You’ve worked your way hard to the top of search results. Your site is generating some decent traffic volume and you’re making a handful of sales each months. But then all of a sudden, you realize that your traffic level dipped and hasn’t recovered since.

This has happened to several of my sites in the past and while it is natural to get alarmed, a holistic approach can help you easily troubleshoot your traffic decline and remedy things before it is too late.

Determine where the dip is coming from

First things first — you need to determine where the dip is coming from. It can be from one of these traffic buckets:

• Search (organic / paid)
• Direct
• Referrals (site, social, email)

If you’re using Google Analytics, you can segment your traffic report to show the different sources: