My Organic Traffic Dropped: Why and How to Fix It?

Introduction

0:00Zaxby's Giant Chicken Finger Wraps are no snack. In fact, they're so big, they get their own menu. Get one in your choice of Asians in Zation, Buffalo Blue, and Chicken Bacon Ranch. And you know they're coming packed with three crispy, hand-breaded famous fingers, fresh ingredients, and their signature sauce all wrapped to perfection. Big on size, bolder on flavor. But that's just how they do it at Zaxby's. Zaxby's Giant Wraps, they're no snack. Who's got the sauce? Zaxby's. My organic traffic dropped.

0:36Why and how to fix it? This is the room for the day.

Discussion Topic

0:41And thank you for being here. I'm excited that we are going to dive deep into the reasons why you can fall traffic-wise and your organic traffic can drop. Also, it can pick up. So, those are two metrics that you can use or think about between the two to know exactly which one is the best for you long-term. So, we're going to discuss this topic today.

1:12And more importantly, we're going to bridge in the reasons why your organic traffic is dropping.

Organic Results

1:19Now, organic traffic is something that happens organically. Of course, it's organic. But what's more important about the organic results that you get are from the seeds that you plant? So, right, if you plant seeds in the ground and those seeds are going to germinate mango fruits or mango trees or orange trees or apple trees, those trees are trees or called apple trees or mango trees

1:49because you planted a seed.

Content Analogy

1:53So, if you use the same analogy, welcome, Anna and Rama. Thank you for being here. When you use the same analogy for your content and you realize that you have an article on your website, you have a page on your website that, maybe let's say you have a product on your website, and this product, this website, this webpage is generating a lot of traffic. More importantly, actually, it's generating a lot of engagement.

2:23Welcome, Lady Erin.

Consistent Content

2:25Because you're creating consistent content workflows that people are going to find your content in the future. Just like you plant a seed today, you're not expecting to eat from that fruit tree tomorrow, right? It may take you five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, but you know that for the next 50 years, you're going to be good. So, you're planning for the future. Organic is for the future. Paid is for now. So, if your organic traffic is dropping, it's because there's some metrics that haven't been re-evaluated

2:56or you have not refreshed the cycle because there's usually a 24-month cycle for organic traffic. So, let me just give you that wide scope. So, when you think about 24 months, that's two years. So, content that you're seeing today on Google is because someone wrote that content two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, ten years ago, and they're still updated today because they still have access to those websites and they have access to those web pages. So, you can have the same access too.

3:28And if you realize your traffic is dropping,

Traffic Drop Analysis

3:31then you have to look at some things and ask yourself, what are the things that are making my traffic drop? And then you have to also look at that based on also seeing the actual traffic map and looking at your search results too. If you go to your website, are you able to know which pages are ranking, which pages are not ranking? Are you able to decide and say, what's going on with this page, with that page hierarchy, in content for people consistently? So, if your organic traffic is dropping, it's because it's something that you're not checking.

4:02Before, this post was popping. This post was showing up everywhere. Now, it's nowhere to be seen. And you wonder, why is it dropping? Now, the reason why it's dropping is because that content is not as fresh as it used to be.

Content Freshness

4:18And that usually takes about 24 months for you to really see that because you're supposed to have a positive trajectory line that goes upwards diagonally. That way, every month, you look at your traffic, it should be going upwards. That's what Google Search Console does. It says you have traffic, you have five impressions today, you have 10 impressions tomorrow, you have 50 impressions next month, you have 5,000 impressions next year. However, it's going to look like, it may look like 50 million for you, it may look like 50,000 for somebody else, but your traffic is highly dependent

4:50on the proportional amount of pages you have to translate that into traffic cumulatively because each and every one of those links are different. One link may be bringing in 1,000 impressions. Another one may be bringing 100 impressions. That's 1,100 impressions. So that's still a lot because you're adding these impressions over time. So imagine if every page is generating impressions and you have 10 pages and 10 out of 10 are generating all. Imagine if you have two out of 10 pages that are generating a lot of traffic,

5:22imagine what it would look like with 10 over 10. So it definitely changes every day. What's up, Rocky? Welcome, Fredo.

Google Search Console

5:28How are you, Rocky? What you thinking?

