What Should You Be A/B Testing?

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Anyone reading this should know they should be testing their websites and landing pages, but if you aren’t well studied in optimization, how are you supposed to know what you should be testing? Oli Gardner has some suggestions to get you started testing your site.

1) Test the Headline – Your headline is the first things viewers will see when they land on your page, and to be most successful it should match what your viewer expected when deciding to visit your page. For example, you can test how positive or negative language performs in your headline, such as “Save Time by Downloading Now”  vs. “Stop Wasting Time, Download Now”.

Headlines are also used by your audience to quickly identify if the site they came to has what they want. Make sure your headline lets visitors know what you have to offer immediately. A great way to quickly test this is to just show the headline to someone unfamiliar with your brand for 5 seconds and ask them what the page was about. If they don’t know, you have a problem with your headline.

2) Test Your Forms – Most landing pages will have some sort of form trying to gain information from visitors. Its important to remember however that you should be offering something to your visitors in exchange for this information. What you offer is up to you, but examples could be an e-book, webinar registration or whitepaper.

The question remains though, how do you test to see if your forms are effective? One test would be seeing which forms people fill out the most, if all fields were made optional. The goal is to make sure you’re offering something equal to the amount of data you need. Try to be efficient and only have forms with relevant information and test different arrangements to see what visitors respond to the most.

3) Test Your Call To Action (CTA) – A call to action is your conversion. It is how you get people to do what you want them to do, and if that isn’t happening, you may need to work on your CTA. Make it descriptive, so that your visitors will know exactly what will happen if they follow the CTA,

A way to test your CTA is by changing just one word and seeing how customers respond. Unbounce found that changing the description “order information” to “get information” led to a 38.26% increase un conversions.

While these examples will get you going, if you want a more thorough guide, you’ll also want to look into Oli’s “Ultimate Guide to A/B Testing”.

 

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3 Reasons to Learn Online Marketing

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As a web designer or developer, it’s always important to understand what the client wants. That’s why it is strange how few designers and developers understand online marketing.

Understanding and implementing online marketing give any developer or designer a great advantage in the marketplace and promises much more of a long term reward than those that fail to learn about online marketing. This isn’t to say neglecting your designing or developing skills is a wise decision, but by combining your skills with online marketing, you can do three things:

1) Get more clients – When clients post ads for developers or design jobs, they often get responses detailing what features and formats the person could implement. They promise so many pages, or list how they are proficient in HTML5, jQuery, and W4C standards. This may seem like a great approach for contacting potential employers, but it has a great weakness.

Potential employers want to know what you will do for them, and what they want you to do is make more money. Employers want to hear that you will raise the number of subscribers a certain percent, or will raise their revenue. Wether you use HTML5 or jQuery is not of much importance to them.

There are plenty of good web designers that can make nice looking websites, but there are way less designers that know how to increase sales. Those that know online marketing will get the better clients, and higher rates.

2) Build Your Brand – The biggest problem for every freelancer is building a base of clients. It would be great for clients to just come to you ready to pay however much you want, but that is a fantasy. Or is it?

Building a strong personal brand online attracts clients by exhibiting your skills to them beforehand. This can be fairly difficult and requires a lot of perseverance, but there is a basic pattern. First, you build a popular blog, followed by establishing a decent social media following. Then, you participate in outside activities like conferences, and make yourself known about.

This path does two very important things for you. It establishes you as a reputable expert, and gains you tons of publicity many would pay for. When employers need work done, they go to the experts they know first, and if you’ve built a strong brand, they will know about you.

If you want to know more about building a personal brand, I highly recommend watching the TED talk by Jacob Cass.

3) Earn extra income – Freelancing is far from a stable career and anyone should be prepared for unexpected problems. That is why it is important to make yourself as financially secure as possible before the problems arrive.

One of the best options for securing your finances is to diversify your streams of income between client work and passive income. If you are already perceived as an expert in your field, creating a passive income shouldn’t be difficult. There are a slew of monetization options, such as creating and selling your own products or even simply displaying ads on your site.

It does take effort to create a product, and even more to market and sell it, but it could be extremely important in your future.

Think of it this way, if you want to run a local bakery, you have to be as good at business as you are at baking. Otherwise, the business won’t get off the ground. The same goes for creating a business online. If you want to be successful online, learn online marketing.

