Site Visits And Seasonality.

Windy City

My site is coming up on its 4th month online. Over the last three weeks I have noticed a steady decline in site traffic. Since I only have around 4 months of data on Google Analytics I was wondering if someone could help me out. Have you noticed a drop the last few weeks?

Is it a holiday thing? It would be great to see four or five years of data from a decent site to really do some seasonality work. I know seasonality can vary from parts of the county. I am in Chicago. My Sister and Dad are in SW Florida. (painting and faux business) They get super busy this time of year when all the snow birds come to visit for the winter. How is it in your neck of the woods?

Any thoughts or data would be greatly appreciated. Jim

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La Grange,Il Remodeling 106 West Calendar Ct La Grange, IL 60525 Phone: 708-590-9993

Advanced Renovations

SnellExperts

Usually if you see a drop in visits that is that noticeable, then you are losing your online presence for some reason. Could be caused by a competitor beating you out in the search engines, or maybe you started off with a bang, and then as time went on you stopped posting on facebook and twitter as much etc, and now people aren't seeing your site. How are you doing as far as positioning on Google for your keywords? Are your keywords appropriate for the demographic that you are going after?

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Leah at d5R

Hi Jim. Congrats on developing such a nice-looking site. It looks as though you've done a good job integrating all your social media accounts (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc.), but I suspect that you could use these accounts better to drive traffic to your site.

Generally, I would suggest that you tweet more, be more active on Facebook, create a few simple new YouTube videos, and always link back to your site with any of these updates. You've got fantastic client testimonials, for instance. How about a daily tweet excerpting from a testimonial? Use bit.ly or some other URL shortener.

Also, do you send an eletter to your clients and community? If so, be sure to also provide plenty of links to the good content on your site.

Finally, I notice that you've got a LOT of towns in your "services area" footer. I'm not sure about this, but I believe that Google is getting wiser to what it can perceive as "keyword stuffing." Talk with your SEO team, as it's possible that listing all these areas may be hurting you as much as helping.

Good luck!
Leah

Windy City

Thanks for the response. Actually over the last few weeks I have really started to gain some traction in different markets. I feel my rankings have actually improved over the last month. This is why I'm curious about seasonality.
I am sort of assuming a correlation between the holidays and my lack of visits.....but this could be a bad assumption. Actually my conversion rate have been fantastic for the limited number of hits I'm getting.
Thanks for the well thought out response. I really do need to start posting to facebook and tweeting more. Jim

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La Grange,Il Remodeling 106 West Calendar Ct La Grange, IL 60525 Phone: 708-590-9993

Advanced Renovations

Windy City

Thanks for the kind words. I will for sure start posting to facebook and tweeting more. I have a youtube video in the works. Should be ready about this time next week. The newsletter is something I am working on as well. I don't have a huge e-mail list yet but I need to start somewhere.
The services area has been discussed and pointed out on my site many times. I am sort of afraid to just remove it entirely. It actually used to be way worse if you can believe that. I will give it some more thought.

Thanks so much for the response! Jim

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La Grange,Il Remodeling 106 West Calendar Ct La Grange, IL 60525 Phone: 708-590-9993

Advanced Renovations

JBM

Thanksgiving has always been the cutoff for the phone in masonry, and it has this year without fail as well.

MattCoops

Moms searching for discounts on iPhones and where she can still find the Barbi Dream House for sale for the holiday rather than searching for a remodeling contractor.

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

RoofmasterFlex

Very interesting topic! Our traffic starts to decrease alittle around this time of year. I imagine a lot of contractors site trafficwill slow down this time of year for the holidays.

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Godfrey Roofing Inc. | Roofing Contractors in Ottawa, Ontario
Specialties: Ottawa Roof Repairs | Ottawa Commercial Roofing

BrandConst

Thanksgiving for me as well. As for Google analytics, this is a good reference but no where close to being accurate but there are some great tools. for instance, I looked up activity thru yahoo which hosts one of my sites and then referenced Google analytics....the numbers were way low for every day on analytics as compared to my host.

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Windy City

Interesting. I never thought the Google numbers could be off. Thanks! Jim

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La Grange,Il Remodeling 106 West Calendar Ct La Grange, IL 60525 Phone: 708-590-9993

Advanced Renovations

SnellExperts

Usually towards the end of October is when we start slowing down...surprisingly though we are still getting jobs in the middle of December. I am gonna say that it has something to do with the weather because it has still been warm enough to see mold growth.

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handyman22

I would think that interest in contractors drops off in cold weather.

I would feature, on the front page of your site, the jobs that are common during cold weather. Even offer a special.

People like to see content relevant to the season. So does Googs.