Website owners and digital marketers are aware of the ongoing struggle of preserving and enhancing keyword ranks because the field of search engine optimization (SEO) is always evolving. The rapid decline in keyword rankings, however, is one of this endeavor’s most aggravating setbacks. Websites that had previously ranked highly on search engine results pages (SERPs) are now abruptly falling, which is confusing and worrying.
Algorithm updates, technological problems, content modifications, and competition are some of the causes of these abrupt keyword ranking decreases. For developing successful tactics to recover and reclaim lost ranks, it is vital to comprehend these causes. In this post, we’ll go into the specifics of these causes, clarify their ramifications, and examine the steps that may be taken to lessen the effects of unexpected declines in keyword rankings.
CAUSES AND SOLUTIONS
To determine the impact of a website’s ranking decline, SEO services employ data from rank tracking programs, web analytics, Google Search Console, and several SEO tools. The best SEO Company in India would also look into the potential causes of the reduction in website ranking before suggesting solutions.
RECENT WEBSITE CHANGES:
Large modifications to a website frequently result in a decline in ranking. You’ll notice significant changes in your rankings if you’ve moved a lot of pages, launched a (responsive) redesign, or changed a lot of the content on your website. This is normal, and the only reason you should be concerned is if your rankings don’t improve.
- Technical changes
Check again to make sure search engines are still indexing and crawling your website in the same way they were. Look over the HTTP headers as here are where canonical URLs, hreflang definitions, and robot directives can all be defined. We strongly advise automatically monitoring site modifications throughout the board. Investigate further to see if the technical changes you’ve discovered are connected to the ranking decline you’re experiencing.
- Internal link structure changes
When it comes to the homepage, other authoritative pages, the sidebar, and the footer, modifications to the website’s internal link structure can significantly affect the SEO performance of your pages.
You frequently notice a significant change in the internal link structure, especially after a redesign has been implemented, so pay attention to that.
- Content changes
Content modifications significantly affect your results since search engines utilize content to estimate the relevance of search queries. Additionally, deleted pages have a greater effect. Crawl your website and look specifically for changes in the title, meta description, headings, etc. to double-check whether your content has changed.
TECHNICAL ISSUES:
Your rankings may be impacted if Google has been having technical difficulties crawling and indexing your website. Here are a few technical problems that could result in an unexpected decline in the ranking along with potential fixes.
- Crawl anomalies
Google is not getting the data it requested due to crawl abnormalities. They won’t be able to index and rank your material if they don’t succeed in this phase. The crawl rate for particular pages or the entire domain decreases as rankings decline. It’s easy to determine whether something is a devaluation or anything else by analyzing log files. Additionally, you can better pinpoint the time that rankings may have decreased and connect it to website modifications or other changes.
- Blocking Googlebot
Remember that practically all of Google’s crawl activity originates from the United States, thus if you actively prevented Google from crawling your website, your pages would soon be deindexed. Visit your site while using a VPN with an American server. If everything goes well, repeat the process but set Googlebot as your user-agent as well.
- Load time
Have the load times for the pages impacted by the ranking decline greatly increased?
- Check out your crawl statistics in the old Google Search Console.
- Check Google Analytics for the page load time.
- Examine it.
GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATE:
Check to see whether a Google update coincides with your ranking decline. Although Google is rarely transparent about lesser modifications, SEO experts across the world keep a close eye on things and have developed techniques that detect significant changes in rankings and attempt to link them to updates.
Remember that ranking changes brought on by Google algorithm adjustments don’t always take effect right away. You’ll frequently notice your ranks eroding over time. This makes sense given the sheer volume of data sets that Google must recalculate and reprocess. Similar to how Google’s Penguin and Panda filters operate, they can cause rankings to decline over the course of several weeks.
GOOGLE SERP UPDATE:
Google doesn’t always update its algorithm. They can also alter the layout of their search engine result pages (SERPs) by including new components that either push your snippet to the bottom or draw more attention than your snippet.
Keep in mind that featured snippets are handled differently by rank trackers. Some search engines might not even consider a featured snippet when reporting ranks, while others would. Always act as though you were a searcher and check the SERP results for the queries you’re targeting.
DISAVOWED VALUABLE BACKLINKS:
Most of the time, you won’t need to disavow spammy backlinks that you don’t want to be connected with to avoid getting penalized. Even though spammy backlinks aren’t particularly helpful, they also aren’t detrimental unless there is an obvious evil intent. Be cautious with this because disavowing those bogus backlinks could potentially hurt your SEO performance.
WEBSITE HACKED:
Site hacking, unfortunately, is a very lucrative industry. Once “inside,” hackers frequently infest websites with spammy content and links as well as dangerous malware. It’s unlikely that your website was hacked, but if it was, you should find out as soon as possible so that you can take action to retake control of your website.
Google checks web pages for malware and other suspicious behavior. Through Google Search Console, they’ll let you know if they discover that your website has been hacked. Even though this check isn’t perfect, it only takes ten seconds to check Google Search Console to see whether they are aware of a hack. For that reason, we advise constantly doing so.
CHANGE IN SEARCH INTENT AND BEHAVIOR:
When Google changes its mind about the purpose of a search, it may also change the websites they consider to be relevant.
Particularly in odd times like the COVID-19 pandemic. Rankings must have been affected, either directly or indirectly, by the fast change in search behavior. While some goods and services are in high demand, others are no longer required.
COMPETITORS MAKING MOVES:
Your rivals are always moving to catch up with you and lower your listings in the search results as a result. Even if it’s uncommon for the competition to overtake you for many search queries in a short period, the competition might nonetheless contribute to your ranking decline.
Find out to whom you lost your rankings by doing some research. You created a list of search terms for which your positions declined in the following stage; now go deeper to determine who profited from this. Once you’ve done that, try to determine how they were able to defeat you.
LOST BACKLINKS:
Use a tool like Ahrefs, Majestic, Monitor Backlinks, or Kerboo to see whether you’ve lost any backlinks. Please be aware that there is always a slight delay before these applications detect lost (or new) links.
In the future, it’s advised that you keep an eye on your backlinks using one of the methods described above so that you may receive notifications when links are lost. After that, you can get in touch with the websites that are linked to see if you can get the backlinks restored.
CONCLUSION:
Rankings do fluctuate; this is given in the SEO industry. Just remain composed and meticulously look into potential causes for the drop. It’s strongly advised that you have monitoring that keeps track of changes to the technical foundation and content of your website in addition to having a mechanism in place for looking into the potential cause of the dip. After all, you are in the dark without that knowledge. Hence, consult an SEO Company in India to regain the desired website ranking.
Author Bio
I am Pawanbir Kaur Bajwa, Content Writer at AMR Softec. I administer the content for several websites in addition to writing blogs on a variety of topics, including business, technology, lifestyle, health, and entertainment. I am always curious to learn more which makes me eager to research, study, and write on the most recent and popular topics. I believe in sharing informative and interesting content only.
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