Visibility is a metric you may hear talked about by digital marketing agencies and is often a vanity metric to use when judging the performance of a campaign. However, visibility can also give you an insight into how Google updates have affected your industry, and more importantly, your website.
So if you have noticed a decrease in visibility or a sudden drop in visitors to your website, this piece may help you get to the bottom of it.
Stage 1 – How severe is it?
If you have just noticed a slight drop in visibility then there may not be much to worry about; obviously we all want lots of visibility and visitors to the website but fluctuations do happen.
If you are experiencing fluctuations in your website’s visibility and visitors on a regular basis, then the reason is probably something other than a Google update. In this scenario we would recommend speaking to an expert (like us) about this.
If visibility and/or visitors has dropped dramatically over a short period of time and has stayed at a low, then it is more than likely you have suffered from a Google update. But which one you ask….
Stage 2 – Check the dates.
When did the decrease in visibility happen? When did you first notice the decrease in visitors? By working out when the drop off happened, we can establish what algorithm update had the negative effect.
Was it Panda, Penguin or one of the many others?
Stage 3 – Devising a fix.
Once the problem has been diagnosed, we need to create a strategy to improve the situation and ultimately get the visibility and visitors back to where they once were. The fix required can vary in time depending on the update and the size of the issue.
If it turns out your website has been affected by the Penguin update, you will need to get someone to perform a full backlink audit before submitting a disavow file to Search Console. The more links your website has, the longer this will take.
If you are unfortunate enough to be affected by the Panda update, then a full website content audit will need to be carried out, looking for areas where content is light, poor quality or duplicated. Once an audit has been completed, you will need to create the required content to improve the visibility.
For more information or help on diagnosing a visibility drop, get in touch with an expert within the digital marketing team who will be happy to help you out.