your website’s health as well as your competitors.

Direct traffic may drop when there are issues with your pages. Perhaps a page is broken and unreachable. The content of that page could also be less relevant to your audience. Noting recent changes to your site can also lead you towards the source of the problem. Besides changes to your website, changes in the industry can also affect Direct Traffic. Is there a new competitor in the market that has gain popularity? Has a rival come out with a new and improved service or product? Keeping up to date with your industry can help diagnose sudden changes in your users.

Next Step: Improve Website

Addressing broken pages or links is essential to maintaining your current flow of Direct Traffic. Beyond general maintenance and keeping content up to date, improving your content will also help keep your site attractive and relevant. The more useful and easier to use your site is, the more likely users will enjoy spending time on it. You can’t go wrong with improvements that will benefit user experience.

Organic Social Traffic

Organic Social Traffic considers users that arrive to your site via your social media outlets. Shifts in this traffic could suggest issues with your social media page, a lack of activity from your business, or a change in your audience.

When Organic Social Traffic drops, make sure your social media pages are running smoothly and check out your most recent content. Is your page up to date? How have your recent posts been doing? Does your audience seem to be getting bored? All of these can affect the draw of users from your social media outlets.

Next Step: Optimize your Social Media Channel

One way to draw more clicks from your social media channels is to improve your page and posts. Make sure your information is up to date and that you are active on your platforms. Social media is a place where users can ask questions and share opinions about your products. Such information can be beneficial in terms of improving your brand. Asking and answering questions from users can help create a better understanding of your products and your audience’s needs. The more you know about your users, the better you can produce content that will keep them interested and coming back.

Referral Traffic

Referral Traffic stands out as different from other forms of traffic. This category contains users that arrive to your site from sources that are not under your control. Your social media outlets or search engine results would be excluded form this category. Instead, this type of traffic is created when a different site entirely links your page to their own.

Referral traffic can come from “Top 10” like articles as well as explanatory pages that link your content to theirs for the sake of education. In a way, these pages reflect how others rate the quality of your content. For your blogs or products to be considered useful enough for another website to link to is a complement on its own. A drop in this kind of traffic would suggest that a better source has come out for your type of content.

Next Step: Improve Website Content & Network with Others

While this traffic is usually smaller compared to other sources of users, it can say a lot about what you are doing right. Using GA4, identify where your referral traffic is coming from and for which of your pages. Note the content of those pages and keep it in mind when improving and adding new content to your website. Checking out what other websites they linked to may also help in deciding what content you want to pursue in the future.

If you want to pursue more referral traffic, reach out to the website that brought users to you already. Connect with them, or maybe link to them in your own content. Networking can be beneficial in continuing to receive referrals from other sources.

Want more Tips and Tricks for Improving Your Website?

Optimizing your website to not only bring in traffic, but to build a reoccurring relationship with customers can be hard. There are many avenues that can be worked on to increase the conversion rate of your website. At BCSE, we can help! Contact us to discuss how we can improve your online shop.

Want to learn more about what you can do on your own to improve your eCommerce endeavors? Join the waitlist today for Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website.” In this course, you will learn the tools and techniques you can use to bring more traffic to your business.

In previous articles, we explored how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can bring more traffic to your site. With SEO, search engines like Google can better serve your website to relevant customers. The goal of this process is to increase your rank in searches where your products are services could be the answer.

One of the main ways people perform SEO is through the use of key words and phrases. These dialogues are determined by the words your audience use to search your line of work. However, keywords alone cannot fully improve your visibility.

The Issue with Key Words

While key words are still an essential part to bringing traffic to your site, search engines have become smarter over time. In the past, using a key word multiple times in your content would increase your rank in relevant searches. However, entities such as Google have broadened their scope to include the user experience when judging rank. This means that readability becomes a factor in determining your site’s placement.

When reading anything, hearing the same word over and over again can get boring if not annoying. Repetition breaks the natural flow of a piece and can cause readers to stop reading. The same applies for your content. While you could use your keywords as many times as possible on your site, it will not be attractive to your users. As with any piece of writing, the use of synonyms can help greatly with this issue.

