Websites are made to be visited. However, visits can mean different things for different sites. From website creation to optimization, the primary reason is to direct the maximum number of website visitors and convert those visitors into direct sales or leads. Whether you are a small-scale business owner or a well-established entrepreneur, growth is necessary for every kind of business. In simpler words, the more people will know about your brand, its products and services, the more they will end up using it. This in turn will generate ROI (Return on Investment) for your brand.

So, what should one do if their local search ranking and results are in a state of decline? The first thing you need to do is take a break, step back and assess why your website traffic has decreased. Whether it’s a quarterly trend or has decreased over a year or month, a drop in the local search ranking isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, if dealt with in the right way, it can increase your profits significantly.

Read on to learn about the four most common reasons of why your local search numbers are in decline:

1.   Disruption in the Market

In the digital market, we rarely see disruptions that would cause noticeable and drastic decreases year over year or month or month. However, recently there has been a significant change in the criteria and algorithm of selecting the local search websites by the Local Service Ads. Otherwise, known as Google Guaranteed Ads, this upgraded format that has not only pushed local search further down the page but has also changed the search result layout.  This has caused a decrease in the traditional local search exposure metrics, it isn’t all inherently negative as this disruption has increased in phone calls- leads!

2.   Seasonality: The Search Volume You Are Used to Isn’t There

In most cases, a yearly evaluation can determine the effectiveness of a local search strategy. But what if there’s a decrease? So, if you have neither changed your service offering nor moved to a new location and still see a visible decline in the local search ranking, the chances are that you are falling behind the trends. Therefore, keep track of the digital marketing trends and advertise your products and services accordingly.

3.   You Have Recently Optimized Your Business Listing

Though this might seem counter-intuitive, optimizing your local search listing can result in decreasing interaction data and traditional visibility. However, the local search decrease is a good thing when it comes to the bigger picture. This means that your optimization is working, and note that to reach out the relevant audience, Google needs to weed out a lot of bad views or impressions.

Here is Google’s advice on improving your local search ranking!

4.   Your Business Has Moved

When it comes to optimizing your brand’s local search, its physical location is the most important piece of information that Bing, Google and other search engines use to rank your website. From the local search perspective, the longer your business is in one location, the higher the chances of growth. This helps in building trust and ensures that your potential customers know exactly where to find you.

On the flip side, when your business moves, the local search engine now has to re-learn everything from a new perspective. The time-consuming process can have a drastic impact on your conversion rate.

Wrapping It Up!

Is your website’s ranking plummeting, or is it losing traffic? Make a note of the fact that digital marketing is not linear. There will be downward trends and upward trends; what’s important is that you remember and focus only on your business’s long-term growth. The key to this is by identifying the reason for your local search’s downfall and adjusting your marketing strategy accordingly.