5:36I just realized I had my Rodecaster plugged up but not my microphone. I was talking and I was like, what? Why don't I see my ring? I don't know. Are we talking Google Search Console? If you are, I'm excited. I haven't been in there in a while. Yes, we are. We're talking about Google Search Console. Hey, Brandon. Good to see you a long time. Rosalyn, good to see you as well. Nisi, welcome to Clubhouse. I see you got a party hat.

6:01I'm going to welcome you to the app. Hope you're enjoying yourself here too. Wilson, thank you for being here and being a member of the Marketing Club very soon after you cash in your ticket. So thank you for being here and joining us today.

SEO Agency Experience

6:12Brandon, where have you been? How are you, man? I think I saw you on Twitter X somewhere, threads, and that was the last time. And I was like, where is Brandon? How are you, man? Long time. No C. Hope you're well.

6:27Hey, Faber. Did you hear me? I'm not sure if you could hear me.

6:33It's opened up the app for the first time in a very long time. I'll be honest. I saw it the other day too. And it looks like things are a little bit better here. Am I right or wrong? Yeah, things have changed, really changed. Now we have coins. People are sending each other things like on TikTok. It's pretty different. We have hallways that are looking a little different. You can actually now do incognito mode so you can hide yourself and get into a room anonymously.

7:03A lot of things have changed and they're still updating new stuff. Now there's a whole Clubhouse Plus that you can have as well. And I'm sure they're also bringing new tiers to the app too. So a lot is changing, but it's good. I feel like it's better. Sometimes people don't like change and that's okay. But I think where we are right now is definitely not where we were five years ago or even six years ago on Clubhouse. So yeah, it's definitely a big change.

Founders-Led Marketing

7:27Interesting. Yeah, no, I've been on X for the most part, but X is getting really, really repetitive and just boring and people are saying the same shit.

7:40That's why I'm not on X. I feel like I'm just there. I'm just there because I have an account there. I'm not really active because I've been there for a long time back when it was Twitter days. So yeah, it's not the same at all, but I would say threads would be a better place to be if you want to think about discovery. So I would swap threads with X if I was to stay somewhere like that, if I'm thinking about community. But I just can't imagine. Actually, this is what I'm thinking out loud right now. Imagine if threads turns into X

8:12where this is just a wishful thinking thought. It's not happening, guys. So don't check this anywhere. This is just wishful thinking. Just imagine if threads, they have communities right now, but just imagine if threads actually had live communities where people can do stuff on Clubhouse, but on threads in communities that they can build kind of like a Reddit, but now doing that on threads and then doing what X is doing where you can have spaces, but threads have their own type of space. That would be crazy. But is threads even popular like that?

8:42I don't hear too much about threads. I mean, I love it. I love it. I'm just not over there as much as I used to. I mean, I'm on all the platforms, which is probably part of the problem. But for threads, it's kind of like, I like the fact that you can access the celebrities and they actually talk back because they don't have that big of an audience as they do on these other platforms. I mean, you can access brands and stuff like that. But other than that, I'm like, I don't know what's going on with threads.

9:10Yeah, threads is really good. It's a good place for discovery. And it's also, I love threads because it's like TikTok without videos, even though they have videos and stuff like that, but you can really do a lot on threads. People are even making money on threads too. It's a really great place to have communities. So just imagine if there's a community, but that community owner or community moderator or somebody who can build your own community and merge with others can start to get more organic feedback because we're going to talk about that today

9:40as well in the room, just because organic traffic, sometimes we think about it and it's only Google, but organic traffic comes from every social media platform, every search engine platform. So it's just how you're going to use a percentage and now bucket each and every one of them so that you know, okay, I get 20% from Google. I get 1% from Yandex. I get 5% from ChatGPT. I get 3% from threads. It's going to be there, but it's based on how you're able to translate that text or translate that context to data intelligence or even creating something scalable within.

10:12So yeah, it's not a big deal, Rocky, but people are there. I will say what I do use it for that has worked. And I know that's not the topic of the room is I'll see, but then you can see how many comments, shares, likes, and all that other kind of stuff in the conversation. Anytime I've taken a high level conversation and the topic and brought it over to Facebook, my posts have gone viral and I'm able to monetize. So I like that I can see which posts and ideas are trending so I can bring them on over to my Facebook. So for research purposes, I like threads.

