“You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch…You’re a vile one…” While you might not feel as passionate as that about missing site traffic, there is a small Who searching for your help! Whether that be your clients or for internal marketing companies their boss, don’t let the Grinch sneak up on you this year. 

These are the four most common black hat strategies that other companies and websites utilize to do this! 

1. Understanding your baseline

How will you know the Grinch stole your site 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. 

Source: Google Trends “Christmas decor”

2. The wrong keywords 

In the industry, keywords are one of the most important factors to bring in qualified website traffic. This is because the research that is based on the company’s target audience is what brings in the traffic, if the traffic is a bit off, then the website traffic will be skewed and the Grinch is taking a bulb off your analytics one at a time! 

If you are selling homeowner insurance, and the potential customers are asking if you are an agent, that is the first definite sign that your strategy is completely off. 

With this in mind, this is a behind the scenes way that the Grinch can be stealing site traffic! 

3. Spammy backlinks 

“A new backlink! Success!” Yes, there are times that this is one of the most successful points of the SEO strategy because links are coming in and out, but sometimes, that new link can be more detrimental than we realize. While this process is so important, the wrong backlinks to your website can start to negatively impact your overall strategy. 

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. 

On the other hand, if your company has hired an SEO agency that has left you questioning their strategies a time or two, this could be the start of low quality backlinks that are being implemented by the thousands to quickly rank the site. 

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 site 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 mask and letting him run crazy in the Whoville. 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 site traffic and metrics without even realizing that your company is doing this!