You once had high rankings for your website, it appeared all over the search engines, and you were getting lots of traffic which resulted in email messages, calls and text messages, leads, and revenues. Then something happened, you’re not sure what, and the leads and revenues stopped coming in. You inspect your analytical insights and notice an abrupt and noticeable drop in traffic. You’re worried now. You check your search engine ranking, and they’ve either dropped or vanished. You’re frightened at this moment, not just alarmed. What could have caused this to happen? More pertinently, what could be done to resolve the issue and restore the stream of leads and sales?
According to many top leading digital media marketing agencies, your rankings can drop for various factors. Sometimes it’s because of a blunder that could have been avoided. It could have less to do with what you’re doing and more to do with what your competitors are doing. In other contexts, a fall in rankings is the organic and momentary result of your deliberate action. Here are some possible reasons for a fall in rankings, as well as what you could do in each scenario.
1) You’re tracking the Wrong Rankings.
There’s been a transition forward into “natural language” search queries in recent times, in which people type or, progressively, speak complete sentences into search results instead of a few keywords. If you are only observing generic keywords, your keyword strategy may be out of date. Individuals searching for you are utilizing new keywords or phrases, so your keyword strategy needs to be updated.
2) The Google “dance.”
It is common for rankings to change. Not just from one day to the next, but also from one pc to another, from one destination to the next, and depending on a wide range of factors. By modifying search results, Google is constantly evaluating every parameter it can detect. This is one of the reasons why focusing too strongly on particular rankings is counterproductive. Your SEO firm may provide you with a ranking report. Still, if you inspect the rankings on your desktop, they may be distinctive merely because the document was generated on a different computer. And because the rankings have shifted since the preceding day.
3) New Website
If you develop a new layout for a current site, expect your rankings to drop, irrespective of what you’re doing to start preparing for the launch and how much stronger the new website is in SEO than the old one. Ensure an appropriate 301 redirect plan in place to mitigate the decline in rankings. We know of at least one company that went bankrupt due to that minor failure. Before re-launching the website, ensure that it is well optimized. However, expect the rankings to fall, at least momentarily. In general, rankings will regain within 1-2 months, if not much sooner.
You decided to launch a redesigned website to replace the old one, and the rankings dropped, then rapidly rebounded, even greater than before, and have now decreased significantly again. Or you recently launched a new website, but after a few weeks, it rocketed to the top of the rankings, only to drop like a stone dramatically. This is a common occurrence as well. The best approach is to be patient while investing in SEO best practices. Long-term rankings necessitate long-term effort.
4) Losing Good Links
The loss of high-quality links could cause a drop in rankings. Those websites or web pages may have vanished, or the link to your website may have been taken away. Whichever the cause, the approach is to build high-quality links regularly. And by “building,” we necessarily imply “attracting” because the best links come naturally. How do you get high-quality backlinks? By making innovative or simply great content that is compelling enough to share.
5) Bad Hosting
Hire a low-quality hosting company or one whose facility isn’t in the best location to provide fast loading for your target audiences. You may probably wind up with user behavior on your site that assures search engines that other web pages must rank higher than yours. The solution is to ensure that most of your website visitors have a quick, catchy experience by hosting the site nearer to your visitors, where possible, and paying sufficient to have your website on a server that isn’t clogged with 5,000 other sites on the internet.
6) Competitors
Rankings in search engines are a zero-sum game. If one website’s ranking enhances a specific keyword, at least one other website’s ranking must fall. This is one of the reasons why SEO services are available continuously instead of once. Even though your competitors’ websites are constantly being improved, yours will never be fully optimized. It’s a never-ending game of king of the mountain, and that the only way to take full advantage is to put in the work.
These aren’t the only factors your rankings may fall in, but they are some of the most common causes we see affecting search engine ranking and traffic. Do you see a drop in rankings for reasons other than the ones mentioned above? Let us know in the comment section.
Author Bio:
Donna Bill is an experienced SEO manager; she helps optimizing copy and landing pages for several brands. Donna’s previous experience with top-notch Dallas Search Engine Optimization Companies as an Technical SEO Expert. She is well-versed in the research and implementation of content recommendations for successful organic reach.