10:44True. And it's a good place to actually connect and see what people are talking about a topic. Like I remember when Apple dropped their flagship last year, the iPhone 16, everybody was talking about it and threads is a place you can connect just like you can go to X to look for news. I can't remember what they call them, trending news or I can't remember the name, but they would have something like that. And then you can use that to know what's going on in your community because people are just posting it. So you can also curate your feed. So yeah, it's definitely different, Rocky, for sure.

11:15Brandon, can you hear us? Mic check. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you now. Sorry. It was weird after I stopped talking and it went silent and I assumed you were talking and then I saw the transcript of those. So anyway, sorry. No, you're fine. You're fine. What are you seeing today in organic traffic just in your world? What's happening? Because people are always talking about AI and SEO and is it working? Is it not working? Why is my traffic dropping? What are you seeing and hearing? So, interesting question

11:47because what I did do and we haven't caught up in a long time is I pulled back on SEO and started to do more CMO analysis and CMO kind of work because companies obviously can't just rely on one channel and then also it kind of depends on the business. So the question that you just raised, it really depends, right? Organic, like meaning Google SEO or Google organic still remains significant because if you look at the stats,

12:18Google is still the number one site by a huge margin. But what I did notice is that YouTube has grown to about half the traffic as Google. So, you know, and it makes sense. People are pretty lazy. They like to just watch videos to get answers and stuff like that. So YouTube's grown significantly. Facebook has actually dropped significantly. They used to be at 25 billion. Now they're down to 10 billion. So that's been kind of interesting. Then obviously AI has taken over a lot,

12:48but it's really hard to tell statistically how much and how it's impacting. So I don't know if you guys have taken advantage of ChatGPT's new advertising services. I know that they went beta or whatever. I would test that out if you can do that just to see how AI answers and AI advertising is actually working. But I mean, most of the stuff is still status quo. I'm thinking from a different perspective because like recently I took on a project evaluating this company that generates like 50

13:19to about 200 million a year. And they're in the fintech space. And their space is completely different from how other spaces work. So it really, really depends on what you're talking about. Individual, small business, you know, Scala, enterprise. And unfortunately, I don't have all like different cases, but I was just talking to somebody actually. He has 2,000 different clients. So we might be able to find some more data using all those different case examples. Okay, that just got me thinking

13:50because a lot of companies when they are using these tools, either they know about it in-house or they're outsourcing it by consultation to implement or integrate systems that they may not be aware of because of how technology is moving and advancing. So I'm wondering, some companies may have those scoops. Some may not have that at all. They may get feedback loops too. But depending on which client needs what, you're able to still tweak and build something that you can give back as a report analysis to be able to show, okay, in month one or Q1, you were here.

14:22Month two, Q2, we're here. So either way, we're looking at it quarter over quarter, year over year, month over month, then people can be able to see where they're showing up across different platforms, specifically based on where they operate from because a company may just be on LinkedIn and Threads. Someone else might just be on YouTube and TikTok. So everyone's going to have their own different thresholds. But sometimes when people think about the companies, when you look at social media, you wonder which social media is doing well because some businesses, they leave their Facebook pages dormant for years.

14:53They leave their ex for years. They don't even know the password, the username to their account because they used to use it, but no longer is it of use because they've learned or adapted to other things or have just ignored the whole interface altogether. So that's what I was asking.

15:09Actually, have you ever bought SimilarWeb, gotten a paid account on SimilarWeb? I've used it, yes. I've used it before with clients as well, but not personally for myself, but I have operated with it. So I decided to drop the 150 or whatever it is, and then I also dropped, what, 200 for SEMrush. Recently, so diving into the paid SimilarWeb account, I mean, you can do all this stuff for free up to like 10 queries or something like that. They have a lot of fucking data, excuse my French. So it's been kind of eye-opening.

