Four SEO Reasons Your Rank and Your Traffic Are Decreasing - Episode 124

Summary

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Grumpy SEO Guy, Episode 124

Four SEO Reasons Your Rank and Your Traffic Are Decreasing

Date: September 3, 2025
Host: Grumpy SEO Guy

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Grumpy SEO Guy breaks down the most common reasons behind drops in website ranking and traffic, drawing from 14 years of agency experience. The episode aims to clear up confusion in the SEO community about what actually causes declining traffic and ranks, and offers practical, no-nonsense guidance on how to accurately diagnose and respond to these issues—especially by leveraging SERP (Search Engine Results Page) tracking.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Traffic Decreases: Not Always an SEO Problem

• Traffic ≠ SEO Metric: Traffic is not a direct SEO metric as often misunderstood. It is influenced by two factors:

  1. Monthly Search Volume
  2. Your Rank (Position in SERPs)

• Example provided:

  • If a keyword has 10,000 monthly searches and you’re in position 1 (which gets ~30% of the traffic), you get about 3,000 visitors. If monthly search volume drops, so does your traffic—even if your rank stays the same.
  • Quote:

    “Just because your traffic decreases doesn’t mean you have an SEO problem. Maybe monthly search volume decreased. Maybe your position stayed the same.” (A, 04:09)

• Diagnosing a True SEO Issue:

  • The first diagnostic step is to check if your rank (SERP position) has changed using SERP tracking tools.

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2. The Critical Importance of SERP Tracking

• SERP Tracking: If you’re not tracking your rankings, you are essentially flying blind in SEO.

• SERP Chart Essentials: The host emphasizes the big mistake many make:

  • Quote:

    "If you are not tracking your SERPs, you are not doing SEO." (A, 04:35)

• What Makes a Good SERP Tracking Tool? (06:21–09:21)

  1. Pick Your Own Keywords: The tool must let you choose the specific keywords you want to track.
     • Quote:

       “There are some SERP tracking tools that do not let you track your own keywords. Does that even make any sense?” (A, 06:34)

  2. Individual Charts for Each Keyword: Avoid tools that provide only average positions.
     • Quote:

       “Average position is a silly metric that doesn’t really have any value.” (A, 07:42)

  3. Daily Data: The tool must provide daily (not just weekly or monthly) data, offering the details needed for proper analysis.
     • Quote:

       “You want to know where you ranked every single day for 30 days or however long it’s been.” (A, 09:16)

• Recommended Tool: Serpfox.com (not sponsored), offering the first 10 keywords for free.

• Actionable Tip:

  • Set up SERP tracking for your keywords immediately if you haven't already.

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3. How to Decode Traffic Drops with SERP Data

• SERP Charts as Diagnosis Tools:
  • SERP charts reveal whether it’s a true ranking issue or a change in search volume.
  • Understanding how ranking position and visitor numbers are related is crucial:
    • “Remember, it [traffic] is a result of monthly search volume and rank.” (A, 10:13)

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4. The Four Reasons Your Rank Decreases (10:51–12:09)

1. Penalty

• If your site is penalized, your rankings tank and visitors drop accordingly.
  • Quote:

    “If you get a penalty, your position’s gonna drop and your visitors are going to decrease. Because if you get a penalty, you’re not gonna rank anymore.” (A, 10:52)

2. Losing Authority

• Most often linked to losing backlinks.
• Authority is a major ranking factor after on-site factors are dialed in.
  • Quote:

    “If you are losing authority, your rank might decrease. And that generally means you’re losing backlinks.” (A, 11:26)

3. Algorithm Updates

• Updates can shake things up, sometimes recalculating authority or changing ranking factors.
  • Quote:

    “An algorithm update can cause your website to decrease. It can also cause it to increase.” (A, 11:58)

4. Competitors Improving Their SEO

• When competitors up their game, you may drop even if nothing about your site changed.

• Quote:

  “If your competition is doing better SEO, they are gaining authority. If they are gaining authority, that’s quite similar to you losing authority, isn’t it?” (A, 12:09)

• Relative Nature of SEO:

  • The second and fourth points are closely related because SEO is always relative to the competition.

