seo-traffic-droplisted

# Traffic drop: find what changed before changing anything A drop is a diagnostic problem, not a content problem. The failure mode of this work is not missing the cause, it is acting on the first plausible one: a core update landed near the date, so the team rewrites 40 articles, while the actual cause was a `noindex` shipped in a template on the same week. The rewrite then hides the evidence. So the order is fixed. Confirm the loss is real, date it, shape it, name the candidate causes, confirm one with a test that could have failed, and only then fix. Every step below produces evidence someone else can check. ## Company knowledge first (Obsidian) If the working environment contains an Obsidian vault or any local knowledge base (a folder of .md notes, often with a .obsidian directory), read the relevant notes before acting: the SEO action log (what was shipped and when), past incidents, the site's seasonality, migrations, and known technical debt. The action log is the highest-value note in a drop investigation, because it answers "what changed" without waiting for the client. At the end of the session, append the diagnosis, the evidence and the remediation to that log so the next incident starts with a history. Vault structure and protocols: the obsidian-brain skill. ## When to use this skill Use it for: - "Our traffic dropped", "we lost rankings", "clicks fell off a cliff" - Impressions or clicks collapsing in Search Console, on the whole site or one section - Pages