site hits getting less and less

[surrealillusions]

I admit this sounds very much like a noob question, but one site im working on, the site appears to get less and less hits over time according to Google analytics.

We're only talking about a short period i guess, from the beginning of this year to now. February hits were down by about 150 (from about 550), and so far in March we've got about 200. Granted March is only just over half way through, so, in theory we should get more than February.

I've looked on Google Trends, but the search volume isnt enough to get any results, as the keywords are too specific.

Things I'm aware of - we cant force people to search for stuff they dont need. If our industry isnt needed as much as before, then people wont search for it, we are in an economic downturn supposedly. People want to save money. It is only a short period of time, site hits are going to down as well as up, its not going to up all the time unless you have a super duper never seen before everyone will need it type site. (even those sites have lulls i guess).

The site hasnt gone under a facelift (the script has been on the site all the time), content is the same, no spam or dodgy link building excersises in place. All our listings in Google are still there.

Is there anything to blame for this downturn in hits or is it just one of those dips in the valley of website hits?

:)

[thecoalman]

I'd go back in the server logs when traffic was higher and see where they were coming from. If you have low traffic to begin with you might have one or two pages getting referrals for specific search term you might of "lucked" out on. If you lose it you're traffic will suffer.

I had a small niche site some years ago for example that brought in a tremendous amount of traffic through Google image search because I was in the top 5 for a very popular image search not directly related to the site. That surpassed all my search referrals combined.

[rocknbil]

Don't overlook the possibility of just plain old ups and downs. Our market is niche too, an area dealing with a women's hobby, of sorts. Over the last 4 years December is the worst for sales. We do make some (although we'd expect the husbands to shop for their women interested in this) but it's generally our worst month.

But look out January, when everyone else is taking a breather from the holiday sales. It's almost as if the women say "There, I've done my part for GIVING, time for me!" and we get totally hammered. It picks up again in summer when there are lots of outside-ish things going on.

[surrealillusions]

I'd go back in the server logs when traffic was higher and see where they were coming from

Sounds like a plan actually. Will have a nosey around in them and see what I can find.

Personally, I think its more of a plain old up and down that rocknbill suggests, but still probably worth while having a look to see how the hits were higher.

Thanks.

:)

[explorador]

Check your traffic sources. Some other sites that drive traffic to your site might have done something not so good for them, perhaps penalized or just not updated.

If a source of traffic for you goes down, your traffic will go down too (from there).

Remember, your site might be good, but you can't sleep on it, add stuff or your traffic itself will go down in time. Gained traffic won't stay there forever.

Check for your links. Sometimes a search reveals you had 5K links to your site and then only 3k, so traffic goes down.

[JS_Harris]

It's too soon to be looking for a trend and the site isn't getting enough traffic yet to make an accurate assumption.

When you launched the site you were clicking around it most likely so a good part of the first 550 "hits" may be yours.