The Wardman Wire

Recently I was asked for advice as to why a UK political blog could possibly lose traffic in the UK during the summer.

I ended up giving a bundle of reasons why this could have happened, and I thought it would be useful to post the list here as “things to think about”.

This is a quick list - I’ll update tomorrow with deep links to relevant articles (I can here the beer calling like a ghostly voice …. Matt, Matt, drink me Matt).

Reasons for Lost Traffic for a UK Political Blog

Change in Reporting

• It may be that they have changed their reporting approach - or tracking service. 25-30% variability could be down to such a change.

Change in the Way Domains are Reorganised

• Have they changed their domain or the way they redirect traffic? If so - did they loose links and not redirect properly?

Technical reasons

• Server trouble.

Seasonal reasons

• Is it a normal summer dip? In July/August I would not worry about a 10-15% drop. 40-60% would be worrying.
• What do their records show in previous years?

Political Reasons

• Have big referrers removed links?

Site Reasons

• Are they writing less or have they burnt out / been on holiday?
• Have they broken fewer stories?

Redesign Reasons

• Has a redesign confused the readership and people can’t find things?

Search Engine Reasons

• Has Google could slugged them? No widespread update has been done recently. A google update may be due late in July.
• Did they have a lot of new links 6 months ago that have dropped out of the Technorati numbers?

Competition Reasons

• Are people reading Blogs about Ealing and Sedgefield (have they given full coverage?)?
• Have they lost ground on some key search terms? Dropped off the front page of Google?

Banning Reasons

• Have the House of Commons or a large provider of traffic IP filtered them?

Wrapping Up

There are lots more possibilities, but these are starters for 10.

Tags: political blogging, drop in traffic; lost traffic, summer holidays, quiet season, google slugged me, technorati links, blog promotion, defogging blogging, build a better blog[tags]political blogging, drop in traffic; lost traffic, summer holidays, quiet season, google slugged me, technorati links, blog promotion, defogging blogging, build a better blog[/tags]