 

If you want to learn more about online marketing and the mistakes you can make while starting out, read more at 1stwebdesigner.

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How To Dominate Search With Content Marketing

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Google has made five recent SEO changes that will make most content marketers, writers, and bloggers quite happy. They play to your strengths. Some users may be less happy about these changes, however.

The changes were mostly made to keep more people on Google products, which isn’t a bad idea from a business perspective, but some may find the changes effect searching negatively.

The good news is, the changes were also made so that your results would be more personal by monopolizing on the fact that people are more likely to purchase something if they know their friend also likes it.

The even better news is these changes are great for anyone who makes content for a living. I will walk you through all of the changes and help you to take advantage of them.

1) Optimize personalized search – One of the biggest changes Google has made completely changed SEO by making search results personal. The results you get for a search will be different than mine, based on factors like your browsing history, the content you create and content shared by your social circles. People are finding their content more and more through social media networks and searching less.

So how can you optimize your content for personalized search? One option is you can increase your Google+ circles. Google is actively trying to get people to sign up for Google+, and in this instance, using Google+ and connecting with more people on there helps improve your search. The more people you have in your circles, the higher relevant content will show up in your searches. This also means that your circles can see your content when they search.

2) Increase social sharing – As a content creator, getting shares on social media is a great way to get your content high in the search rankings. According to a study by branded3, the more tweets leading to a URL you can get, the higher you will appear in rankings. For example, anyone that gets over 7,500 tweets (not an easy task) will appear in the top five results almost always. This type of logic most likely also works for Facebook.

As a content creator, capitalize on social sharing and you can beat your competition in the rankings. Just make sure to make the social sharing buttons obvious so that readers can find them, encourage your readers to share and try to court others with influence in your target social circles. Interview them or offer to do guest posts. Anything to establish a connection.

3) Employ semantic keyword research – Google is improving at segmenting search results, which gives you an opportunity to rank higher in verticals. This is a surefire way to get higher conversion rates because your prospective visitors are better targeted.

To take advantage of this, you’ll need to look for “advanced search” keywords. When you search, there is a way to refine results with a tool hidden in “show search tools”. Within this advanced search tool, you can look at “related searches”. Now you have semantic options you can test for the highest search volumes. There are also ways to improve your keyword list such as Google Insights for Search, which lets you narrow keywords down via categories.

4) Play with the Panda update – Google’s Panda update finally made life hard for spammers and content farms by harshly punishing sites with low quality content. This is good for all of the content creators who put hard work into long blog posts with useful content. Google even offered questions to determine the value of your content.

5) Implement the Google Authorship Mark-up – A search marketing firm proved rich snippet will increase SERP CTR and traffic. It’s that simple. Their analytics show a 150% increase when rich snippet was implemented. You might not get results quite that good, but it’s almost certain you will benefit if you implement the Google’s authorship snippet. It can be complicated, and it is slow to show results, but if you invest now you’ll see results in the not too distant future.

All of these Google changes have radically changed the SEO game, but they have made it a wonderful moment to be a content marketer. Those that put out shoddy content are being penalized, and there are all sorts of opportunities to really get your content out there.

 

For a more in depth look at author rank, read Neil Patel’s article at Quick Sprout.

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SEO Budgets Rising, Google Offers Warnings

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Google’s changes to their SEO policies have made optimization more and more difficult over the past few years. Chris Crum at WebProNews suggests that a new study from the world’s largest search marketing-specific nonprofit trade organization SEMPO reports that SEO spending is still going strong in spite of all of the free information available on the Internet.

The 72-page report, published by Econsultancy, looked at almost 900 companies and agencies and found that, “overall, the report depicts a stable industry, without making dramatic changes.” Despite significant changes in practices through the inclusion of new tools and algorithms, the survey reports that SEO has “very much the same goals in place.”

Most survey respondents increased their SEO budgets over recent years, and as low as 2% of those responding said they did not spend money on SEO. Meanwhile, the amount of agency billing for SEO services is on the rise. SEMPCO says “a significant rise in those spending less than $100k corresponds to higher numbers across the board, with the greatest increase in the $1 to $5 million range.”

One change that is particularly interesting is the statement by SEMPCO that “survey responses show a drop in the blunt objectives of driving traffic.” However, the amount of agencies citing brand reputation as their primary objective has consistently doubled annually. This is especially clear in the paid side of the industry.