Improving Content & SEO with Synonyms

Synonyms, words that are similar to your desired word, will not only improve the readability of your content, but also improve your SEO as a whole. Today, search engines can understand and define synonyms of your key words and phrases. Thus, using synonyms will continue to enhance the searchability of your site, if not broaden the words that users can use to find your services. At the same time, your writing will be improved as a whole, making it more palatable and interesting.

Keeping users on your page is key to create customers. In order to tell if your site is attractive as well as optimized for searchability, make sure to read your content multiple times. How does it sound? It is enjoyable? is it relevant? Being critical of your content is a simple step in optimizing your website for turning visitors into customers.

Want to Learn More?

Wondering what key words you could use to optimize your website? Interested in learning more about the many ways you can work on SEO? BCSE is always here for you! Reach out to us with any questions you may have! If you are desiring a more hands-on approach to learning more about SEO, join the waitlist for Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website.” In this course, she will dive into SEO and other important factors that aim to optimize your website.

In previous articles, we have explored some techniques we can use to improve our site’s searchability and ranking through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). From technical SEO to on-page SEO, there are many aspects that we can work on to push our search engine ranking higher. One such method is content pruning.

An aspect of your site that search engines consider when determining your rank is content. Quality content not only is essential for good user experience, but also for the bots that crawl your website in search of its meaning. If the bots do not find value in your content, they will rank your page lesser, bringing down the ranking of your site. Thus, it is important to cut content that isn’t helping your business thrive.

Content pruning is the process of removing content that is no longer relevant. Such content could be out-of-date, low performing, or too similar to other content, bringing your search engine rank down. Any content that confuses users or causes them to leave your site should be questioned. By removing ineffective content, you bring focus to your site, improving user experience and SEO.

Bad Content Vs. Content in need of Editing

When content pruning, you may wonder what the difference is between bad content and content that just needs some improvements. The main difference between bad content and editable content is potential.

If a currently ineffective page has the potential to reach the goal you created it for, then it may be worth editing. If the page already has rich content that could be improved, it may be worth bringing it up to date. Sometimes, the problem with a page is less about the content and more about the linkage. A page could be great, but not linked in a way that is reachable by most users and bots. These kinds of pages have room to grow and still be useful.

However, pages that are completely out-of-date and no longer serve a purpose lack potential for expansion, especially if a better page already exists to replace it. Your company may have grown beyond this page, the content no longer relevant or accurate. A bad page could also be seen as useless by your users, despite its original intentions. These kinds of pages are on the chopping block for content pruning.

There are also some pages that are not bad, but do not rank well for special reasons. These pages tend to have content that is misunderstood by the bots because they are unusual in their usage. Pages that are only live for certain parts of the year, or pages that are aimed at very specific parts of your audience could fall into this realm. These are pages that should be hidden rather than removed, as they are useful to your business in certain cases.

Analyzing your Site for Content Pruning

Trying to figure out what pages need cut, edited, or left alone can be tough. The best way to determine what pages need content pruning is to illustrate the big picture of your site’s performance. What pages are performing well? What pages are lacking? Such information can be found through analytics services like Google Analyics 4 and Google Search Console. With analytics services, you can analyze data such as page views, bounce rate, and conversions to see how attractive your pages are. Internal linkage is also an important factor to look at when determining a page’s success, as well as external links, such as social media. How users arrive and respond to your page determines your page’s success.

Want to Learn more?

Carrie Saunder’s upcoming course, “The Converting Website,” will dive into SEO and other important factors that aim to optimize your website. Join the waitlist today to stay up to date on the classes release!

There are many aspects of your website that encourage visitors to become customers of your business. One thing that these factors have in common is that they create a sense of trust between you and your customer. When you meet someone for the first time, the impression you create can determine if the individual wants to pursue a relationship with you. Creating a sense of competency, transparency, and relatability can go a long way in attracting customers to your business. Let’s explore some of the ways you can create trust through your business’ website.