15:41So like one thing that I do regularly, SimilarWeb also produces a top growing companies list every year. And you can grab that, grab those top companies, and then if you have a paid account, you can go and dive into figuring out what their sources of traffic are. And they're getting more and more granular in terms of the data. So you can find out what channels they've been using and what they've been leveraging. And so after I get back from this vacation, honestly, that's what I'm going to spend a lot of time on

16:12is trying to figure out. I mean, growth-wise, paid seems to dominate because paid's the fastest driver. Organic is more mid-tier, like, you know, scale-up. So one thing that, you know, recently I've kind of realized is organic doesn't really work at the beginning. It works more when you've built your brand. So that's something to kind of consider as well. But anyway, I would recommend if you can. It's expensive, but there's a lot of data within SimilarWeb.

16:41Love that, Brandon. Thank you so much. I'll definitely try that too. And it's good to see where different endpoints are pointing to and pointing from because everyone is looking at it from different vantage points, especially when you now look at the overall setup of a website. And even when I audit websites these days, I can see that they're not agentic-ready. They're not local-ready. They're not Google-ready. They're not search-ready or search-bot-ready. And they want to rank on these child GPT, Gemini, perplexity platforms.

17:13But when you look at their own infrastructure internally, they don't have any technical setup or foundation for them to even launch in. To that kind of ecosystem. So that's why they're getting organic traffic dropping because they're not able to say, oh, okay, we see why we're dropping. It's not because we're not writing content. It's because the content is not even being seen across different web platforms. Yes, Google has one of the top, if not the most traffic you can ever get on a daily basis when it comes to traffic and engagement. But when people are searching for other data points,

17:43Google is still a database that people go back to, to verify things. So if you're able to be on those platforms and then use the other platforms to now build your organic traffic, it helps because businesses are not even on Reddit. Reddit is one of the great places you can be on the internet today. If you have an account and start posting there to get, I could say, backlinks, which could be nofollow backlinks in a way. I could put it that way so that you can have that off-page SEO and start having more traffic and citations,

18:15not just on your website, but coming from other sources. So you can have LinkedIn. Most people don't use LinkedIn newsletters. That's a place you can really organically show up. If you use LinkedIn and you write newsletters on LinkedIn, your LinkedIn newsletters can show up on Google search when people are searching for information. So not only are blogs listed, but your LinkedIn articles are listed. And if your website is listed in the LinkedIn article, then that's even a double win for you because you have two links or listings within the 10 page. I can even call it the 10 listing per page breakdown.

18:47So it's very important to think about those things because not every company does it and they don't really know why they're doing it. Sometimes they're not able to track it because they don't see the reason to, but it definitely changes when you know that these are the platforms you can use as ecosystems to also build your brand, like you said, Brandon, on creating more avenues of success that people can find you other than just your website that people can only visit when they're actually looking for something compared to where they're actually spending time on, which could be Facebook, LinkedIn, and the rest. So I really don't get to know that too.

19:19Go ahead.

19:21So I have an SEO agency site that's ranked number one for Seattle SEO and SEO Seattle for the past 16 years. It was interesting that, just to point out real quick, Google's gotten smarter and smarter, it feels like as far as figuring out what it is. So now I'm starting to see SEO company in Seattle traffic that's coming in. Now, with that said, I have not done a lot on the site in the past 10 years.

19:52But one reason why it still ranks number one is the backlinks, in my opinion. And so if you're not building up enough citations and backlinks and authority points across the web, whether it's social media or it's getting other people to basically mention you on their websites and whatnot, you're not going to have the ability to get a lot of your content unless there's very lacking content for those searches, right?

20:23So like, for example, one piece that brings in organic traffic for that agency is top countries that people search for because I wrote a blog piece about it a few years ago. And it's because there's no traffic, or sorry, there's no competition that really exists for that. So that's why it ranks. That's the shittiest piece of, excuse my French, I apologize, I'm using too much French today, post on my site, yet it ranks because why? There's no competition. So you can rank for anything

20:54that doesn't have competition. And funny enough, there's still not enough content for everything despite AI. So there are those opportunities, but you usually find them out because you just accidentally start ranking for it, right? But if you really, really, really want to rank for organic SEO, it's in the backlinks, in my opinion. And it's still to this day, I don't see anything that drives the site higher and higher unless you have all those backlinks, just like FYI. I love that you mentioned that, Brandon. Definitely your backlinks are your backbone.