What can’t be denied after the report is the value of the search marketing industry is only rising, even when faced by the rise in popularity of social media and Google algorithm updates that force sites to be less reliant on Google.

The report makes clear the “changes to the Google algorithm affects a large percent of marketers, or at least has them concerned,” and SEMPCO also notes “87% call the updates of the last 12-18 months ‘significant or highly significant'”. Most find the changes to be positive, but some legitimate brands have felt the backlash of the hunt for spam sites. Meanwhile, there are rumors of more Google updates in the future.

Thankfully, Google offers some advice on SEO, especially when beginning to look at hiring someone: “Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site.”

Google does emphasize the benefits SEO agencies can provide, such as technical advice on website development, content development, keyword research, and expertise in specific markets and geographies.

They advise “before beginning your search for an SEO, it’s a great idea to become an educated consumer and get familiar with how search engines work.” Of course, they recommend their Webmaster Guidelines and Google 101: How Google crawls, indexes and serves the web as starting points. Google also recommends hiring an SEO early in the development process. They even offer a list of questions you can ask SEOs during your hiring process.

Google’s assistance with SEO doesn’t come without it’s warnings, however. “While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEO’s have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways.”

It’s Google’s suggestion to be nervous of any SEO firms or agencies that contact you out of the blue, or one that asks you to link to them. “You should never have to link to an SEO.” They also warn that no firm can guarantee you a #1 ranking.

And if Google hasn’t already made you worn out from lists of recommendations, they also offer a list of deal-breakers when investigating an SEO, such as if the SEO owns shadow domains, puts links to their other clients on doorway pages or offers to sell keywords in the address bar.

Just because Google offers lots of advice, doesn’t mean they are making it easy to get on the first page of test results. But, they are offering resources to give your site its best shot and SEO doesn’t look to be going anywhere.

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Do You Need a Gravatar?

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We all use different ways to identify ourselves online. Most use their websites or social media pages. The problem is, once you go outside of your own domains and comment on blogs or forums, you become, for all intents and purposes, anonymous. Not so if you use a Gravatar, or ‘Globally Recognized Avatar’.

What is a Gravatar?

A Gravatar allows you to make a sort of ‘brand’ image of yourself by concisely providing a visual summation of the identity and personality of your choice.

The trick is choosing one that works best for your business, whether it is a standard head and shoulders photograph of you or your brand or product’s logo.

Everyone knows that blogs and forums are some of the most useful resources one can have to keep in touch with the trends and technical issues of their industry or areas of interest. What many may also realize is the comments sections on these posts are sometimes even more useful than reading the articles.

If you take a moment to look at comments sections, there are usually three different types of commenters.

  1. Spammers – The posters who leave generic comments that are often irrelevant.
  2. The Interested – Posters who appear to have a genuine interest in the subject, but are not usually very informed.
  3. The “Experts” – The people who post relevant and informative comments.

You will notice the Experts almost always have a Gravatar next to their names.

How Do I Create a Gravatar?

Creating a gravatar is as quick as it is easy and free. If you have a WordPress account, it’s as simple as logging in to Gravatar.com. If you don’t have a WordPress account, you can just associate your Gravatar with your email address.

After that, all there is to do is set up a profile with a suitable image and a few personal or business details. You can even add links to existing blogs, websites and social media pages.

Now, anywhere you comment, you will have your Gravatar next to it.

What Are The Benefits of Gravatars?

If you participate in comments sections frequently, you will begin to be recognized by others in the industry. This is why it is essential to have a professional looking image. This will help raise awareness of all of your pages, as well as their reputations inside the area of interest.

Considering it takes almost no time, and Gravatar doesn’t send you waves of spam e-mail, there’s really no reason not to sign up. You’ll be surprised by just how much your Gravatar does for you.

 

If you need more persuading to check out Gravatar, check out Alistair Harris’ article at ClickThrough.

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How To Fix Common Technical SEO Problems

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Technical SEO can be interesting, but no one likes coming across the same problems time and time again. That’s why it’s shocking how many websites are struggling with the same issues.

Here are some of the most frequent issues that can found while doing a site audit. We also have the solutions, so you can be prepared if you come across any of these issues.