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5. How SERP Behavior Reveals Rank Drop Causes (13:14–13:48)

• Pattern Analysis:

  • A slow decrease: Usually competitor improvement (gradual authority changes/backlinks growth).
  • A dramatic drop ("off a wall"): Likely penalty or massive algorithm update.
  • Quote:

    “Different types of SERP behavior indicate different causes of ranking declines.” (A, 13:22)

• Action: Always request or review SERP charts before jumping to conclusions about ranking/traffic decreases.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “Traffic is not an SEO metric. But let me tell you why.” (A, 03:46)
• “If you are not tracking your SERPs, you are not doing SEO.” (A, 04:35)
• “Average position is a silly metric that doesn’t really have any value.” (A, 07:42)
• “So stop listening to this episode, go to SERPfox.com, create an account, enter your URL, enter your 10 keywords, or however many you have, and then come back to this episode.” (A, 09:21)
• “By tracking your SERPs and checking a SERP chart, you can see what the behavior looks like, okay? Are you decreasing quickly or slowly? Is it bouncing around or is it dropping off a wall?” (A, 13:14)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:46–04:09: Traffic is not a direct SEO problem—defining what really influences traffic drops
• 05:23–10:05: SERP tracking tools—how to choose and why they’re vital
• 10:51–12:09: Four detailed reasons for ranking decreases
• 13:14–13:48: Using SERP chart behavior to diagnose the type of rank drop

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Final Thoughts & Practical Advice

• If your traffic drops, don’t panic or blame SEO immediately—diagnose using SERP tracking first.
• Set up proper SERP tracking with daily, keyword-specific charts.
• Compare your SERP data to spot which of the four main causes is to blame.
• Always remember that SEO is relative; what your competitors do directly affects your own rankings.
• For ongoing support and discussion, join the Grumpy SEO Guy community on Reddit or contact via email.

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This episode is a straightforward, bias-busting guide to understanding organic traffic and ranking drops—the kind of advice “99% of SEO professionals” aren’t talking about.

Transcript

[A]

This is Grumpy SEO Guy Episode 124. 4 reasons your rank and you'd traffic are decreasing. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies and and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the Grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because people are uncertain why their traffic is decreasing and why their rank is decreasing. And so we're going to talk about that in this episode. But before we do that, a couple reminders. New episodes come out on Wednesday, 9am Central Standard Time. That is for the podcast. If you're on YouTube, it's gonna be a little bit later than that. If you leave a comment on YouTube, I try to reply on Wednesday, but sometimes it's not until Thursday. If you like the podcast and you wanna subscribe on YouTube, that would be really beneficial for us. So please subscribe. If you really like the podcast and wanna support us, you can do [e-mail] grumpyseoguy if you want to join the Grumpy SEO Guy community, we are on Reddit. You can find [e-mail] r Grumpy Seouguy if you are hearing ads on this podcast and there's a chance that you are, but I'm not sure and you don't want ads, you can do ad free at Patreon, but if you're already a Patreon subscriber, you will get no ads anyway. So thank you for your support. If you'd like to ask more complicated or more detailed SEO questions and you want to book a Zoom SEO advisory, call email me@hello, grumpyseoguy.com, and we can talk about getting that scheduled. Okay, back to the episode. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other Search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical. And based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. So the reason I wanted to talk about this today is because there have been a lot of questions recently on SEO discussion boards where people are saying things like, why is my traffic decreasing? My traffic is decreased by so much. What's going on? Why are my visitors declining versions of that question? And it might not even be an SEO problem. But in this episode, we're going to talk about why your traffic might decrease, how to tell if it's an SEO problem or not, if. And then we're going to talk about your ranking, because that's sometimes part of the problem. And we're going to talk about the four reasons your rank can drop. So, okay, here we go. When people say, oh, my traffic is dropping, that's not necessarily an SEO problem. Look, traffic is not an SEO metric, and people get all frustrated when I say this. But it's not an SEO metric. But let me tell you why. So, traffic is a function of two things. It is a function of two things. One, monthly search volume, and two, your rank. Now, let me give you an example of that. Okay, let's say there are 10,000 searches for a keyword, okay? 10,000 searches. Now, let's say you are in position one, okay? The first position gets about 30% of the traffic. So if there are 10,000 monthly searches and you are in position one, you are going to get about 3,000 visitors per month.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Because position one gets 30% of the traffic. Now, for every position below that, it decreases a bit, okay? Which is why you want to be in position one, because then you get the most traffic. But just because your traffic decreases doesn't mean you have an SEO problem. Maybe monthly search volume decreased. Maybe your position stayed the same. Perhaps your position improved.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

