Websites owners and digital marketers must have experienced this frustrating situation once or twice of falling in ranking in Google. Such fluctuations in organic rankings can result in a significant drop in the referral traffic of your website, which eventually cause a decrease in the conversion volume, and thereafter the sales proceeds. It is important to understand why your site had dropped in ranking so that you can figure out how to get your former real estate back in SERPs (search engine results pages). In the rest of this article, we are going to focus on some of the most common reasons why your SEO ranking drops and provide steps on how to fix the problem.
Identifying the Causes of Google Ranking Fluctuations
It could be something simple like a Google ranking fluctuation for reasons irrelevant to you, which you’ll quickly identify and correct. It could be an algorithm change at the search engines; those happen on a semi-regular basis. But there are other reasons your rankings could go down, so it’s wise to rule those out, too. If your rankings did drop on several search terms, you need to figure out why. Start by analysing any loss of traffic or rank during the course of a single week or month. That will give you a good idea of what instigated the drop in the first place and help you work backwards from there.
While the diagnosis is all important, you’ll get nowhere unless you first check that your website ranking actually is in a period of decline: the first sign of a problem! Tools such as Google Search Console and third-party tools can be used to track how your rankings change over time. Whilst this might appear superficial – after all, it requires little in the way of investigation to identify a website losing a lot of ranking – understanding this nuance is important because, depending on how quickly your ranking goes south, it can be a clear indicator in diagnosing the problem. For example, rankings might tank after a Google algorithm update, if your website was flagged by Google as not complying with the new ranking factor. Alternatively, it might happen gradually, perhaps months later, which likely means that your site is at fault – perhaps a server is slowing down, or some links are broken, or indexation is suffering.
Technical SEO Issues and Their Impact on Organic Ranking
Technical SEO problems, despite great content and keyword strategy, can actually negatively affect your organic ranking. Problems such as your site being slow to load, your site not being mobile-friendly or having broken links can harm user experience, affecting your rankings. Google’s algorithms look at your technical SEO when assessing user experience on your site, and this can determine how your site performs in the rankings. To find and fix these issues, you should invest in conducting a technical SEO audit.
Another major technical issue is loading speed. Slow loading pages mean that users might just give up on your site out of frustration, and it might flag to Google that your site isn’t a good user experience. Mobile usability issues are also a major ranking factor, and Google prioritises mobile-first indexing, so creating a site that is mobile-friendly and loading quickly can help to improve user experience, which in turn helps your ranking. You should regularly check for and fix broken links, long URL structures and avoid the use of HTTP.
Content Quality and Relevance as a Key Ranking Factor
High-quality, relevant content is one of the most important parts of your site that can help to keep or enhance an organic ranking. One reason for the ranking drop, if your site has this content, could be that it is no longer seen as ‘good enough’ (by Google’s algorithms). Similarly, there may have been developments in SEO content standards that make your older pages look like poor value indeed, Google might regard your competitors’ content as more useful than yours. Another cause of ranking drop might be thin content that is, pages or blog posts that are insufficient in length to rank well in search engines.
It means your content needs to be updated so that the rank is retained: new information is added, new keywords are optimised for, and the content keeps up with what is new or what the users are looking for day by day and answering these questions in the best way possible. Updating old content not only means improving the relevancy and usefulness of content to target audience but also creating new, quality content can help you drive more organic traffic. The second step here is keeping an eye on on-site engagement metrics, which include time on page and bounce rate, as well as other engagement signals we discussed before. If a user is spending two minutes on your content or a page, that’s an indicator of quality content.
The Role of Backlinks in Maintaining Organic Traffic
They remain an important ranking factor for many websites, and a dramatic backlink drop can equate to a dramatic dip in your organic ranking. From the perspective of Google, backlinks represent votes of confidence by other sites: if other sites are linking to your content, Google might assume that it’s worth recommending, and that it can be trusted. Aside from having spammy links pointing to your site, your links may come from websites with very little authority in Google’s eyes, so your links are seen as being less worth mentioning in the search results. You might need to delve into the juicy details of your backlink profile.
Links are lost from time to time like these. Perhaps it is a normal trend because your former links might have lost their connections in their own site, perhaps it is because of Google’s manual penalties or a negative SEO attack (a trend in link having a bad neighbourhood). One way to monitor your backlinks is by using a paid-for tool such as Ahrefs or Moz at least every three months or, if possible, every month is better. This way you get to observe and analyse your loss of links if you have any. In case you have lost some good quality backlinks, it is always advisable to reach the sites that you have lost backlinks and enquire whether those individuals are willing to reinstate them. Sometimes, a relevant backlink on other sites might be completely lost, and take other linking schemes such as social media. In such a case, it is advisable to build new and relevant links. Disavowing these toxic backlinks that destroyed your ranking is also important to keep your backlink profile clean. By focusing all these attention in building and maintaining quality backlinks, one should have a steady trickle of organic traffic and a better position to rank high.
Addressing Competitive Pressures and Market Changes
After all, rankings are a meritocracy, and your ranking can change overnight based on changes to your industry, or to your competitors. If your competitors are launching new content, finding new backlinks or improving their technical SEO, they might rank higher than you do. Keeping track of what your competitors are doing and changes in your market can help you diagnose why your ranking might be dropping and how to respond.
A competitive analysis will also help you understand what your competitors are doing better than you. Tools such as SEMrush or SpyFu can reveal your competitors’ keyword strategies, backlink profiles and themes of content updates. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses can help you adjust your SEO strategy. Say a competitor is ceding the number one ranking for a crucial keyword because your content (such as a listicle) is better optimised and more thorough. You might need to polish up or deepen the content to maintain that ranking. If your competitor has a more extensive Linkedin page, that could be tripping you up in rankings. If they’re boosting rankings with a more authoritative backlink profile, you might need to develop some of your own. And addressing market trends before they become commonplace, by talking to emerging user needs and adapting your content strategy accordingly, will help you maintain ranking or regain it in a crowded field.
Monitoring and Adjusting Your SEO Strategy for Long-Term Success
SEO is a continual, dynamic process; algorithm changes occur, as do competitive pressures, so there is a lot of maintenance required to stay in front of the pack. You should always be checking your Google ranking, looking at your organic traffic metrics in things such as Google Analytics and Search Console, to identify small problems that could grow into big problems.
This state of continual observation helps you make sure you don’t drop in search rankings or miss beat the latest trends and techniques in SEO and algorithm changes made by Google frequently. Also, to maintain the illustrious position for your website it is extremely necessary to upgrade yourself with the latest SEO best practices.
Conclusion:
Being able to identify a cause behind an SEO ranking drop, and then fixing the problem, is an important skillset that can keep your site on the competitive track. Reviewing the key factors that might be causing a drop in rankings can already help put your focus in the right direction: is the drop technically related, does the website content possibly need adjustments, or are you fighting against too many strong competitors? Whatever way you decide to address the next steps, learn to monitor your rankings on an ongoing basis and make adjustments to your SEO strategy when needed. This way, you can bring your site back to where it needs to be in the long term. By drawing the picture in the round, SEO can enable you to have a more competitive website with good organic traffic and, potentially, helping you reach your business objectives.