21:24It's like your back. If you don't have a back, then how are you going to move forward? You know, like it's the same thing. I look at it from that particular structure because when you look at your backlinks and you've been featured on magazines, on citations, on awards, you're on Wikipedia, you're on Forbes, you're on CNN, you're on Times, you're on platforms that you've, you know, you've been able to achieve those things. Then it also allows your domain to grow even more because when they now start citing you, it's a good thing too because your domain authority is going to be based on the number of links that you have

21:57that are linking back to your website. So let's say you have a hundred backlinks. Let's say you have a thousand backlinks, a million backlinks. All those backlinks are going to be stated between two different partitions. They're either going to be a do follow or a no follow. So right now for you, because you have that, I would say that the longevity for the number of years you've had within now the decades going on by, you still have that same traffic because those domains are still active and that's why your website is still active and higher in ranking too.

22:29If those websites that linked back to you are not active, then those will not be backlinks. It will be four or four errors. So the good thing is that they're your backbone and you're their backbone because your link is active, they're linking back to you and you're linking from them. So they're able to still connect back to you even though it may look like, okay, this link is just going to be here. But eventually as people are looking for information about you or about your business, because of those backlinks, you've been able to justify that through content and through trust. You know, people are able to look at your reviews.

23:00They look at your blogs, they look at your products, they look at your case studies. They check your LinkedIn profile. They get to know your company profile. All those things also interlink too. So definitely backlinks help, but their backlinks I've seen, like there's a someone I saw, he has about, their company has about a billion backlinks, but they're only generating about one visitor a month. So you wonder, is that a backlink? Is it backlink worthy or is there spam scores in there? So I look at the things and I just don't look at the number of backlinks. I go deep into understanding

23:30exactly the quality of the backlinks because you can have three backlinks that are strong and I have 30 that are mid, but you're able to do way more because you have something that can outlast what I've already built. So it's a really good way to measure those two out as well.

23:47This is good. Rocky, what you thinking about organic traffic? Just in general. I don't know. When y'all start using big words like backlinks and all this other website stuff, you know, my eyes cross because what are you talking about? I don't, I'm not, I literally sit here to, don't laugh at me, Brandon. And I missed you too, by the way. You've been gone a while. I, you know, the website stuff, I usually pass over to you because I don't, I don't know. I'm a social media person. So I typically,

24:17and I never understood backlinks, none of that stuff. What I will say is as far as organic, what you did for me was focusing on the search engine optimization and I had no clue about putting your website links on Google search console. That, that like exploded my business and it gave me information. Um, I'm a marketer and when it's hard for me to market, I cheat. I use ads and I just feel like organic is slower, but I also feel like it's necessary because you still need that information.

24:49So say I have, run an ad to get traffic and someone comes to validate who I am and I don't have a ton of information or organic information about me. Um, then that's something that's going to hurt my brand reputation. But what I will say is I, and this is a good question for you, maybe, maybe Brandon, cause he sounds like he likes using big words too. If I run ads, right? Like I'll run my Facebook ads for brand awareness on my Instagram page

25:19for one particular post and it builds my organic traffic because now they're going to be nosy based on that ad that they saw. So they'll click on that ad, but they're also dive around and search me on the rest of my Instagram page or Facebook or whatever it is. Is that considered good organic traffic if it's coming from a paid entity?

25:42Brandon, do you want to go first? So a couple things real quick. Um, it's not necessarily organic, but it is an opportunity for Google to judge whether or not you're relevant for that search if they, you know, search for you in some fashion because every time whether it's paid more organic, Google is judging you on, you know, if they bounce from the page or if they sit there on the site because when they sit on the site then obviously it's relevant.

