This can be every SEOs horror story: Your website’s search rankings dropped, and your number of website visitors is dwindling.
What to do next?
Well, you need to remind yourself that site fluctuations are inevitable. Google’s algorithm changes regularly.
So, if you see your rankings dive, don’t panic.
A proactive, careful troubleshooting will help you rescue your rankings and get things going on the right path. That said, here are 11 helpful tips you need to do when your search rankings have dropped:
1. Don’t Panic
As we said, the first thing you need to do is stay calm. That’s because these are a part of SEO.
Check first if your ranking tracking app has issues or whether Google is tuning their ranking algorithm.
You can then recheck it the next day so that you can see whether or not things have gone back to normal.
2. Analyze And Confirm The Drop
Before doing something that will help raise your rankings, track and analyze it first. You can do it daily yourself or expect a regular report from an agency as part of their SEO services in India.
You also need to track your rankings daily because Google makes approximately 3,200 algorithm changes every year. That’s about eight algorithm changes per day. So, you don’t have much choice here but to track your rankings regularly.
You can also check your web analytics or Google Search Console to help verify your rankings on Google and see if your organic traffic did drop.
3. Check Search Console For A Manual Penalty
In the same way, you might also raise Google’s ire without intending to do so.
If you start to see your rankings drop for no reason at all, then it’s maybe because manual action was taken against your site or for specific web pages.
The reason is that you might have done something unknowingly (which has caused the drop in rankings, or a mistake happened. Regardless of the reason, you need to correct this mistake as soon as you can.
To help you verify manual action, get alerts when there are any issues, and notify Google once you fixed the problem, you can use Google Search Console.
4. Check For Errors Or Warnings
How does Google crawl your site, are there any penalties or errors?
Usually, Google will notify you automatically about crawl errors when bots crawl your site. It will also let you know about the manual actions done by their human reviewers in case some of your site pages are flagged.
Usually, this is pretty specific information. So, it’s helpful that you check for errors or warnings so that you can deal with them once they arise.
5. Check Your Backlink Profile
Many factors can significantly impact your Google rankings, and the largest is the quality of links that point back to your site.
Acquiring backlinks take time. Thus, we suggest checking your backlink profile if it’s healthy while developing new ones.
You can also opt to hire a local link building company that can do it for you. There are also SEO companies that provide such services.
So if you are based in India, try searching for “SEO packages India” to filter local marketing companies that provide link building.
6. Enhance User Experience
While it can be easy to blame broken backlinks or changing algorithms, keep in mind that your site’s user experience is also crucial. It can impact your website’s usability, which can make or break its search engine ranking.
Let’s say that your site isn’t responsive or mobile-friendly. Or you have slow-loading pages.
You’ll only experience higher bounce rates, which can cost your valuable customers in the long-run.
Meaning, a great user experience in your site comes with several benefits.
7. Check For Possible Malware
Another reason why your site rankings have dropped is that it was hacked or infected by malware.
Usually, search engines would place a warning next to the organic listing of your site. The notice would say, “This site may harm your computer.”
Now, seeing this would keep most users from ever visiting your site.
Most internet browsers today have their inbuilt malware and phishing protection. That way, when search engines aren’t able to warn searchers, their browser will.
To check for possible malware issues, go to GWT and click Dashboard > Diagnostics > Malware.
8. Produce High-Quality Content
Having many pages on your site that provide irrelevant or unmeaningful content can trigger a thin content penalty.
Usually, such content belongs to a category. It is loaded with links, a couple of text lines, or other pages that don’t offer a lot of value in terms of content.
These types of low-quality content should be scrapped and replaced.
Apart from that, updating your content provides you with an opportunity to do conduct further keyword research. That way, you can incorporate better-performing keywords and make your content timely.
Just see to it that you stay away from keyword stuffing practices that Google usually frowns on.
9. Understand The Search Trends
Whenever traffic drops, we tend always to blame it on the site, but this doesn’t usually work this way. Likely, the search volume for specific keywords is down.
So, ask yourself, did the latest search trends change? Most probably, keywords that you’re previously using aren’t famous anymore.
Let’s say that your content is seasonal and depends on a specific time of the year and events, and then your traffic will depend on these dates.
To know why this traffic drop, you can head to Google trends to check for these keywords.
10. Do A Competitive Analysis
If you’re the only company in a specific niche or industry, it usually doesn’t matter how many backlinks you have and what content you produce.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen that way. The competition to get noticed online (whatever industry you’re in) is fierce.
What we mean is, your Google rankings don’t often exist in a bubble.
You’re often competing with other sites out there, so you need to understand how you can measure up to them.
That’s why an essential part of your SEO strategy is competitive analysis.
Once you identified what your competitors are doing right, consider doing the same for your website. That way, you can improve your ranking.
11. Research Google’s Ever-Changing Algorithms
Everyone dreads changing algorithms. When you think that you got your SEO strategy right and start receiving the rewards, Google blindsides you again with an algorithm shift.
Doing so can outright diminish or even destroy your entire SEO strategy. As we mentioned earlier, Google is continually tinkering with its algorithms.
So, between these huge updates, it doesn’t hurt that you try to keep up with the small changes. That way, you can quickly deal with these dwindling rankings.
Over To You
Rankings do drop. That’s how it is in the world of SEO.
That’s why you must keep your cool and thoroughly investigate the reasons that caused the drop. This is where having a “rank recover process” could come in handy.
But more importantly, you should monitor your website’s search engine regularly. This includes checking the number of organic traffic and conversions that your website is making.
Lastly, always keep yourself abreast of Google algorithm changes. That way, you can be proactive in improving your search rankings.