But monthly search volume decreased and you lost traffic. Not necessarily an SEO concern. Now, now, the question is going to be, well, how can I tell? Okay, I'm going to answer that question for you. You can tell by tracking your position. Okay, Your position, or the phrase is serp. S, E, R, P Search engine result page. It just means, where do you rank? So when you hear somebody describing SERPs or SERP, it just means your rank. That's all it means. So we have an episode, and I'm gonna put a link in the description. We have an episode called, if you are not tracking your SERPs, you are not doing SEO. I'm not joking when I say this. Tracking your SERPs is the main thing you need to do. And many people do not do it because they either don't know what's possible or they don't know that they have to. So look, what is the reason you do SEO? You do SEO to get to the top of the search engines? What are you doing to gauge your progress? How do you know if you're going up or down? How do you know? Are you checking your keywords every day? Are you entering them and scrolling through the results until you find them? I mean, you can, but that's gonna not be very. It's not gonna be very productive. So what you do is you use a tool called a SERP chart.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Anyways. Or our SERP tracking tool is a tool that produces a SERP chart. So as I said, we have another episode that talks about this, but there are three things that you need to look for in a SERP chart and I'm going to tell you what they are because there's many SERP tracking tools out there and there's various ones that you probably should not use because they don't do these three things.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

We use a tool called serp fox serp fox s e r p f o x serpfox.com I don't get paid to promote them, okay? I don't get paid to promote them, but we've been using using them for over a decade because they perform all the tasks that a SERP chart needs to do. I'm going to tell you what those are right now. You can use. By the way, you can use any SERP tracking tool. It doesn't matter to me. But it has to do these three things or it's not going to be very helpful to you. So anyways, look, a SERP chart or SERP tracking tool needs to do three things. Number one, it needs to let you select the keywords.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

It needs to let you choose the keywords. So why do I say this? There are some SERP tracking tools that do not let you track your own keywords.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Does that even make any sense? Of course not. So why would you use the tool that doesn't let you pick your keywords? If you're trying to rank for your specific keywords, you need to know where you rank for those keywords. So make sure that it lets you. Now, if it wants to give you other keywords, that's fine, but make sure it lets you choose your keywords.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Number two thing that you need to look for in a SERP tracking tool, you need to have individual charts for each keyword. Oh, you know what? Let me tell you what a SERP chart does. First, I think I forgot to say this.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

A SERP chart is like a stock chart. You know, a stock chart, how it shows you the price of a company, and you can look at it and see where it used to be and where it is now. You can see if the price is increasing or decreasing.

[B]

Right?

[A]

A SERP chart does that, but it does it for your position. So you can look at a SERP chart and see where you used to rank and where you rank. And so it's very helpful. It's very helpful. You can tell if your position is increasing or decreasing. So it's pretty useful. Anyways, you need to have an individual chart for each keyword. So here's why I'm telling you this. There are some SERP tracking tools that only show you average position.

[B]

All right?

[A]

Average position is a silly metric that doesn't really have any value. So if you have. Let's say you're only tracking two keywords, okay? Let's say one of them is in position one and one of them is in position 19. It would tell you that your average position is 10. But you have one keyword in one and one keyword in 19. So knowing that your average position is 10, big deal. That doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter. So anyways, you need to make sure that each keyword has an individual chart for that keyword so that you can see where you rank for that keyword and where you used to rank for that keyword.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

And number three, you need to have daily data. Some SERP charts only show you, like, weekly or monthly data. You need daily data. And the reason for this is. And this is a more advanced topic that we're not really gonna talk about right now. But first of all, it gives you more data points. Second of all, there are certain behaviors in a SERP chart that you need to have daily data to determine.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Actually, you know what? We're gonna talk about this in a minute. I think so anyways, though, if you only have. If your SERP chart only updates itself every week, that's not specific enough. You need it to update every day. So if you open it. So SERP charts usually won't start tracking your keyword until you enter the keyword, right? Cause obviously, why would they do it otherwise? So let's say you started tracking your keywords a month ago.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

