Seeking SEO / Advice on sinking traffic

[zooki]

Hi my pride and joy forum which has 10-12,000 unique visitors a day has over the last 2-3 years declined and now gone below 4,000 uniques.

I have no idea why this is happening. At first I believed it was a one-off thing based on Google Panda. Now I am really unsure? The activity level on the site has dropped a lot, it is pretty "dead" with a handful of active users. Everyone else spends their time in Facebook or Twitter.

I am not an expert at SEO or Traffic. If someone can take a look at my site I would be grateful. I know that I made a few changes with add-ons, and there are URL redirects happening also.

Please PM me for more info and if you can help advise.

 

[DaveM]

Everyone else spends their time in Facebook or Twitter.

Well I think this is your real issue here

 

[Olly Wood]

Panda and Penguin wouldn't have penalised you that much , unless you were using black hat methods to get where you were in the rankings. One thing it did do was affect the way any backlinks you have are seen.

If you had masses of high ranking backlinks from non niche sites these would be downgraded and affect your ranking, dropping you down a page or two, however for that to happen you would need masses and I mean masses of non niche backlinks with very few in niche backlinks.

 

[cmeinck]

Panda can most certainly be responsible for your decrease in traffic. That algorithm is designed to lower the site-wide rankings of sites that are deemed to have thin or low-quality content. To get a better understanding of what may have hit you, I'd recommend using the Panguin tool. This utilizes your Google Analytics and dovetails them with known Panda updates. If you see any noticeable drops during a specific update, then you've got your answer. Panda can also be responsible for slow drops over time.

 

[Olly Wood]

Invest some time in the google webmaster tools, like the data highlighter for one. It's best to use all the tools Google provides, if you want to stay ahead of the game.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

That is exactly what Panda does... and sites hit by it follow that slow decline. Social media is like the current old techniques all wrapped into one. The more your site is being talked about upon them and referred through, the more traffic you will recover.

Google is very big on putting "In" sites up top, dropping the rest down, regardless of how much new content gets added. They help obtain this from social traffic throughput, as what is popular is being discussed their.

The next best thing you can do... is seek out some seriously good expired domains, buy them, and redirect them to your domain, getting a big hit of inbound quality to your site. One good .org purchase can revive your site in two months.