An article that once brought you customers can gradually slip down Google’s search results. While you publish new content, traffic is disappearing from pages you’ve already invested time and money in. Start by sorting the pages that are losing traffic. Then you can spend your time improving the content that actually needs it.
This gradual decline is usually called content decay. Competitors improve their pages, information becomes outdated, and people start expecting different answers. Your article can remain exactly as it was when it ranked well, while everything around it changes. Age alone tells you very little about what needs fixing. An old explanation can still be the best answer to a question. Instructions published last month may already be useless if the tool they describe has changed.
Pages that lose traffic don’t all have the same problem. Before you start reading and editing every article, separate seasonal changes from sudden drops and gradual decline. Otherwise, your Search Console report can turn into a list of articles to rewrite before anyone has checked whether rewriting will help.
Find the pages losing traffic
In Search Console, start by comparing the last three months with the same period a year earlier. Open the Pages tab in the Performance report and sort by the biggest losses in clicks. That gives you an initial list to investigate.
Look at what happened between those comparison periods, too. Two pages may have lost the same number of clicks but followed very different paths. One has slipped a little every month. The other was stable until traffic fell last Tuesday. That should affect what you do next.
Sort the pages into three groups
Make an initial assessment before changing the content. Look at the traffic trend, the comparison period and the main queries losing clicks. You don’t need to solve every problem at this stage, but you do need enough evidence to decide what to investigate next.
Seasonality and misleading comparisons
The first group contains pages where the apparent decline may be explained by when you’re measuring. An article about Christmas gifts will naturally behave differently from a guide people find equally useful throughout the year. Even a comparison with the previous year needs checking. Holidays, campaigns and other events don’t always fall in the same place on the calendar.
Check that you’re comparing periods with similar demand. If the page maintains its position for important queries but gets fewer impressions, fewer people may be searching for the topic. Google Trends can help you investigate that.
The next step is to correct the comparison and assess the decline again. If the loss disappears when you compare suitable periods, you haven’t established a traffic problem that needs fixing through content. If the page is still performing worse, investigate further and sort it according to the pattern you actually see.
Sudden drops that need a separate diagnosis
The second group contains pages where traffic falls sharply over a short period. Start by identifying when it happened and what changed at that time. Did a competitor overtake you? Did Google start showing more ads, AI answers or videos? Did you change the page yourself?
If the decline began after you shortened the article or removed an example, compare it with the previous version. You may have removed something that made the page useful for an important group of queries. If many pages are losing traffic at the same time, broaden your investigation to include indexing, changes to the site and Google updates. Two things happening at the same time give you something to investigate, but don’t prove what caused the drop.
The next step is a separate investigation into the decline. Don’t put these pages straight into your scheduled content work. The investigation may eventually show that the content needs improving, but it could also point to a technical fix or reveal that the search results are sending fewer clicks to websites.
Gradual decline where the content has fallen behind
The third group contains pages that have gradually lost ground and where an initial comparison suggests the content has become less useful than the alternatives. The page still answers a relevant question, but its instructions have aged, important information is missing or competitors help the reader more effectively.
A downward trend isn’t enough on its own. You also need to identify a likely weakness in the content. Otherwise, you still have a diagnosis to make. Gradual decline by itself doesn’t prove that the article needs rewriting.
This is the group that goes straight into your planned content work. You now have a set of pages where there is a reason to spend time examining and improving the content. The pages in the other two groups have their own next steps.
Prioritize the pages that create value
Even among pages that need improving, you have to decide where to start. Suppose you have two articles losing traffic. One attracted plenty of curious visitors who then left the site. The other has far fewer readers, but some of them get in touch because they want to buy what you sell. Start with the one that brings you customers. You can spend an entire working week recovering traffic that never did much for the business, simply because the drop looked dramatic in a report.
Weigh the benefit against the work involved, too. An important guide with a few incorrect instructions may be straightforward to fix. A product comparison that needs original testing requires a bigger investment. Note what each page contributes, the weakness you’ve identified and what needs closer investigation. That gives you a work queue you can actually prioritize.
