The topic of this month’s video training inside Fearless Bloggers Pro, our community and membership for bloggers, was about seeing a drop in traffic. I shared many industry updates with them and just what the current state of the blogging space is and where things are going. I also shared my traffic numbers, what I discovered after analyzing why my traffic went down, and my action plan from here on to bring it back.

Why Your Organic Traffic Went Down

Now, there are many reasons why your organic traffic – the one coming from search engines – may have dropped significantly.

This and last year the most common one is a recent search algorithm update. It could also be a manual penalty, tracking problems with your site, changes in the SERP layout, issue with website crawling and indexation, lost backlinks, an overall decrease in your content quality, the use of AI content, seasonality, outdated content and lack of any new content, and so on.

But usually, if you haven’t done anything wrong, anything against Google’s guidelines, and if you’ve had good traffic for a long time now and kept doing the same things as a blogger, but see a sudden drop in traffic, it’s changes with Google.

Seems like they aren’t favouring small publishers anymore and I hear bloggers from all niches and at all levels, complaining about it, being disappointed in Google and not relying on it anymore, and looking for alternatives to organic traffic.

Things aren’t easy in the blogging space right now, and the way we optimize our content is changing too. On-page SEO is changing, the rules of the game are just different now that AI is dominating the search results and there’s so much low-quality content out there.

What do we do?

The usual tips apply:

• Create quality content consistently;
• Stay up to date with the latest Google algorithm updates;
• Follow Google’s guidelines for creating helpful content;
• Publish unique content only;
• Go back to old content and update it;
• Check Google Search Console for errors in indexing;
• Improve the user experience on your site;
• Improve page speed;
• Have a good WordPress theme, and overall design of your site;
• Use only quality plugins, and don’t overdo it. Only keep the ones you need;
• Diversify your traffic sources by building a presence on other platforms;
• Grow your brand. Improving your site’s reputation now is also about branding, not just content or traffic. By becoming an authority in your niche, you gain trust with both readers and search engines.

But ultimately, there’s one tip that comes before anything else.

One practice that becomes more crucial and necessary than ever before in the online space…

Writing for people, not for search engines

Now, you might be thinking:

‘But, Lidiya, I am writing for my readers. I haven’t created any AI content. I optimize my posts naturally, but they are for people, not for search engines.’

But let me ask you this.

Are you obsessed with the score Yoast SEO gives you, and do you always make sure you get the green light?

Do you optimize every blog post?

When was the last time you wrote a blog post based on a question a reader asked you?

When was the last time you sat down to write a piece of content because you felt inspired and because you knew it could inspire others and provide value? And without doing any keyword research for it.

When was the last time you posted something without strategizing how it would rank high on search engines and bring new visitors to your site?

That’s what I mean.

In Google’s guidelines for creating helpful content, there’s a section titled ‘Avoid creating search engine-first content.’

According to them, warning signs are that: 

• your content is primarily made to attract visits from search engine;
• you produce many blog posts on many different topics hoping that some of them will perform well in search results;
• you’re using automation to produce the content;
• you’re summarizing what others are saying without adding much value;
• you’re only covering topics because they are trendy and not because your audience wants them or is interested;
• you’re aiming for a certain word count because you read that Google ranks posts which are that long, higher;
• you enter a new niche to get traffic, but don’t actually have expertise in it;
• you’re updating old posts or changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh only to improve your rankings, not to be helpful to your readers;

Truth is, after a long time of certain SEO practices, and even over-optimization, working well and giving us results, we forgot what it’s actually like to write for people first.

But it’s why blogs exist in the first place. It’s why we do what we do. For people to read it and get value from it.

And the way to get in front of more people was optimizing the content and ranking it high, sure. But things have changed.

What ranks now is not just content sites, and the reasons for ranking are different, and they change as new core updates happen. 

We need to adjust. But we also need to get back to where it all began – writing people-first content.

We can find a healthy balance between SEO and creating original, genuine and helpful content for the people we can help the most.

I’m doing a big content audit right now and am removing thin content. Just removed a whole category from my blog actually. I’m also optimizing tags, creating more topical authority, moving onto other platforms, and so on.

If you want to see exactly how I do it all, as well as get my best blog traffic and income strategies, make sure you join us inside the membership. I’m talking about the paid plan, because that’s where the magic happens.

I released a free one too recently but there you can get the freebies that are already offered on Let’s Reach Success, access to blogger interviews, and a discussion forum. That’s still valuable, but the video trainings, the income reports I share from my business, the monthly blogging strategies, the motivational updates, the bonuses, all that can be found in the paid plan, Fearless Bloggers Pro.

I hope you enjoyed this short but sweet post, and I hope you take another look at your blogging strategy and how you do content creation and optimization. There’s always a way to focus more on people and value, and the rest will follow.

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