When your rankings suddenly take a dramatic drop in the search engine results pages (SERPs), you may find yourself wondering why. Instead of allowing this to make you anxious, take the steps to figure out what’s happened.
Have Your Google Rankings Really Dropped?
Your rank tracker may be messing up so make sure there are no known issues there first. When Google changes its SERPs, rank tracker software needs to be updated. Until then their rankings are off. In this case, you probably don’t need to worry about recovering from a ranking drop.
Check Out the Impact of the Ranking Drop
If you do need to worry about recovering from a ranking drop, you’ll want to start by seeing how big of an impact it’s had. To identify this use Bing Webmaster Tools data, your rank tracking application, Google Search Console data, and web analytics data.
Check Out Any Recent Website Changes
Large website changes frequently result in ranking drops. These changes naturally result in big ranking fluctuations. Don’t worry about this unless your rankings don’t return to normal. Additionally, make sure you check your project management software and code repository.
Look for Algorithmic Penalties. Although rare, algorithmic penalties occur when your SEO doesn’t follow Google’s rules. Usually, you can’t see them in your Google Search Console. However, once it happens you won’t recover in the SERPs until you fix the issue and file a reconsideration request.
Look for Any Content Changes. Your content is important to SEO because it helps determine your relevancy for SERPs. Therefore when you make any major changes it may leave you recovering from a ranking drop.
Look for Any Technical Issues
You also need to beware of technical issues that prevent Google from crawling and indexing your site.
Crawl Anomalies. These prevent Google from receiving the requested information. When they fail here you’ll find yourself recovering from a ranking drop.
Look for Any Google Algorithm Updates
While some of Google’s updates are small others have a huge impact on your SEO. See if you’re recovering from a ranking drop because there’s been an update. SEO experts have built tools to help you find these changes.
Look for Any Google SERP Updates
Not all Google updates are about algorithms. Sometimes Google adds new things to its SERP layout. Featured snippets aren’t always taken into account by rank trackers.
Watch Your Backlinks
Backlinks are very important for your rankings. Losing them will leave you recovering from a ranking drop.
Some people believe that spammy backlinks negatively impact their SEO but this isn’t true. If there’s no malicious intent there’s no point in disavowing them. Disavowing these links can negatively impact you in the SERPs.
Make Sure Your Website Wasn’t Hacked
Unfortunately, there are a lot of hackers today. Once they get inside your website they’ll infest it with malicious and spammy code, content, and links. This really hurts your rankings. When it happens you need to know about it immediately so you can be proactive in regaining control. If Google finds that your website was hacked they’ll use the Google Search Console to let you know. This is something you should keep an eye on since it’s important for your SEO.
Analyze User Engagement
There are a few different things that can hurt you here. First, you need to be mindful of how fast your users are leaving your site because when they leave too quickly your rankings suffer. Secondly, you’ll also want to make sure that you don’t bombard them with pop-ups or ads because then they’ll quickly leave. Thirdly, it’s important that your content satisfies a user’s search queries, if not your visitors will move on to find their answers elsewhere.
All these factors are growing in importance. While you won’t find any of this information in your Google Search Console, you still need to pay attention to it.
Take Time to Make Changes
Finding what’s caused your ranking to drop takes a lot of time. Recovering from ranking drops takes even more. All of this is time you could spend on other aspects of your business. So, if you value your time, reach out to us at Affordable SEO Company Tampa in Tampa, FL, and let us take care of this for you.