Google Traffic Decline

Question

Below is a chart which shows traffic from Google for a new website. What could be the reason for those dynamics: fast growth and slow decline?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xmv3kd3q0l2iyaa/traffic.png

Answer 1

That's not fast growth, it's a spike. (Though note you're providing no context.)
You probably got a link from a couple of sites that sent a bunch of quick traffic your way, their readers stopped by for a look, and most of them didn't come back.

Chop off those two highest points, which represent all of two weeks(probably two days) over ~5 months, and the graph is much more even.

Answer 2

What is the subject matter of your website?
What are the search terms that bring people to your site, and how have they changed over the period in question?
I see that you are higher on weekdays, indicating that the site is more relevant to work life than home life, so lets assume your website supplies sprockets. Have people stopped searching for "Dave's Sprockets" (you) or are they simply no longer finding you when searching for "sprocket supplier"? If the former, then it would suggest your marketing is waning. If the latter, then your site needs to be improved so that you rise up the search rankings. Consider including pages on each of the sprockets you supply and how happy existing customers are (or whatever).

On the other hand, the decline could simply be seasonal variation. If, for example, it's related to some corporate event which happens around late May, then an annual growth-decline pattern is to be expected. Also, most websites experience declines in August due to northern hemisphere vacations. Everyone's on the beach instead of sat at their computers.

Answer 3

I see this often with new websites (although less common over the past 2 or 3 years) - at one point, it appeared that when you completed a new site and got it live it would rank fairly well and after a while, it would disappear and then eventually settle out. This is not a million miles away from the Google Sandbox although does differ in some areas.

Further investigation also revealed that a lot of this traffic is bots - trying to get everything entered on their records (whether it's spiders for engines, chaching websites or just people crawling new websites to collect phone numbers/emails etc).

I'm convinced that (and I cannot prove this - it's just what experience suggests) after Google indexes a chain of events occur (such as those already mentioned) and this is why the bot count is so high.

However, there is also no reason why the following hasn't occured

1) Your website has changed with a negative SEO result 2) A competitor(s) website(s) have changed, performing better than yours, moving above your site in the rankings for various keywords, therefore meaning less people click your website.

I mention this for fullness only (I know it's not part of the question) but remember, SEO is not just about how well you've SEO'd your website, it's also about how well the competition are doing!