Google's John Mueller told one website owner on Twitter., and I quote, "I would not assume traffic changes are indicative of technical issues - it's easy to spend a lot of time "fixing" technical things when the problem is elsewhere."
That is not a great thing to hear. That means, John probably took a look at your site, and the technical changes you think are causing your site ranking issues are not your issue. Instead, the issue is likely the quality of the content and the overall site. And site quality issues are much harder and long term to improve than simply making some technical changes to your website.
Here is that tweet:
I would not assume traffic changes are indicative of technical issues - it's easy to spend a lot of time "fixing" technical things when the problem is elsewhere.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) May 28, 2021
He also said this in this past SEO hangout video:
If you see a sudden decline in traffic, in most cases this is not likely to be due to a technical issue. https://t.co/HgqKtK2Nqy #GoogleHelpHangout pic.twitter.com/wTkKbdCGej
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) May 31, 2021
And if John did not look at the site and just passed along this advice in a generic fashion, then that can be a bigger concern for most sites concerned about traffic changes from Google Search. Maybe, just maybe, most issues with rankings are not technical in nature but more quality in nature? John Mueller has been handing out the "check quality over technical issues" thing for some time now.
What percentage of sites that you work on have quality versus technical SEO issues?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
