If you have a hotel website the hope is that with each passing year you continue to see an increase in traffic to your site. Unfortunately, this may not always be the case. You may experience a decline in your website traffic year to year and if this is the case, there are a number of things that should be checked that can help determine why the decrease occurred.
Website Traffic Drop Checklist
We’ve put together a list for you of common causes for your hotel website traffic to drop. See if any of these affected your YOY traffic.
Google Knowledge Graph
- Perhaps one of the greatest traffic drivers for a hotel website is the Google Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph provides pertinent information about a hotel, as well as a direct link to its website. If your website is not properly linked to the Google Knowledge Graph you can guarantee your traffic will decline. The Google Knowledge Graph is highly visited, so you’ll want to make sure it’s taking users to the right place.
Historical Events
- How have events in your market differed from year to year? Historical events, like the Pope’s visit to the United States, will increase hotel searches and drive more traffic. However, if your market is not experiencing the same high profile events the following year, then you could potentially see the volume of hotel searches and website visits go down.
Referral Traffic
- Are you still linked to the same quality referring websites? Referral traffic may not be the same year to year if you’ve stopped advertising on certain sites or if 3rd party sites sites have dropped you from their listings. In addition, sometimes 3rd party websites go through changes that may affect how traffic to your site is recorded. For example, if they change their page formatting to accordion style, Google will most likely not record the traffic being sent to your site because the search engines have difficulty reading the content on accordion style pages. Be cognizant of the referrers sending traffic to your site. Periodically, check their websites for any changes that could be affecting your traffic.
