All through the Whoville, everyone is preparing for their Christmas celebrations, all the while, the grinch is devising an evil, and most sinister plan to ruin the holiday for the Whos! 

While he was wallowing in self-pity at 4:00 p.m., as a marketer during the holiday season, now is not the time to solve world hunger and tell no one. (Or your website traffic!)  It is also not the time to notice a change or decrease in strategies without telling anyone! 

The Grinch stole Christmas for the Whos, and while it created panic and chaos, it taught them a very valuable lesson about the meaning behind the holiday. The same can go for your marketing strategy. 

This is how the grinch can steal your website traffic this holiday season! 

1. Understanding your baseline

How will you know the Grinch stole your website traffic or the Whoville family left you a present without understanding your baseline? Companies can find a drop in their website traffic during the Christmas and holiday season up to 17 percent! While industries that are selling holiday decorations or products will see an increase in their website traffic, the same could be said for your company this holiday season, but without a baseline understanding, you will be wallowing in self-pity come dinner time. 

While consumers' online behavior has changed during this past year, what trends did you notice throughout the change in the beginning, middle and current COVID-19 pandemic? Did you increase in the beginning, level out and then what? Increase or decrease again?  This is how the Grinch can steal your website traffic! 

2. Actively review everything

A few questions to ask every day include: Is your scheduling software connected properly? How are ads running? Basically, how is everything going? While that advertisement was set and was running fine, make sure to double check it, whether it be a pay per click ad or a social media advertisement. 

This is because, more often than not, when an ad just “runs” the course, you can find yourself paying more, but not seeing the needed results. At the same time, was there accidentally a mistake that went out? This can hurt any website traffic, landing pages and even lead generation.

3. Spammy backlinks 

This happens more often than clients or companies even realize. This is because a company that is spammy can grab your backlinks from search engines, and while you can’t do anything about it at first, you can disavow them once you realize this is happening. This is a way that website traffic can be stolen in its own way because the website traffic can be misleading or not the right audience. 

A dramatic uptick in website traffic could indicate that there are some of these practices going on, but that is not always the case. This is why you should review website traffic or review organic keywords and search in any marketing tools as often as possible. 

4. An old outdated website 

An old, outdated website is basically giving the Grinch the ornaments off the Christmas tree. How is this possible? This is because a website should be mobile-friendly, responsive, SEO optimized and all of the other things that a modern, new website will have in place! Google prioritizes websites that have their Google Development Guidelines in place no matter if it is a custom website or a WordPress template. 

Stop giving the Grinch your valuable website traffic and metrics without even realizing that your company is doing this! If you need help analyzing your website data, increasing traffic, or creating a marketing strategy, contact us today!