Did you recently lose a considerable amount of organic traffic to your apartment’s website? Although your first thought might be that is has to do with an algorithm update or penalty, there are ways to find the real reason for the drop, which can help you better find a proper solution.

Reasons Why:

1. Algorithm Update?

Begin by checking your organic traffic levels for any major downward spikes. You can then follow through and look into whether or not the drop occurred because of just one search engine, which may prove some form of algorithm update from this single source. You can also check the timing of the drop and match it with the timing of any recent updates from Google with Moz’s Google Algorithm Update History page.

2. Penalty? 

You can check for penalties fairly easily as well, beginning by getting a Google Webmaster Tools account. You will need to check this regularly for notifications from Google concerning any spammy links they may find. You can also do some detective work of your own by checking backlinks Google identifies and lists to see if your SEO Company has built spammy links. 

3. Blocked Indexing?

When traffic drops from multiple search engines, it could be a sign of an issue with search engine indexing. Be sure to check if your robots.txt file was moved to the live server, which would block indexing from search engines. Remove any disallow statements from the file to begin recovery. A few other issues to check that can prevent indexing include using JavaScripts, placing forms in content and making any technical changes to your pages.

4. Missing 301 Redirects?

If you updated your URL or domain for your apartment site, 301 directs are absolutely necessary for search engines to find content. Traffic will often drop when these are not in place following a site re-launch. If even the most traffic-laden pages are missing these, be sure to check all other pages on your site when creating 301 redirects.

5. Market Changes?

Changes to your particular market can also impact the amount of organic search to your multi-family site. Google Trends is a helpful tool to show the search volume for different keywords over a period of time, which can help you determine trends and any changes you should make to your strategy.

Overall:

Be sure to stay on point with your SEO strategy, always monitoring the productivity of your current strategies and making any updates as necessary. Continue looking at your SEO as a consistent investment that requires your attention. This can help maintain search traffic to your multi-family site overall.