Just when I thought the decline in traffic to my site was slowing down, there was another percentage significant drop throughout December, and I don’t even need to zoom out to see it. It is clear as daylight.
I’ve given up trying to stay up to date with what Google is doing and any updates to their search algorithm that may be going on, I just try and focus on my site, and creating good content, with a personal touch, that people should find useful. But whatever I am doing isn’t making a difference so far.
Overall, both traffic and revenue were significantly down in December. This is disturbing because December should be the best month of the year in many cases.
Keep reading for more detailed breakdowns and screenshots looking at traffic and revenue.
Site Recap
The site is in the ‘Entertainment’ niche – established in January 2021. Monetized with Ezoic advertising.
Approx 350k words of content over 300+ posts.
See full site history, content publishing breakdown, and traffic history here.
December Statistics
When I saw the November stats, I took a small amount of relief that perhaps the bleeding had stopped.
The relief quickly turned into further disappointment when the next month’s statistics came through. Though clicks and compressions did not drop by half, it wasn’t much better than that, unfortunately.
Putting aside the disappointment, I have been trying to analyze the content that has dropped away in traffic, look for themes and reasons why, and look for content that has remained in the SERP’s and look for reasons why, but I seriously cannot find any logical connection or pattern explaining why. Some content that I rate highly is now usurped by garbage and dated forum posts that aren’t even helpful, while other content that is thin, unhelpful, and full of stock photos, is still holding on.
I seriously do not know how to think about web publishing anymore.
From a revenue point of view, things were dire because of both the traffic and EPMV.
I was expecting December EPMVs to peak, but they went in the opposite direction, in line with the falling traffic.
Comparison to the Ezoic Ad Revenue Index
I wanted to benchmark my personal EPMV performance with other publishers, so used the Ezoic Ad Revenue Index to check.
The end-November spikes helped me in previous months, but the baseline average looked similar before the notable drop we have coming for January.
Comparing my site against the industry average, I’m guessing most site owners would see a decrease in December EPMVs.
I’m sure it contributed to my EPMV drop, but the declines in traffic I saw further accelerated the decline.
On top of the decline in EPMV and traffic, the small affiliate commissions I was attracting have also gone to nearly zero.
January Activity
I’m wary of putting effort into something that will not yield a result.
I understand that in some ways, you can never have a guaranteed outcome in this entrepreneurial space, but I don’t even have a logical hypothesis about what should work, and why.
Until I do I’m very cautious about what to allocate my time and resources to.
I plan to continue heavily working on the content that I have this IS getting traffic. Though Google could take it away at any moment, at least for the time being, there is some indication that the algorithm thinks that the content provides some value to the reader.
Aside from optimizing existing content, I’ll keep networking with other site owners to see what other people are having success with.
I might need to seriously consider more aggressive link-building. Though Google says it won’t have an impact the sites that keep performing, seem to have health link profiles, and many that I know of do participate in active ongoing link attraction campaigns.
January will be very interesting, to say the least.
