Organic Traffic Down? Try Writing for People, Not Search Engines

The topic of this month’s video training inside Fearless Bloggers Pro, our community and membership for bloggers, was about seeing a drop in traffic. I shared many industry updates with them and just what the current state of the blogging space is and where things are going. I also shared my traffic numbers, what I discovered after analyzing why my traffic went down, and my action plan from here on to bring it back. Why Your Organic Traffic Went Down Now, there are many reasons why your organic traffic – the one coming from search engines – may have dropped significantly. This and last year the most common one is a recent search algorithm update. It could also be a manual penalty, tracking problems with your site, changes in the SERP layout, issue with website crawling and indexation, lost backlinks, an overall decrease in your content quality, the use of AI content, seasonality, outdated content and lack of any new content, and so on. But usually, if you haven’t done anything wrong, anything against Google’s guidelines, and if you’ve had good traffic for a long time now and kept doing the same things as a blogger, but see a sudden drop in traffic, it’s changes with Google. Seems like they aren’t favouring small publishers anymore and I hear bloggers from all niches and at all levels, complaining about it, being disappointed in Google and not relying on it anymore, and looking for alternatives to organic traffic. Things aren’t easy in the blogging space right now, and the way we optimize our content is changing too. On-page SEO is changing, the rules of the game are just different now that AI is dominating the search results and there’s so much low-quality content out there. What do we do? The usual tips apply: * Create quality content consistently; * Stay up to date with the latest Google algorithm updates; * Follow Google’s guidelines for creating helpful content; * Publish unique content only; * Go back to old content and update it; * Check Google Search Console for errors in indexing; * Improve the user experience on your site; * Improve page speed; * Have a good WordPress theme, and overall design of your site; * Use only quality plugins, and don’t overdo it. Only keep the ones you need; * Diversify your traffic sources by building a presence on other platforms; * Grow your brand. Improving your site’s reputation now is also about branding, not just content or traffic. By becoming an authority in your niche, you gain trust with both readers and search engines. But ultimately, there’s one tip that comes before anything else. One practice that becomes more crucial and necessary than ever before in the online space… Writing for people, not for search engines Now, you might be thinking: ‘But, Lidiya,