How to Recover Falling Recruitment Traffic

As a recruiter, you should drive as much web traffic as you can to your site. With more web traffic coming in, the more chances you have to generate leads. However, there may be times when you’ll experience a decline in traffic.

Experiencing a minor drop in web traffic is not a cause for panic. This is a regular occurrence since the number of people who visit your website daily is not constant. However, you should pay attention when there’s a sudden significant drop in recruitment traffic. This could indicate a penalty from Google or a technical issue on your website that you should fix as soon as possible.

5 Ways to Get Back Falling Recruitment Traffic

Fortunately, you can still recover after experiencing a sudden decline in web traffic. Follow these steps to bounce back on your feet.

1. Check if you have a Google penalty

Receiving a penalty from Google is one of the most common reasons for having a sudden drop in website traffic. More often than not, the search giant doesn’t explain why you have a manual penalty, but you can confirm if you have one by checking your Google Search Console for any notifications.

Receiving a penalty suggests that you’re using a black hat SEO strategy. It could also indicate that you have spammy or plagiarised content. Either way, make sure that you address the issue immediately so you can get rid of the penalty and recover your web traffic. If you’re working with an SEO specialist, discuss the strategies you’re using and ensure that they comply with Google’s rules.

2. Take a look at your backlinks

If you have segmented your traffic and see that there’s a noticeable drop in incoming referral traffic, you should give your backlinks a thorough look. There might be a few links that were lost, particularly if no traffic is coming in through a number of your webpages.

It can be difficult to recover lost backlinks. However, you might be happy to know that obtaining new ones is not rocket science. One way to do this is to update your old content with further information. For instance, if you have previously written a guide about passing job interviews, you may include new information or expound upon the topic to make it fresh and relevant. You can also republish or share it on social media, especially if the site or webpage that has been linking to that piece of content is no longer available.

3. See if you’re linking to bad sites

Similar to having spammy and plagiarised content, having links to and from spammy and shady websites can also get you into trouble. Whether it is unintentional or not, it sends a message to Google that you bought those links and are using black hat SEO to obtain more traffic for your recruitment site.

To fix this issue, remove those links as quickly as you can. Also, it would be best if you ask spammy websites to stop linking to you. If they refuse, you can  disavow the unwanted backlinks on your own. 

4. Check out your competition

Having a fierce competitor is another reason for having a sudden drop in recruitment traffic. If your traffic is dropping significantly, your competitors have likely offered your audience something better. For example, they probably uploaded a piece of content that is more informative and engaging than yours.

If you’re trying to rank for the same keyword the competition is ranking well for, you can shift your focus onto other keywords, especially the ones your competitor isn’t using. This should help improve your performance for the keyword you’re targeting. Another solution is to face your competitors directly, especially if you think you can win against them. However, make sure that you conduct a thorough study of the competition first. Also, ensure that you have enough resources to support a more aggressive SEO/PPC campaign.

5. Look up Google issues

You might think that all is well when your content has a good search ranking and your main keywords have outstanding search volume. However, you can still lose traffic despite these excellent conditions. It could be because Google is showing a snippet of your content, particularly the part that answers a user’s question, on the search result page. Because of this, job seekers or employers don’t visit your site anymore since they already obtained the information they need.

This trend has become so common these days that the SEO community has already coined a name for it: the “no-click search.” Previous research revealed that no-click searches make up 49% of all Google searches. 

To encourage people to proceed to your site and not merely stop at the result pages, you should give your content a makeover. Consider creating more comprehensive material, such as research articles or blog posts, so they will be too long to show up and be read on search result pages.

Conclusion

A sudden drop in web traffic is often a big deal. However, the good news is there are steps that you can take to recover from this problem. When you see that your traffic dropped suddenly, don’t panic. Instead, keep a clear head and follow the solutions discussed above to overcome this hurdle.

If you need help recovering lost traffic, contact us at Recruitment Traffic. We have SEO specialists who can offer you the solutions you need.