can fix your stagnant B2B website with these top SEO tips.

You may have noticed that the organic traffic to a site fluctuates over time. Even the most authoritative websites will see older pages with a drop in traffic.

The recent algorithm updates may have caused your site to experience more instability (and possibly even a long-term flattening) than in previous years.

This article will walk you through the steps to reverse organic traffic declines or grow your B2B website again if it has plateaued.

Analyzing organic traffic drop

It’s crucial to first understand why your traffic is dropping. Here is an article which goes in depth about how to determine what the real cause of a traffic decline (or flattening), may be.

• Loss of rank as a result of algorithm updates.
• Drop in impressions as a result of changes in the search results. (Ads and features such as featured snippets or people asking, etc.) ).
• Drop in click-through rates due to a combination of the reasons above.

You’ll also want to look deeper to find out which pages are problematic. Determine the time period you’re interested in:

• Note the high of the last year and the direction in which the decline is going.
• Note the time period when traffic plateaued.

You can then compare dates using the following:

• The period in which traffic decreased compared to the previous period.
• If there is a drop, the low will be compared to the previous high.
• If traffic is flat, compare the last 28 days of traffic growth to the 28-day block that traffic has been stagnant.

Be aware of seasonality, and the day-of-week difference that could make your comparisons apples to oranges.

You can begin to identify the pages with the lowest traffic once you have selected the date ranges that you wish to compare. This can be done in Google Search Console, by clicking the date.

Select the dates you wish to compare, and then select compare.

You can click on pages, sorting the data based on click differences, to find pages that are losing traffic. (Even if your traffic is flat, there will likely be pages that lost traffic. On an older website with lots of traffic, that’s likely where you “traffic leak” comes from.)

What has changed?

You can help each page see a traffic increase by taking a few steps.

Understanding why is the first step. To do this, you need to:

• Identify terms that are losing traffic on a web page.
• Look at the SERP.

You can sort the queries by clicking difference, just as you did with top pages, from your list of the pages that have the largest page drop.

Then, you can go back and look at those search results where you lost traffic. Some things are true:

• Rankings may include more authoritative sites.
• Google’s perception of search intent may have changed. For example, your guide on restaurant marketing may have ranked, but many results now are “restaurant marketing” lists. Your page may no longer be a good fit for this intent.
• Your page may have ranked well in the past, but now you will see more specific guides ranking where yours used to. (For example, your restaurant marketing guide ranked highly for Google Ads campaigns targeting restaurants. Now, however, there are many guides covering that topic only).
• Your intent may be perfect, but your content may not be. It may be that there are now a lot of pages about the same subject, and it may not be as good as before.

This is an excellent starting point, as it will give you a clear idea of what you should prioritize when updating content. Here’s a good way to go about it:

• Export the pages with the least traffic (ideally, looking at different angles and date ranges).
• Note the traffic drop, the queries that were affected and what you discovered when you examined the SERPs (why did you see a drop on your pages)

You can now prioritize them based on the pages that experienced the largest drops.

If you see a drop in traffic for a particular type of content, it is important to update the pages that drive a lot, even if those pages have not been hit yet.

is likely to happen if they have similar content and age.

You should have a system for Prioritization and Repeatable Cadence when updating older content.

B2B assets are dropping

Traffic drops are not a B2B-specific function, but certain B2B assets tend to be more vulnerable.

Technical and industry-specific terms

These are often pages that have not been updated for a while, or terms you created content around in the past, but other sites have more recent, comprehensive assets.

Recurring reports

When you publish an “State of X”, or industry survey, these are assets that will often lose value over time.

When the asset is created, they are often ranked for a particular category or set of terms.

Over time, some sites will create more specific content, which speaks to granular words, or the search intent of the category term may change (i.e. a what is X? page replaces a report on the state of X).

Terms for software or tools

Here, again, assets such as buying guides could be replaced by best-of lists due to the searcher’s intent.

Update your content to regain lost traffic with these 6 simple steps

You can address the traffic drop by taking specific actions once you have identified which pages are losing content.

1. Search for addresses

Search results are the first place to start when updating content.

The screenshot below shows the results of a search using the Ahrefs Google Chrome extension.

These sites are authoritative, and they have a variety of content (a list with ideas, a guide on how to market a restaurant, and a list with strategies).

You will also find additional formats for lists as you scroll down:

Consider reworking the post in order to make it more aligned with the current ranking, or creating a new asset with a similar focus that targets this keyword.

2. Answers more quickly

Before answering the main question, you should pull up the three paragraphs that explain what a restaurant turnover rate is and the history of it. This will help the reader quickly find the information they are looking for.

You can also use ChatGPT to get featured snippets .

3. Update information and links

Update broken links and refresh any outdated post information. This is a simple way to update old content.

4. Add multimedia and relevant sub-sections

Update content by looking for related topics and answering questions that people ask, using tools such as Ahrefs and Also Asked. You can also update your content by updating topics that other pages have not covered.

Consider creating new sections to answer the queries that are losing traffic.

These updates also provide a wonderful opportunity to introduce

• Images that are more relevant (such as charts/graphs and other useful visuals to enhance your post, improve engagement metrics).
• Embed relevant video (either your own video or a video created by another person)
• Embed relevant social media content (even B2B content will often have content on platforms such as LinkedIn or Twitter which will be relevant, and make your content more dynamic and fresh).

5. Add FAQs

A FAQ section is a great tool to answer questions that you’d like to address. Using FAQ schema will also increase click-through rates.

You can now take advantage of some extra SERP real estate.

6. Add internal Links

Internal links are often overlooked in a page or post that has lost its popularity over time.

You can find some internal linking targets for your page by doing a quick search on your site for the domain name and target term.

Addressing time stamps

It is a good idea to address the time stamps of your pages, especially in niches that are technical or B2B where information can quickly become outdated. You can use this tactic when you are dealing with a lot of turnover, such as models and standards for equipment or regulations.

We’ve noticed that switching from publish dates to time-stamps for the last update on blog posts, and being aware of what date-based data you expose on your page can have an impact on organic traffic.

Update title tags

Searching the SERPs for title tags and thinking about the query intention can make a big difference.

It can be especially effective on older posts, if you’ve noticed that the click-through rates for a particular content type have dwindled or stagnated.

can also use ChatGPT to help you rewrite title tags.

Topical authority

Google has recently published a post about a system that assigns topic authority.

To combat the decay of specific posts, you can create more content to support them. You could also develop a topic cluster that is more comprehensive and includes more supporting content.

You can highlight entities within your content using the schema by using the about and mention tags. (Read more about this in This Article).

You may also consider removing content of lower quality (but proceed with caution, and don’t delete content that is helping you).

Technical and content audit

Remember that this is all assuming you do not have any major issues such as manual penalties, toxic links, crippling tech issues, or obvious content issues.

If you notice a site-wide drop of 50% or more, you should consider a technical audit and/or content audit instead of what has been described above.

The post Top SEO Tips for Stuck B2B Sites appeared initially on Search Engineland.