And then when you Open that SERP chart for each individual keyword. You should see 30 days worth of data.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

You want to know where you ranked every single day for 30 days or however long it's been.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

So daily data from this topic. I want you to understand that SERP tracking is very important. And again, we use serpfox because it does those three things, but you can use something else. It doesn't bother me if you use a different tool. But SerpVox is great. And the first 10 keywords are free, so there's no. You can't tell me anything to explain why you're not tracking your SERPs, because literally the first 10 keywords are free. So stop listening to this episode, go to SERP fox.com, create an account, enter your URL, enter your 10 keywords, or however many you have, and then come back to this episode.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

And continue listening to it. It's how you track your results.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

The purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the search engines. The way you check if you are at the top of the search engines is with a SERP chart.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

You need to have this. Anyways, so now we know. We know how to track our SERPs, and we also know how monthly visitors are determined. Remember, it is a result of monthly search, volume and rank. Okay, so now let's talk about. Because sometimes. Sometimes the reason you're losing traffic is because your SERPs are dropping, your position is falling. Okay, there are four reasons that can happen. We go into these in depth in other episodes, and I'll put a link in the description for those episodes, but let's just describe them very briefly right here. So anyways, there are four reasons that your rank can decrease.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Number one, penalty. You get a penalty. If you get a penalty, your position's gonna drop and your visitors are going to decrease. Because if you get a penalty, you're not gonna rank anymore. And if you're not ranking anymore, nobody's gonna find your site and you're not gonna get any traffic. So, pretty obvious, right? Like, yeah, right. So anyways, number two, you can lose authority. Now, as you know from grumpy SEO guy, authority is a big ranking factor. Once everything on your site is how it should be, you need to get as much authority as possible. Why? Because authority makes you rank higher. If you are losing authority, and that generally means you're losing backlinks. If you are losing authority, your rank might decrease. Okay, number three, algorithm updates. The third reason that your rank can decline is because of an algorithm update. Algorithm Updates? Well, they do a lot of things. Sometimes they change how authority is calculated. So it's kind of another reason for losing authority. But it's not the same as necessarily losing backlinks. We have other episodes. But an algorithm update can cause your website to decrease. It can also cause it to increase.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Sometimes people are helped by algorithm updates, but anyways, doesn't matter. And number four, because your competition is upping their SEO game.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Now, two of these are kind of the same.

[B]

All right?

[A]

Two of these reasons are kind of the same. Have you discovered which two are kind of the same? How about I'll just tell you right now? So I said number two was, you're losing authority, okay? And number four was your competition is doing better SEO. Those are kind of the same, okay? If your competition is doing better SEO, they are gaining authority. If they are gaining authority, that's quite similar to you losing authority, isn't it? Because remember, SEO is about how much authority you have compared to your competition. So if you lose authority, even though that's a different reason, if you lose authority, it's probably because you're losing backlinks, okay? If your competition is increasing their SEO, it's probably because they're gaining backlinks. It doesn't matter that those are different because the relative authority between you is still changing, okay? But overall, it doesn't matter. Look, anyway, here's the point. By tracking your SERPs and checking a SERP chart, you can see what the behavior looks like, okay? Are you decreasing quickly or slowly? Is it bouncing around or is it dropping off a wall?

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Like, different types of SERP behavior indicate different causes of ranking declines.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

So, and again, we go into this another episode, but let me give you one example. Right now, if you see a slow decrease, okay? If you see a slow decrease, that likely means that your competition is increasing their SEO. Why? Because you usually move up, you know, a few positions at a time. And every time some website increases its position, another website has to decrease its position.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Does that make sense? Every time a website raises its position, another website has to drop its position, okay? If you're in position two and you reach position one, that website that was in position one has to go somewhere. It's probably gonna go down to position two. Make sense? So anyways, I don't really want to get really complex into the reasons and stuff right now, but using a SERP chart can help you identify what your SERP progress looks like, and you can use that to figure out what might be the cause of your rank or your traffic decline. Anyway, when people ask and they say my traffic is decreasing, what's the cause? I usually ask can you post a SERP chart? And generally they never do because they don't have one. You need to be tracking your SERPs. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or or you can email [e-mail] if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks, and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do [e-mail] grumpy SEO guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday for another episode.