Older site has been loosing traffic over the past year, not sure why

[cdoyle]

Hey There,
Our site
http://www.caraudiocentral.net

has been online since about 2001, and has been always getting steady traffic. Up until about this year, it's really dropped off. I know that Car Audio isn't as popular as it used to be, but I think there is something else going on.

Does anyone see anything obvious by looking at the site, as to why it's been dropping?

Thanks!
Chris

[RichieBoy67]

I have not followed your link but one thing that has changed is Google's algo rhythms. If you have not kept up with these changes then this could be a big reason for traffic to slack off.

In addition social sites are very large these days and many forums have to compete with them or join them.

[setishock]

Have to keep in mind the economy is in the toilet. With the law in effect that US citizens have to sign up for health care, money is being diverted to that.
Hopefully the next idiot in the white house repeals the law and we can get back to pissing our money away like we want to.

[Max Taxable]

Did this happen to coincide with your upgrade to vBulletin 4?

[webmastersun]

Originally Posted by cdoyle

Hey There,
Our site
http://www.caraudiocentral.net

has been online since about 2001, and has been always getting steady traffic. Up until about this year, it's really dropped off. I know that Car Audio isn't as popular as it used to be, but I think there is something else going on.

Does anyone see anything obvious by looking at the site, as to why it's been dropping?

Thanks!
Chris

I can show you some reasons why your website decreased traffic
- Content site is not really good
- Poor website layouts and design
- Google update more search algorithms, rankings changed
- You didn't do SEO for it, your didn't target keywords to get them into top 10 google.

Just my thoughts, hope it's useful to you!

[nhawk]

Keywords and Google don't go together. Google ignores keywords. This has been known for years....

Q: Does Google ever use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking?
A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that's an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don't have any effect in our search ranking at present.

Q: Why doesn't Google use the keywords meta tag?
A: About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called "off-page" factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.

Q: Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags?
A: No, Google does support several other meta tags. This meta tags page documents more info on several meta tags that we do use. For example, we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets, as this screen shot shows:

Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?
A: It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.

[cdoyle]

Originally Posted by Max Taxable

Did this happen to coincide with your upgrade to vBulletin 4?

No we've been on VB4 for quite awhile, the drop has been within the last year.

--------------- Added [DATE]1387820949[/DATE] at [TIME]1387820949[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by webmastersun

I can show you some reasons why your website decreased traffic
- Content site is not really good
- Poor website layouts and design
- Google update more search algorithms, rankings changed
- You didn't do SEO for it, your didn't target keywords to get them into top 10 google.

Just my thoughts, hope it's useful to you!

What do you mean content site is not really good? Not sure what that means?
what part of the layout is not good?
I've struggled with SEO for a forum, how do I do a better job at SEO when most content is supplied by our users?

[BBNZowner]

I think they're referring to using the default theme, which some people have an issue with as they take it to imply you're not even trying to stand out from the rest. Personally I don't think its the end of the world, as your member base may not really care about that stuff, but car related forums are pretty easy to deck out with some custom graphics to make them a little bit more memorable.

The way your forums are arranged could do with some work. For example, your 'Forum Rules' 'Forum News' and 'Second Stop' could be put into their own 'Welcome to' or 'Community Announcements' category to separate them from the general forums below. The other forum categories etc seem to be working as they are so they don't really need to be changed.

The navigation tabs also could be organised better, i.e. removing home and replacing it with the 'Whats New' tab, or vice versa. Having both seems a little bit uneccessary. That and the Maf|a Life tab seems a little out of place but if it gets a reasonable amount of traffic leave it as is.

But then again, these aren't about gaining new traffic so much as maintaining who you do have. Getting people to your site requires promotion and google to assist you with that. When I googled 'car audio forum' yours was not on the first page, which many people do not navigate past when searching. None of the top ones were even hugely special in what they offered so offering something they don't have would be a bonus, too.