26:14Now, how they got there is another question. I can't tell you exactly how the algorithm works in that respect, but do know that paid does indirectly contribute to your organic presence if you can prove to Google that it's valid, if that makes sense. The other thing, I just want to say real quick, Rocky, good to see you, but as far as back leaks are concerned, a couple quick, quick strategies. If you're a business of any type, you should be in every business directory

26:44that exists. You can go to Bright Local, you can go to White Spark, you can use Favor, you can do whatever. You can do it manually. Actually, Bright Local even gives you the actual places to go and register. You need to go out and put your website or your presence, whatever the landing page is, on every single business directory because you're a business. Now, if you're a marketer, well, then you want to look into all the marketing communities or any marketing website. So, if you can, find a way to put your profile on every single, you know,

27:15marketing site. All your social media, the top social media like Facebook, Instagram, you know, X, whatever, they all have a profile that you can put the backlink, meaning your site's link to your site. So, backlink, all it means is just your website link on another site, but it's coming back to you. And so, therefore, Google's, you know, giving you credit for more sites that you appear on. The higher the quality of that site, the better the backlink, right?

27:45And then, on top of that, if you can, with those links, if you can have anchor text that sits on top of that, which means the text that sits on the link, that's, you know, related to your business, let's say, online marketer, for example, for you, or social media expert, then Google sometimes uses a way of determining your anchor text ratio, and then it will give you credit for that keyword. That's the reason why I've been able to get in Seattle SEO, SEO Seattle stuff,

28:15is in the early days, I had a lot of friends who would put SEO Seattle or Seattle SEO on their website and then link it to me because I was helping a lot of different, you know, companies that were small and they just do it as a favor. But the more you can get of that, in every category, every adjacent category, you can research, one way to do it is literally just look up your competitors, just Google them, and then look through the pages on Google of all the different sites they come up on. And then just, you know,

28:45do a quick audit and see if you're on there. If you're not, then get on that site. But if you can do that with all your competitors, aggregate all your competitors and just, you know, it's a lot of hard work. The reason why I'm number one or why it remains after 16 years is because I stayed up until 4 a.m. for three straight weeks just researching, finding all this stuff and getting myself in there. No one's gotten, you know, energized enough to do it, I think since. And so that's why we still remain there. But back to you in favor as far as answering that question.

29:17Oh, Brandon, and I'll add really quick, Go High Level has this prospecting tools where I can do that for any business. It'll pull up the business and I need to do it for my daggone self. I didn't even think about that, Brandon. Thank you. Thank you for showing up today. I can put my business in there and see where I'm not listed and then list my businesses there. And I think the last time I did it for a client, oh my God, it was like 20 different other search engines. I'm like, what are these? Like beyond Yelp and some other ones. There were some local ones as well that were in there.

29:47So I'll do that for myself. I'm not going to stay up until 4 a.m., but great idea.

29:57That's hilarious. It's actually when you wake up super early, that's when you get to see those things that happen. I'd be doing that even on a Sunday, Sunday evening, early morning. I'm just there putting it out there and then you realize, okay, it's out. And once it's out there, everybody's waking up and you've already gotten like three, four hours of data you could be able to use on the rest of the 24 hours you have in the clock. So it's important to look at it that way and say, okay, if I have 24 hours a day, what am I going to use this first hour for? And organic traffic is growing. It's like when it rains,

30:28it pours. And when you start noticing your traffic is growing, that's when you turn on ads. So if you realize that, oh, you have a page that's actually showing up and it's driving more traffic, then in 30 days, look at your top five, then put them on ads and then you can actually create a catalyst on that. And that's also going to indirectly connect back to your website because now you have paid and you have organic. Now you're using both of them and you're still growing up in traffic, which is also giving you more brand relevance and also visibility overall, whether you're local, regional, national,

30:58or global. So thank you, Brandon, for that share as well. And thank you for being here, Celeste, too. I see you, Yo-Yo, in it. Wanting to say hello and wanting to see if you have a question. Please feel free or contribution. The floor is yours.

31:13Sorry? I can hear you now.

31:21Okay. Sorry. Yeah. So hi, guys. I've seen your room a couple of times but I've been too lazy to join because I've been quite busy at work. So basically, I wanted to say it was such a beautiful conversation. I just wanted to drop my own take and sorry, I'm on the road.

31:42Sorry, can you see me? Oh, my God. Okay. So, yeah. So basically, I wanted to drop my own take in terms of organic. He said my organic traffic drop and why and how to fix it. But I'm going to come from a different perspective because I like the fact that you spoke, what's his name? Brandon spoke about SEO, even yourself. And Rocky also spoke about the ads and social media. I think for me, one thing that has worked for me because

32:12I was able to gather 70 million views plus across all platforms