It is possible you received an entire site optimization – several Google algorithm updates ago. If it has been quite a while (and in some instances, as long as last August) your site could probably use a website audit in some capacity to see if it is following the guidelines of the most recent update of Hummingbird. This is going to range from keyword density, your inbound link portfolio anchor text and diversity, length of meta information, site structure for robot crawling, and much more.
It is common for most businesses to see some sort of fluctuation in algorithm updates, even if Google proclaims that the update will only impact “2%-5%” of websites. If you notice large differences in traffic and then hear that afterwards it was a change to the Google algorithm, it is a good opportunity to pursue a site audit to see how you can improve your digital marketing efforts. There are many resources online that can do it for free, and then provide added features afterwards. They are almost always great baselines though. A few that we like are WooRank for an overall look and Open Site Explorer to take a peek at the health of your inbound links.
Of course, there’s going to be a ton of jargon in both of these reports, so unless you’re handing off to your in-house webmaster that is also well-versed with SEO, you may find yourself doing more research yourself interpreting what the data means. Ideally, SEO companies that are vying for your business will often put together some sort of site audit in layman’s terms for you to go over and understand. That being said, the experts at Market My Market put together free site audits for companies multiple times a week to help them understand where their site stands in the scheme of digital marketing. If you’d like one for your business, we would be more than happy to arrange something for you.