1) Uppercase vs. Lowercase URLs – This happens most often on sites that use .NET. The server is configured to respond to URLs with uppercase letters and doesn’t redirect or rewrite to lowercase versions. This issue is slowly disappearing because search engines are improving a lot at recognizing canonical versions and disregarding copies. Just because it is going away doesn’t mean this issue should be ignored. Search engines still make mistakes doing this, so don’t rely on them.

Luckily, there is a an easy fix for this issue in the form of a URL rewrite module, which solves the issue on IIS 7 servers. There is a convenient option inside the interface that allows you to enforce lowercase URLs. If you do this, a rule is added to the web config file and this problem is gone.

2) Multiple Versions of the Homepage – If you are auditing a .NET website, go check to see if www.example.com/default.aspx exists. Most likely, it does. The page is a duplicate that search engines often find via navigation or XML sitemaps. Other platforms will instead make URLs like www.example.com/index.html or www.example.com/home. Most contemporary search engines automatically fix the problem, but why not make sure there isn’t an issue to be fixed?

The best way to solve this problem begins with doing a crawl of the site and exporting it into a CSV filtered by META title column. Do a search for the homepage title and you’ll quickly spot duplicates of your homepage. An easy fix for these duplicates is to add a 301 redirect version of the page that directs to the correct version.

You can also do a crawl with a tool like Screaming Frog to find internal links that point to the duplicate pages. Then, you can edit the duplicate pages so they direct to the correct URL. Having internal links that go via 301 can cost you some link equity.

3) Query Parameters Added to the End of URLs – This issue is most common on database driven eCommerce websites because there are tons of attributes and filtering options. This means often you will find URLs like www.example.com/product-category?color=12. In that example, the product is filtered by color. Filtering like this can be good for users, but bad for searches. Unless your customers do not search for the specific product using color, the URL is probably not the best landing page to target with keywords.

Another issue that tends to show up on tons of crawls of sites is when these parameters are combined together. The worst is when the parameters can be combined in different orders but return the same content, such as:

www.example.com/product-category?color=12&size=5 

www.example.com/product-category?size=5&color=12

Because both of these have different paths but return the same content, they are seen as duplicate content. It is important to remember Google allocates crawl budget based on PageRank. Make sure your budget is being used efficiently.

To begin fixing this issue, you need to address which pages you want Google to crawl and index. Make this decision based on keyword research and cross reference all database attributes with your core target keywords. You need to figure out what attributes are keywords used to find products. In figuring this out, it is possible to find high search volume for certain keywords, for example “Nike” = “Running Shoes.” If you find this, you want a landing page for “Nike Running Shoes” to be crawlable and indexable. Make sure the database attribute has an SEO friendly URL and ensure that the URLs are part of the navigation structure of your site so that a good flow of PageRank users can find the pages easily.

The next step depends on whether you want the specific attribute indexed or not. If the URLs are not already indexed, add the URL structure to your robots.txt file and test your regex properly to make sure you don’t block anything accidentally. Also, make sure you use the Fetch as Google feature in Webmaster tools. Remember, however, if the URLs are already indexed, adding them to your robots.txt file will not remove them.

If the URLs are indexed, unfortunately you are in need of the rel=canonical tag. If you inherit one of these situations and are not able to fix the core of the issue, the rel=canonical tag covers the issue in hope that it can be solved later. You’ll want to add this tag to the URLs you do not want indexed and point to the most relevant URL you do want indexed.

4) Soft URL Errors – A soft 404 is a page that looks like a 404 but returns a HTTP status code 200. If this happens, the user sees something resembling “Sorry the page you requested cannot be found”, but the code 200 tells search engines that the page is still working. This disconnect can be the source of the issue with pages being crawled and indexed when you don’t want them to be. A soft 404 also means real broken pages can’t be found.

Thankfully, this problem has a very easy fix for any developer who can set the page to return a 404 status code instead of a 200. You can use Google Webmaster tools to find any soft 404s Google has detected. You can also perform a manual check by going to a broken URL and seeing what status code is returned.

5) 302 Redirects Instead of 301 Redirects – Because users won’t be able to tell there is even a problem, this is a pretty easy problem for developers to make. A 301 redirect is permanent. Search engines recognize this and send link equity elsewhere. A 302 redirect is temporary and search engines will expect the original page to return soon, which leaves link equity where it is.

Find 302s by using a deep crawler like Screaming Frog. It allows you to filter by 302s, which you can then check individually. You can then ask your developers to change any that should be 301s.

