SEO Rankings Drop? Here’s Your 4-Step Recovery Plan
January 15, 2024
Sarvesh Bagla
Summary: Facing a sudden SEO rankings drop? Understand the causes, verify, and take swift action. Our 4-step recovery plan guides digital marketers and SEO experts to diagnose, fix technical issues, and regain lost visibility.
It’s that time of the month when you assess your website performance. After weeks of positive growth, you see a sudden drop in the SEO rankings. Your pages and blog posts that were ranking on the first page, now are losing the traffic.
Before you hit the panic button, keep calm and analyze the situation. Fluctuations in rankings can happen for various reasons. Sometimes, they’re just temporary hiccups. However, it’s crucial to investigate to ensure it’s not a substantial drop impacting your website visibility.
We have crafted a 4 step recovery process, so you can easily diagnose and fix your rankings.
Continue reading!
1. Do a thorough investigation
The First and foremost thing to understand is that SEO rankings fluctuate regularly, especially during search engine algorithm updates or seasonal changes. What you need to assess is whether this is a short-term fluctuation or a major issue has occurred.
Use reliable SEO tools like SemRush, and Woorank to check your current ranking and compare your current positions with historical data. This helps distinguish between a real drop and normal variations.
Another factor that could be the reason for your drop is the loss in impressions and clicks. Sometimes, the keyword that was performing well loses its relevance or search volume, therefore, the content also sees a significant downgrade in clicks.
Now that you’ve confirmed a significant drop, your next step should be to find the cause.
2. Revisit the recent changes you made
Did you recently revamp your website? Do recent site modifications trigger this ranking drop? Updates to content, site formatting, or unintentional errors might affect rankings.
Let’s break down each section.
Do a website check
This involves reviewing any modifications made to your website lately. It could be updates to content or changes in site structure. For example, you updated your website’s product descriptions or changed the URL structure. These modifications might inadvertently introduce errors or affect the way search engines crawl and index your site. These alterations can impact your site’s search engine rankings. Search engines like Google tend to reevaluate and reindex websites based on these modifications.
Changes due to Google updates
Google frequently updates its search algorithms, and sometimes these changes can influence how a site ranks. For example, Google rolled out a new algorithm update that prioritizes mobile-first indexing. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices, it might experience a drop in rankings due to this change. Manual penalties can also occur if your site violates Google’s guidelines, leading to a drop in rankings.
Competitor Activity
Monitoring your competitors’ SEO strategies is extremely crucial. If they’ve enhanced their tactics, it might also be a reason for your SEO rankings drop. For instance, your competitor optimized their content for voice search and enhanced user experience. As a result, they start ranking higher for certain keywords, impacting your site’s comparative visibility. Therefore, you need to keep track of what your competitors are doing. Understanding their improvements can help identify areas where your strategies may need adjustment to stay competitive.
Technical Issues
Technical glitches on your website are bound to happen if there is a site revamp. Issues like broken links, slow loading times, or indexing issues, can significantly impact SEO performance. Addressing these issues on time can improve your site’s visibility and ranking on search engines.
Backlink Loss
We all know, that backlinks from authoritative sources, play a vital role in SEO. Losing valuable backlinks can also lead your site to drop ranking. If you had several high-quality backlinks from reputable sites, but they removed those links or their sites went offline. Your site’s authority and rankings will decrease due to the loss of these valuable connections. It’s important to track any loss of significant backlinks and work on strategies to regain or build new ones.
Keyword Changes
Keywords are fundamental in SEO. Monitoring the performance of your target keywords is essential. If the popularity or effectiveness of your chosen keywords changes, it can affect your site’s visibility in search results. Keeping track of shifts in keyword trends allows for adjustments to maintain or enhance your ranking.
Each of these sections represents crucial aspects of maintaining and improving SEO performance. Regular monitoring and addressing any issues in these areas can help ensure a strong online presence and better search engine rankings for your website.
After checking all the mentioned causes above, we are sure you’ve identified the culprit. The next step would be to take swift action.
