SEO Traffic Investigations
Peel back the layers. Pinpoint the real issues. Prioritize the right fixes.
Find the needle in your haystack.
Searching for the true cause of an alarming organic traffic dip can feel a little like, well... you know. SEO investigations deliver actionable insights in ambiguous moments,
giving you confidence on the road to recovery.
Comprehensive & Clear
We consider the whole story by quickly assessing all of the potential issues — and uncover the real story by isolating those with the most impact.
Measured & Methodical
Our proven process puts us on the right track: let the data direct our attention, dissect the numbers to find patterns, and follow patterns to powerful answers.
Agile & Actionable
Our findings seamlessly connect the dots between discovery and execution, ranking impact with recovery in mind to facilitate easy, informed roadmapping.
Every case has its key suspects.
Each case unfolds a unique story, but the antagonists are often the same. Our experience conducting investigations across industries and verticals enables us to recognize meaningful patterns and simplify even the most complex scenarios.
Internal factors
- Site crawlability
- URL indexability
- Page rendering
- Content quality
- User-intent cannibalization
- Brand & channel impact
External factors
- Competitive landscape
- Backlinks & referrers
- SERP changes
- User behavior & interest
- Algorithm updates
- Potential penalization
Parse SEO performance from brand & channel impact.
Identify whether this should be an SEO conversation or a larger brand and marketing conversation.
Understand the true impact to the business.
Quantify the impact of organic traffic lost on business KPIs like conversion for a true sense of urgency.
Validate issues & back hunches with data.
Get a data-backed gut-check on both issue and cause, ensuring resources go to the right work.
Take a closer look at your search landscape.
Digital Market Intelligence shows how competition and user behavior are shifting the sands of the playground.
Get answers you feel confident in, quickly.
Comprehensive can be quick — we cover all the bases and bring back answers at the speed of business.
Illuminate the issues that matter most.
Chart the path forward with a clear breakdown of which items are weighing you down most and why.
The official SEO Sherlock-ing process
01
Validate the data and confirm there’s an issue.
A big drop in traffic is a normally a problem to investigate further, but sometimes, it’s a tracking issue. An SEO investigation is the ideal opportunity to give analytics a checkup and validate there’s a story to pursue. In fact, ~15-20% of cases uncover reporting errors that result in a quick fix.
02
Find the source and determine the business impact.
Drops in traffic from brand terms versus traffic from brand-agnostic terms signal very different problems. The former is significantly important, but the latter tells us it’s a true SEO issue. By parsing them out, we discover where SEO performance is hurting business-critical metrics outside of traffic — chiefly, conversion.
03
Diagnose the most significant causes of SEO performance issues.
SEO is complex... and layered... and based on a number of factors. Some are in your control, some aren’t. Both matter. Before narrowing our focus down to any particular issue, we zoom out to leave no stone unturned. Then we zoom in on the major causes through the magnifying glass of data and SEO know-how.
04
Map insights to implementation with SEO Product Management.
Knowing discovery is a milestone on the way to recovery, we deliver clear prioritization to fuel planning and implementation. Our SEO Product Management Services can support next steps, building business cases, creating the roadmap, and guiding execution with product requirements documentation.
From the blog
Resources for the road to recovery