6) Broken or Outdated Site Maps – XML sitemaps may not be essential, but they are very useful to search engines that make sure they can find all the URLs that matter. XML sitemaps help show the search engines what is important. Letting your sitemap become outdated causes them to contain broken links and miss any new content and URLs. Keeping sitemaps updated is especially important for big sites that add new pages frequently. Bing also penalizes sites with too many issues in their sitemaps.

Audit your current sitemap for broken links. After, speak to your developers about updating your XML sitemap and make it dynamic so that it updates frequently. How frequently depends on your resources, but doing this will save you a lot of trouble later.

It is very possible you will come across other issues while doing an audit, but, hopefully, if you come across any of these, you are now prepared to fix the problem.

 

For more Technical SEO Problems, read this article by Paddy Moogan at SEOmoz.

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Why You Need a Mobile Optimized Site

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Where is your phone? If you’re reading this, there is a good chance it’s in your hand. Over the past few years, Internet users have made a huge shift to mobile browsing as tablets and smart phones have made it easier to access the web while running errands, dining out or even talking with your friends.

This is why it’s important to make sure your website is optimized for mobile browsers. With almost fifty percent  of your audience using mobile devices as their primary way to browse the web, not having a mobile optimized website can cost you serious traffic and money.

So what do you do if you don’t have an optimized site for smart phones and tablets?

Well first, don’t just create a miniaturized version of your site. Users don’t want to be forced to try to pinpoint tiny buttons with their clumsy fingers and they definitely don’t want to read walls of text. Even more important is making sure the site loads quickly. Over half of all mobile users expect websites to load as quickly, if not even faster, on their mobile devices as they do on their computers. To make your site load quickly, make your mobile homepage streamlined with only essential content with minimum JavaScript and CSS files.

When optimizing your site for the Internet, it is also important to make sure your website works properly on every device. Ensuring your site supports every mobile operating system protects every visitor from having a bad experience with the site.

If you don’t already have a developer with experience in mobile sites, it’s time to get one. If anything, it is a little late. Your competition most likely already has an optimized version of their website for mobile devices and if your site isn’t ready for mobile browsing, your customers will leave you for your competition.  While it may seem daunting and costly to update your site for mobile surfing, making sure your customers have a pleasant experience with your site will save you much more money.

 

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How to Use Psychological Triggers to Go Viral

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If you haven’t seen the political quiz website ISideWith, you really should give it a look. It won’t change how you’re going to vote in November, but it is a perfect case study in great viral marketing because, as Rand Fishkin points out, it has two important psychological triggers.

First, sharing is simple and obvious. They have made it easy for you to share the quiz on almost any social site with bright and attractive buttons. They even tell you how many people have taken the quiz because of your sharing. Showing how your sharing has influenced others plays on your ego and the desire to know how many people care about what you share.

Second, they ask you how your results made you feel. When you give them feedback, they create a ready-to-share Facebook post for you. By allowing you to not just share your results, but customizing it with your own reactions, ISideWith plays on the way people use Facebook to share how they feel. People don’t always share what they are doing or interested in, but most people share how they feel. Capitalizing on emotions is a smart way to make people want to share your content.

The site isn’t perfect – no site is – but it takes advantage of the emotions people invest in politics to make their content as shareable as possible, thereby maximizing the chances of going viral. By knowing the psychologies of your audience rather than just their activities, you can make them want to share your site with the world.

 

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10 Steps to Great Online Connections

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Marketing your business online is a great way to build and grow your audience. In order to do that effectively, you need to network. Specifically, you need to make connections to bloggers and other content publishers. Sonia Simone at CopyBlogger has 10 steps to do just that, without turning in to someone people dread talking to.

1. Make Something Noteworthy

One great project brings influential people to you. If you’re doing something unique or game-changing, networking will be a snap. That probably sounds difficult, and it is. That’s why we aren’t all millionaires.

2. Be Positive

This isn’t just about the power of positive thinking, but rather about your positive online persona. Share helpful content and make friends through social media.

Being the bad guy could get you noticed, but it doesn’t make people want to do business with you.

3. Have an Opinion

Whatever your area of expertise is, be an expert on it. Stay current and be informed at all times, in order to contribute intelligently to discussions in your area.

