Has your ecommerce sales declined due to Google updates or the recession?

There are two very distinct reasons why the vast majority of ecommerce websites sales have declined over the last 18 months and its easy to blame the wrong candidate.

If you use Google analytics then it’s easy to see if your rankings have dropped in the search engines and you can identify the correct candidate but if you don’t then how do you know which one is to blame?

If your traffic has dropped its crucial not to just blame Google or the recession, look at the data because your solution will differ depending on the answer.

If your pages rank lower than they used to and you no longer hit page one for some key phrases then chances are you got hit with one of Google’s updates over the last year or so and you need some search engine optimisation. The problem comes in when you don’t know how you used to rank or for what terms. Changes could be subtle, if your product pages have dropped from number 3 to number 6 on page one you will see a huge reduction in website traffic.

If your pages still rank very high and your product pages are still where they where then unfortunately it’s the recession. There is nothing I can change about that so what you need to do is find new areas to gain relevant traffic from. This can be done by looking at; new keywords, social networking, PPC, offline marketing or just optimising your website to rank a little higher for the product pages. Ranking number 1 or 2 will see far more traffic than ranking number 3 or 4.

If you don’t analyse your website then start today as it could help you answer difficult questions in the future and help you make the correct decision.