Sudden Drop in Website Traffic

[amleaner]

Recently my 4 months old website punished by Google. It was getting 4500 to 6000 impressions and 90 to 110 visitors which reduced to 600 to 700 impressions and 20 to 25 visitors per day over the night and same trend is continued since a week.

It happened second time since I launched the website. After 1 month of launching website visitors start increasing gradually and after sustaining 10-12 days similar situation arise (as mentioned above). After 1 month traffic recovered again and exactly 1 month later it went again over the night. Currently for long-tail keywords on which I was at 1st page last days, it is showing different page of my website at 6th or 7th page.

I also received an alert in Webmaster Tool for "Increase 404s" which was showing 37 pages on the same day when traffic was drop on 19th. I resolved that issue very next day.

I've unique quality content at my website. Google Webmaster Tool is showing 600 Inbound Links distributed in 80 different pages of my website which are coming from Social Media, Personal Blogs, Article Websites and from 4-5 Authority Directories such as Business.com.

I would appreciate if someone can share their thought on the issue.

[goodroi]

I don't think Google is punishing you. IMHO you need to do a better job building up more quality signals which does not happen overnight.

It sounds like you are relatively new to Google SEO, so here is a quick list of ideas that will hopefully help you to survive in the long term:

-New websites can have their activity fluctuate alot, pay more attention to growing the site and less attention to worrying about every traffic change.

-Unique content does not mean it is useful content. A cat walking across a keyboard can create unique content but that doesn't mean the cat deserves to rank #1. Create useful content that users want and can't find on 100 other competing sites. Make sure your site provides unique value.

-Most people can not accurately track their Google rankings. They think they can but they aren't taking into account the massive amount of personalization that Google applies to search rankings. Focus more on long term traffic trends.

-600 links sounds impressive but it isn't. Quantity is not quality. A handful of great links can outpower 1,000 weak links. When working on backlinks I would suggest you seek links that will directly drive relevant traffic to your site.

-Don't waste time when launching a new website. You need to build up the quality signals that your competition has had years to develop. If you somehow catch up and outrank your competition, you still need to keep working because your competition will now increase their efforts and try to take back the traffic from you. This isn't Google punishment, this is marketplace competition.

-Don't wait for Google to tell you your website is broken. Regularly monitor your site and fix it before Google realizes your website is error filled and a bad place to send users.

Work harder on establishing long term quality signals. Google SEO is not easy and Google keeps hiring more people with a PhD to ensure the challenge level continues to increase.

[amleaner]

Thanks goodroi for your kind response.

I totally respect your opinion that may be Google has not punished my website. However, I didn't experienced such dramatic fluctuations before. Similar thing 2 times in 3 months time, I mean drop in impression from 5500 to 700 shows something is wrong.

Secondly, the keywords which were bringing traffic are totally disappeared. In both occasions when I was receiving traffic there was one page which was bringing 30-40 visits per day from multiple long-tail keywords. This page is even not appearing in top 5 pages from any of the long-tail keyword on which it was showing before.

Your all suggestions are very important and I'll definitely work on those.