4. Twitter

The Twitterverse is a popular spot for bloggers and content creators to congregate. What do you have to lose by attempting to connect with them with your own great content or intelligent questions? They’re a simple ‘@’ away.

5. Change Forums

Find the spot where the majority of your audience spends their time and deepen your Twitter connections there. Whether it’s Facebook, Google+ or another venue, you’ll sound more intelligent and competent than you did in 140 characters or less.

6. To the Real World

Soldify your online connections with real world meetings. Business connections are just like dating: face-to-face > online.

7. No Whining

Remember the step about being positive?  That means you don’t use your social media accounts to complain…about anything.  Try to read your posts from an outsiders point of view and be sure it’s engaging and positive.

8. Don’t be a Teenage Girl

OK, if you are a teenage girl with a successful business, congratulations to you. My point here is don’t talk about people behind their back, or in this case, online. No good can come of it, but plenty of bad can and probably will.

9. Don’t be a Geeky Fan

You will probably encounter some people who are both influential for your business and who you admire. Just be cool about it. Don’t gush over them. Rather, try to find a common ground by being enthusiastic about your shared interest, which also happens to be the area your business operates in.

10. Be Prepared for Twists

It’s great to set goals for yourself, but failure to reach those specific goals doesn’t necessarily constitute failure. Generally, if you are working towards the right goals and doing things the right way, you’ll have success. Just know it might not be the success you originally planned for.


 

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How To Diagnose a Sudden Drop in Search Traffic

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So you’ve been having steady traffic on your website for a while now. You are eyeing expansion and everything seems fine. Suddenly, your traffic nose-dives. There are a few reasons this can happen.  Some are very easy to fix, while others are more problematic. Here is a six question checklist to help identify what is causing the issue and how to solve the problem. Before going through the checklist, please make sure this is actually a search issue. If you go to Google Analytics and go to Traffic Sources->Sources->Search->Organic and select a range of a few months, you will see an image depicting your traffic with the sudden drop. If there is a drop in traffic on this chart, you likely have a serious search issue.

  1. Has the Analytics Tool Been Removed or Altered? – This tiny issue is by far the easiest to fix. It can happen frighteningly easy and frequently, but use an Analytics checker/debugger tool, and you can quickly find and fix this issue.
  2. Have There Been Any Significant Website Changes? – Sometimes just redesigning your website can shatter your rankings. Even removing content or restructuring what order your content appears in can have big effects on your site. Usually, this issue can be solved by using an Analytics tool to see if there were any changes right before the drop in traffic.
  3. Have You Been Hacked? – It is not as easy to know when you’ve been hacked as movies might make you think. There are spam attacks that don’t affect Active pages, but instead create new directories with spam content. This makes the hack harder to find. If a search engine picks up on it, the website is often penalized. Google and Bing Webmaster Tools can help you quickly find out if you are vulnerable to hackers. You can also do a manual search of “links:[your URL here]” to search for meta descriptions that look like spam. The solutions to being hacked vary but once you’ve uncovered the issue, you can look for specific solutions. Usually, it will involve loading a clean backup and changing all passwords.
  4. Has There Been a Major Algorithm Update? – If none of the above questions have helped, it’s quite possible your traffic issues are being caused by an update. Look through available and reputable resources to see if other websites are dealing with similar issues. If your problems are caused by algorithmic changes, it is time to seek professional help. Changing code won’t fix the problem. Instead, you will likely have to make large shifts in company practices, strategies, content and link building.
  5. Has the Site Been Hit With a Ranking Penalty? – If an algorithmic update isn’t your problem, chances are your Web site has been penalized. If you have incurred penalties, it means there has been a sudden spike in bad links or spam content. You should audit who is in charge of making sure your site is following SEO policies and make sure they are up to date with the best practices.
  6. Are You The Victim of Negative SEO? – Negative SEO happens when a competitor manages to automate spammy links at your Web site, causing site wide ranking drops. Bing Webmaster Tools has a Disavow Links Tool but unless you’ve seen a sudden rise in spam content or bad links, you can ignore this tool.

These steps can help you fix sudden traffic drops but you may have to hire professional assistance if the first two questions didn’t help. Luckily, these problems are fixable and soon your site will be back up to its steady flow of traffic.

You can read more about identifying search traffic drops in John Lynch’s article over at Search Engine Watch.

 

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