Find what each page is missing
When it’s time to work on a page, take a closer look at the queries behind the decline. The article may still perform well for its main topic while losing traffic from a group of more specific searches. That gives you a clearer problem to investigate than simply knowing that the article is doing worse overall.
Look at clicks, impressions, clickthrough rate and position together. If impressions remain steady but clicks fall, look at the search results themselves. The page’s average position can also mislead you. It depends on which queries the page appears for. If you start appearing low down the results for lots of new queries, your average position can worsen even though your most important rankings remain unchanged. Follow the queries that generated the traffic you’ve lost. If this closer investigation points to a different cause, change the plan.
Read the page and compare it with those now ranking above it. Do your instructions still work? Are the products you recommend still available? Do competitors have their own tests, better examples or answers to questions you leave unanswered? Look for what readers get from their pages that yours is missing. Simply noticing that their text is longer tells you very little.
If competitors have tested the products and shown what worked, while your comparison mostly repeats the manufacturers’ descriptions, you have a bigger job ahead of you. A few new product names and this year’s date won’t be enough.
Sometimes the investigation reveals that the underlying need has changed. Suppose your article explains how to calculate a particular value, but calculators now dominate the search results. That may suggest people mainly want the calculation done for them. Adding a calculator could be a useful improvement to the page. More paragraphs about the formula are unlikely to help someone who wants to enter their numbers and get an answer.
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Choose the right content action
Once you know what’s wrong, you can decide how much needs changing. Keep the parts that work and improve what’s missing or outdated. Sometimes new instructions and screenshots are enough. Other pages require you to redo much of the research or testing behind the article.
You may also discover that you’ve written almost the same article several times. I know I’ve written about title tags, H1 headings and links more times than I can count. Things were different back then. It may be worth bringing the best material together on one page and redirecting the old URLs to it. But read them first. Someone choosing a coffee machine and someone standing at home with a coffee machine that won’t turn on need different kinds of help.
Record what each page needs
| Article | What you find | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started with Search Console | The article attracts relevant visitors, but the screenshots show menus that have changed and some instructions no longer work. | Improve. Update the instructions and images. Keep the explanations that still work and retain the same URL. |
| How to choose accounting software | The guide generates inquiries, but the prices are outdated and important features are missing from the comparison. | Improve. Review the services and update the comparison so the recommendations are based on current information. |
| Choosing a coffee machine for the office and The office coffee machine buying guide | Both articles help the same readers make the same purchase decision. Each contains useful material, but much of it overlaps. | Merge. Bring the best material together at the most suitable URL and redirect the other one to it. |
| How to clean your espresso machine and Cleaning espresso machines | Two almost identical guides describe the same cleaning process. One has clearer instructions, the other better images. | Merge. Combine the instructions and images into one complete guide. Redirect the old page. |
| Win a tablet in our 2018 giveaway | The giveaway has ended. The article has no relevant traffic, inbound links or ongoing value for visitors. | Delete. There is no relevant replacement to redirect it to. |
| Weekly discount codes from January 2019 | All the codes have expired. The page has no valuable links, historical value or current equivalent. | Delete. Return a 404 or 410 status rather than sending visitors to the homepage. |
Be careful about deleting pages that get few visits. The installation guide may never attract much traffic, but for a customer sitting with parts spread across the floor, it could be the most important page on your site. Check whether other sites link to it and why. When content has outlived its usefulness, you can remove it. If there’s a relevant replacement, redirect to it, but the homepage rarely helps someone looking for a specific set of instructions.
Follow up on the queries that lost traffic
Save the old version and note what you changed and when. That way, a few months later, you won’t be trying to remember whether traffic started falling before or after you removed half the article. Follow the queries that had declined and check whether visitors are getting in touch, buying or finding the help the page is meant to provide. Allow enough time to assess the results. A few good days immediately after the update tell you very little.
Schedule the next review while the page is still fresh in your mind. Note what could become outdated and who will keep an eye on it, especially if the guide describes a tool that changes frequently. Ideally, you should spot an outdated instruction before a reader gets stuck looking for a button that no longer exists.
