Diagnose and Resolve SEO Traffic Drops

Investigates sudden drops in organic search traffic or rankings and produces a prioritized remediation plan. Rather than a general SEO audit, it runs a forensic incident-response process: triaging the incident (when the drop started, whether it was sudden or gradual, which metrics were hit - sessions, clicks, impressions, conversions - and what data sources are available, such as Google Search Console, GA4 or Matomo, server/CDN logs, and deployment history), classifying the incident into one or more of five buckets (algorithm/core update impact, technical/infrastructure failure, manual action/policy violation, content/quality reassessment, or demand/seasonality/external factors), then running a data-driven investigation: timeline reconstruction across 6-12 months to tell a step-like drop (technical issue, manual action, deployment) from a gradual slide (quality issues, competitor improvements, algorithmic re-evaluation), segment analysis by device, country, query type (branded vs non-branded), and page type, page-level impact analysis (top pages with the largest drops, new 404s, redirect and canonical changes, noindex additions), technical integrity checks (robots.txt, indexation, redirects, server errors, Core Web Vitals), and a content/E-E-A-T reassessment once technical causes are ruled out. Findings are organized as hypotheses, each with its own evidence, impact assessment, and validation test, prioritized by severity, ease of validation, and reversibility.

Use it when investigating a sudden, significant drop in organic traffic or rankings, or when there are signs of a possible penalty, core update impact, technical regression, or other SEO incident. Do not use it for a routine SEO health check or for prioritizing general SEO opportunities (use the seo-audit skill instead), and not for long-term local visibility work for legal or professional services (use the local-legal-seo-audit skill instead).

Inputs are the incident context (when the drop was noticed, whether it was sudden or gradual, which metrics moved, and whether the impact is site-wide or scoped to specific pages or sections) plus whatever data access is available: Google Search Console, web analytics (GA4, Matomo), server or CDN logs, and deployment/CI/CD or CMS release history. It also probes the 30-60 days before the drop for site redesigns, URL or migration changes, CMS or plugin updates, hosting/CDN/WAF changes, and robots.txt/sitemap/canonical/redirect edits, plus business context like seasonality, external events, or prior manual actions. Output is a structured forensic report: an executive incident summary (classification, date range and severity of impact, top 3-5 likely root causes, confidence level), evidence-based findings (each with a finding, its evidence, likely cause, impact level, and fix), and a prioritized action plan broken into critical immediate fixes (0-3 days), stabilization (3-14 days), recovery and hardening (2-8 weeks), and an ongoing monitoring plan with checkpoints for closing the incident.

Draws on Google Search Console, web analytics platforms (GA4, Matomo), server or CDN logs, and deployment/CI/CD or CMS release-note history as its data sources for the investigation.

SEO practitioners, in-house marketing teams, and technical SEO consultants responding to a traffic or ranking crash who need a structured, hypothesis-driven investigation rather than a generic audit.