Competency

Language

When a potential customer arrives at your site, they want to feel like you are an expert on your product. However, this requires that you not only understand your product, but also understand your customer. Avoid the use of jargon or complicated words in favor of clear, simple language that your customers can understand. You also want to emphasize how your product will improve their quality of life. Keeping your text focused on your customer will help keep them engaged. This will not only suggest to customers that you understand them and your product, but that you don’t need to hide behind complex language and irrelevant details.

Good Experiences

Another factor that suggests competency is utilizing customer stories to advertise your product. While we can say a lot about our products, our words may be considered biased to some customers. Text reviews, photographs of customers using your product, or even videos can help potential customers gain trust in your services. Make these stories visible on your website by sharing them in high traffic areas and near the products in question.

Visibility

Competency can go beyond your webpage. Using search engine optimizing (SEO) to your advantage can make your business more visible to potential customers. As discussed in our previous article, your position in search queries is determined by your rank. A higher rank indicates that both search engines and users find your site useful and relevant. We can further show how well our products are doing by showing our ratings or reviews in search results as well.

Transparency

Security

Keeping your customers informed on your company’s practices creates a sense of transparency. This can make customers more comfortable with your business. One way we can do this is by adding security seals to our pages. These seals are visual logos that link to the certificates that protects your site. Having security seals on your website makes it clear that you value your customer’s digital safety, encouraging trust. Another visual representation of security that people notice is the small lock that pops up in the address bar when a site is HTTPS enabled. Small things like these create good first impressions and impact your SEO ranking in a positive manner.

Location

Another small change that impacts your customers’ trust can be found in your contact page. While not applicable for all companies, including your physical store address can be to your benefit. Knowing that there is a physical location can reassure customers and offer them a different avenue to purchase your products as well as address questions or issues they may have.

Checkout Process

What happens during the checkout process of your site can impact the trust your customers have in your company. The uncertainty of how much an item will cost after tax, how long it could take to arrive, or if there will be certain options available can make potential customers wary to buy your product. Being forthright with such details in the beginning can ease such concerns. Explaining what will happen during the checkout process allows customers to understand what expectations they should have. If your checkout process has no surprises, your customers are more likely to feel comfortable enough to complete their purchase.

Relatability

Your Story

Last but not least, customers can at times feel like all companies care about is money. To avoid this perception, try sharing your story with your customers. What is your company’s mission and goals? How do you want to grow? These are aspects of life that we can all relate to, in one way or another. It establishes your company as not just a logo, but a place where people work and are trying to achieve things. Customers can find this relatable and humanizing, making them more willing to begin a relationship with your company.

Want to learn more?

We at BCSE are always here to help! If you are curious about how you can further create trust on your website, contact us! Carrie’s upcoming course, “The Converting Website”, will also explore many ways you can improve the conversion of your online business. Join the waitlist today to stay up to date with its release!

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to bring relevant traffic to your website. By optimizing your pages, you can increase the position of your site in search engine results. In our previous article, we discussed SEO and some of the factors that are used to rank your site. Today, lets dive deeper and take a look at a specific category of SEO: on-page SEO.

What is On-Page SEO?

SEO is broken down into multiple directions we can take to improve our search engine ranking. On-page or on-site SEO focuses specifically on the optimization of your webpages’ content and elements.

On-page SEO’s goal is to make it easier for both search engines and human users to understand your website. By optimizing your webpage, you help both search engines and users understand your content and goals. Good on-page SEO helps search engines interrupt what users see on your page and what value they glean from it.

How Important are Keywords to On-Page SEO?

By analyzing webpages, search engines can determine what is considered high quality content to users. They then rank pages accordingly in their respective search queries. When thinking about users searching the internet, keywords may come to mind as an important factor.

In the past, the idea of keywords used to play a larger role in on-page SEO. However, search engines have become smarter and judge pages beyond what specific words they include in their content.