3. Start the recovery phase
Content Updates
Refreshing and optimizing content involves several strategies
Optimizing Existing Content: According to the Search Engine Journal, fresh content is an important factor in improving ranking. Have a content review and improve existing content by adding relevant keywords, and updating information to the existing pages and blog posts. Adding relevant information in a form of visually appealing way can further enhance readability vis a vis more clicks.
Creating New Content: Try Google Trends and search for topics or keywords your industry is talking about. Develop new articles, blog posts, or multimedia content that targets these keywords within your niche. Make sure these pieces align with user search intent and provide value to the audience.
Aligning with Search Intent: As mentioned in the above point, every content piece should align with user intent. Understanding what users are searching for and tailoring your content to meet those needs is crucial in 2024. Ensure that the content you produce satisfies the intent behind users’ search queries.
Technical Issues
Resolving technical issues is essential for a well-functioning website. They are the major SEO KPIs for a successful website. Follow the steps for a step-by-step technical check:
– Identify and repair any broken internal or external links on your website, ensuring a smooth user experience and proper crawling by search engines.
– Improve loading times by optimizing images, utilizing caching, and streamlining code to provide a better user experience, which can positively impact SEO.
– Ensure that all pages intended for indexing are crawled and indexed by search engines. This involves proper sitemap creation, use of robots.txt, and fixing any indexing issues.
Backlink Recovery
Recovering and managing backlinks is critical for maintaining site authority:
– Reaching Out to Lost Linking Domains. Contact websites that previously linked to your site but have removed those links. Politely inquired if they could reinstate the link.
– Focus on acquiring new quality backlinks (preferably from DA- 60 and over) from reputable and relevant websites within your industry or niche. Emphasize quality over quantity.
– Identify and disavow any harmful or spammy backlinks that might be negatively impacting your site’s SEO performance.
| A leading online retailer in the US was also facing significant challenges with their website’s visibility and performance. In just 5 months, we yielded promising results for our client. We delivered a remarkable 50% increase in the top 3 keyword rankings within the target categories, signifying a stronger presence in relevant searches.
Despite a penalty on the website, monthly traffic surged by a significant 79%, indicating a positive trend in visitor engagement. Moreover, overall visibility on Google’s search engine results pages expanded by approximately 25.49%. How did we achieve these impressive results? Read the full case study here. |
Algorithm Adaptation
Adapting to algorithm changes involves staying informed and making necessary adjustments.
Adapting to Google’s Guidelines: Stay updated on Google’s algorithm updates and guidelines. Adjust your SEO strategy to comply with these changes to maintain or improve rankings.
Making Strategic Changes
Analyze the impact of algorithm updates on your site’s
performance. Make strategic changes to your content, linking strategies, and overall SEO tactics accordingly.
Remember, recovering from SEO setbacks takes time, and consistent effort across these areas is essential for long-term improvement. Adjustments made in these areas can significantly contribute to the recovery and sustained success of your website’s SEO performance.
4. Monitor and Climb Back Up
Our final step in the SEO rankings drop recovery process is to monitor your progress.
Regularly check and analyze your website’s performance using tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz.
Get detailed insights into keyword rankings, traffic trends, backlink profiles, and technical issues. Monitor changes in rankings, click-through rates, and impressions to gauge the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.
And that’s it. You are on your way to ranking recovery.
But don’t forget – consistency is key. Even after implementing fixes, continue creating high-quality, relevant content that engages your audience. Maintain technical excellence by regularly auditing your site for any new issues and promptly addressing them. SEO is an ongoing process, and sustained effort is necessary for long-term success.
As a leading SEO agency, we want everyone to know that recovering lost SEO rankings is feasible with the right strategies and dedication. SEO improvements often take time to manifest, so remain patient and persistent. Be ready to adapt your strategies as needed based on the results you observe.
Monitoring progress, maintaining consistent efforts, and staying positive are crucial elements of the recovery process. By regularly tracking your website’s performance, persistently improving content and technical aspects, and maintaining a positive outlook, you increase the likelihood of successfully climbing back up in search engine rankings.
At Techmagnate, we assure our clients of ranking recovery. All we need is to stay persistent and adapt as necessary. Need our help? Contact us today!