My website(s) have worked well for me for 4-5 years (previous one is 12 years old…that one is embarrassingly basic and outdated though). They were so good, that whenever I made a tiny text revision, enquiries would come flooding in (of course it could have been coincidence, but sure felt like it).
I’ve noticed it’s not as easy as that anymore and enquiries have strangely declined dramatically. Of course this could be down to new competition in my geographic area.
Is there an SEO website check facility that’s good (I don’t mind paid if you trust it)? My hosting has one and I’ve got “100%”, but I don’t believe it anymore.
There are lots of sites that to SEO audits (e.g. SEMRush), however local/geographic SEO doesn’t normally require this - how large is the geographic area you serve and what is the nature of the sites?
I think I have, a message comes up that’s very confusing as I think I’ve done all that’s needed:
Red Banner: “This property’s setup is not complete. Settings may be completed for you based on your original Universal Analytics (UA) property, unless you opt out in the connected UA property.”
I click “Complete setup” and the next page says I have done 4 or 7 things, I reckon that what I’m missing is paid options
you need to get a proper audit done. everything from search engine optimization gaps, local SEO schema structure, you could have gotten review bombed on some forums or yelp, thin content, competetor’s analysis, missing Javascript tags, broken website functionality on mobile, security and privacy compliance ( GDPR), black holes not crawled by your internal search engine, testimonials and more.
GA4 is a different beast altogether.
what are the main sources of traffic ? Have you tried
to perform any MVT analysis by segmenting based on campaign ( offline, search engines , referrals) vs bounce rate, purpose/ behavior of visits ( navigational, transactional, information) using a simple survey etc.
this should give you some ideas to get started
There are some good resources/checklists mentioned on LearningSEO.io ( some of the paid tools have upto 6month trial period for their specific link so you can take them for a spin).
Thank you very much for that, a very long to do list for sure! I’m just a one man band, so it’s hard to find time to do some essential website work.
Here’s some extracts of numbers, what is interesting is that there’s a lot of error pages, but they don’t actually exist - it’s as if the internet thinks my website is a wordpress install, when it’s not? It’s just an HTML/PHP/CSS site.
One problem I definitely have way too much traffic from America, I would block it with cloudflare but I thought that might effect Google search somehow.
Thank you very much for the LearningSEO link, very much appreciated
You’re right there. It just seems to have gone a little strange lately, though I haven’t done the leg work and checked to see if I have new competition in the area. To be totally honest, I’m actually enjoying things going quiet (hopefully short term) as it gives me time to do the personal jobs I’ve been meaning to do…for the last 5 years!
Regarding the “100%” score from your hosting, I understand your skepticism. These automated tools can sometimes be a bit too optimistic. It might be worth delving deeper into specific metrics like backlinks, on-page SEO, and user engagement.
Also, keep an eye on your content and make sure it’s relevant to your audience. There’s always a chance that a ctr bot at or other factors could affect your traffic, but focusing on high-quality, user-centric content and building strong backlinks can help combat those challenges.
This thread about a website losing traction is hitting close to home. I’m working on my own website and it feels like I’m constantly playing whack-a-mole with SEO.