Today, search engines can understand webpages not only through keywords, but from synonyms, context, and specific combinations of words. This allows search engines to better measure the actual relevance of your page in a user’s search query. Keywords still matter, but are not the only thing you should be working on. Instead, understanding who your users are, what they want, and what content fulfills their needs is key to increasing your on-page SEO.

How is Good On-Page SEO Achieved?

Beyond keywords and quality content, a variety of factors are relevant when optimizing your page:

• Linkage – Managing how many links are on your page can help increase the value of your content. If you have many links on one page, consider how relevant those links are to what you are trying to convey. Broken links can negatively impact your ranking, so making sure your links work is also important.
• Speed – As discussed in previous articles, slow pages affect user experience. If pages are slow to load, search engines will rank those pages lower than others.
• Organization & Structure – Organization and structure are important when creating a website that is easy for search engines to understand. Check out our previous article where we define structured data and the structure you should use.
• Metadata – Metadata acts as instructions for search engines that are reading your page. Including metadata can help search engines better understand your page’s intent. It also acts as a map when search engines explore your site, guiding them to the pages you want them to see.

Overall, good on-page SEO should equate to creating good user experience. So long as your users find value in your website, your site’s search engine ranking should increase.

Want to learn more?

Carrie Saunder’s upcoming course, “The Converting Website,” will dive into SEO and other important factors that aim to optimize your website. Join the waitlist today to stay up to date on the classes release!

To gain more customers, your business must be easy to find. With E-commerce businesses, many potential customers will be arriving to your site via search engines such as Google. Searching for products and services on Google will result in a hierarchy of websites that are ranked behind the scenes. The higher your site is on a Google search result, the more opportunity your business has to attract new customers.

In our previous article on how Google sees online businesses, we introduced the concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is a method to increase your site’s searchability and search result ranking. Let’s look at some technical aspects of your site that effect your site’s position in search results.

There are three key factors that determine good technical SEO: speed, crawlability, and understandability. These factors not only effect how Google sees your business, but effect user experience as well. Good user experience leads to good SEO, so optimizing your site’s searchability is beneficial to your business.

Speed

We come back to speed often because speed is one of the first things people notice when they arrive on your site. How fast does your site load? How long does it take to get from one page to the next? As discussed in our previous article on Google’s Core Web Vitals, speed plays a key role in determining the first impressions of your site not only for users, but for search engines as well. Search engines such as Google are aware that page speed impacts user experience. When ranking your website in search results, Google measures the speed of your site against a set of ideal metrics. If your page is slow, Google will push that page further down in the search results.

Crawlability

“Crawling” is a term used to describe search engine sending out a virtual robot to “read” your webpages. These bots go through your pages and click on the all the possible links they can find. How many dead ends the bots find and the structure of your data determines the crawlability of your site.

Due to the constant evolution of websites, broken links are not uncommon. These links are pages that don’t work and thus cannot populate their content to the user. While bots crawl your site, they note how many broken links they find. Broken links impact user experience as it causes annoyance and confusion. Search engines include this factor when ranking your page. Minimizing these dead ends benefits both users and search engine optimization.

Understandability

Understandability tends to be a question of how well structured your website is. As bots crawl your page, they attempt to understand what your page is doing. The bot interprets your goals and products based on the content it can read. How easy it is for the bot to understand your content effects its understanding of your business. This information is essential in helping search engines decide when to share your site as a search result. How the bot interprets your website’s purpose impacts your ranking as well as the audience search engines will send to your site.

Other aspects that impact the understandability of your pages include international reach and duplicate content. Having different sites for international audiences can confuse search engines if not defined. Due to different languages, search engines need to provide the proper page to the proper region and thus need to understand the page’s intended audience. Having the same content on pages can also confuse search engines on how they should rank your pages since they may all look the same. In the end, this may result in ranking them all lower.

Optimizing my Technical SEO

Interested in learning more about how you can increase your website’s search engine ranking? Reach out to BCSE! Interested in learning about tools and methods that you can use on your own to optimize your website? Join the wait list today for Carrie Saunders’ upcoming course, “The Converting Website.” This five-week course will explore a variety of ways to make your website turn visitors into customers!