Here is a tricky question we once got asked where the client was getting confused about website popularity.
Can you explain to us why the website has fallen in terms of visitor numbers that contact us each year when we gave you a lot of money to have a new more improved website built, the website is not even two years old and it’s not performing or even ranking as high as the old one did, we are not happy with the fact we have spent quite a bit of money in last two years and it’s going down, shouldn’t it be going up slowly if anything ? I know we need add news blogs etc but we didn’t add nothing on the last website and it was working better in our opinion
and a detailed investigation and reply was given
This is a good question and I will do my best to explain, since the website was created (in a modern / search engine friendly way) in 2017 Google has evolved and changed and your website has broadly managed to improve / keep pace and maintain and increase its visitor numbers / ranking / conversions.
Here are my summarised thoughts / observations addressing your concerns and giving ideas to improve.
- it has improved its ranking for certain search terms and is currently ranked highly (on the first page of Google) for the key search terms (top 10 results)
- Website now is fully integrated in Google’s tools (Search Console / Analytics / My Business Profile)
- It has over 50 Pages indexed In Google (previously it was 10 then 20 pages indexed)
- No problems / errors / warnings are reported in Google Search Console
- There has been no changes to the content in the last 2 ½ years
- The news section hasn’t been used regularly
- The most recent news post just created should ideally have over 200 words with it, unique / relevant text
- The actual visitor numbers have improved massively generally since the redesign (see attached report) we are now up over 86% in Users (unique visitors) comparing 2013 with 2018 (post redesign)
- Your website is now on an upgraded superfast UK Server and have moved your website twice to better / faster / more secure Servers as part of a natural upgrade program
- We have upgraded your website to be secure (SSL Certificate) in accordance to Google Best practises
- We have upgraded the website to use the most advanced / latest performance system
- You rank well both in Google My Business and Google Search / Organic Results
- Website has been automatically upgraded to use Google Anti-spam system
- Website captures and stores the email contact form enquiries (showing 17 enquiries)
- Google now allows 3-4 pay per click (sponsored listings) to appear before their natural / Google My Business listings
- You have never used PPC advertising and your competitors do this now
- The website has been upgraded on a weekly basis (CMS / Theme / Plugins) to keep it secure and efficient
- Regarding the down turn recently its normal that if the website isnt updated or not SEO / Marketing then logically it will not gain traffic
- Older websites generally rank better and your website is now ‘maturing’ well.
- Some of your competitors are now using Google Guaranteed (Google Verified / Google Local Ads) which you cant as you are not a limited company yet.
My overall thoughts are that the website is performing well but could be massively improved by regularly updating it with your new updates (news) new work photos (galleries) new work projects (projects) we can do this work regularly on a standard website support cost or as part of an intensive project, there are always improvements updates / ideas / SEO tweaks that we can perform and they can be tackled as part of any update schedule / task / project if you see fit. I can discuss this separately if needed as there are at least 3-4 things I would recommend / suggest to improve the site on top of the urgently required ‘content’ updates as mentioned previously.
You could also perhaps consider PPC advertising or Google Local ads to ensure you rank higher for local searches for your key services. This can be discussed separately also.
