Website ranking drop is the worst nightmare which nobody would ever want in their wildest dreams. It can be scary, but you have to tackle it while keeping your cool.

Several reasons cause your website’s ranking to drop. Fortunately, there are ways to help you recover the ranking with some easy and actionable steps. If you have experienced a similar downfall, this guide will help you resolve the issues and eliminate the potential causes. Moreover, you can also avail of the affordable local SEO services to prevent the rank from dropping.

 

So many things could have gone wrong like you, or your team might have unintentionally messed up with internal link equity, you might have loose links, or the Google algorithm updated unexpectedly. If the drop happened with a group of pages, the problem could be the page structure or anything else. Whatever is the issue, brainstorming the actual reason is essential to fix the right thing first.

 

What causes the SEO ranking to drop?

 

Here are the possible culprits blocking your road to success. Working on them will help you overcome the challenge and move to the next level.

 

1. You changed something recently, knowingly or unknowingly!

 

The most probable reason for decreased ranking could be the alterations you have made in your website. It could be knowingly or unknowingly but affects the website drinking too much extent. Please ask yourself:

 

• Have you made any structural change on the website?
• Have you migrated to a new server?
• Have you made any other significant change to your website?
• Are you following 301 redirects rule on your website?

 

If your answer is yes, then probably it could be one of the reasons for lousy website performance. Also, 301 redirects tell google the new address of your website, so that it can index the new one.

 

Besides, the minor changes, like adding videos or images, also impacts your website performance and also makes it slow to load. For the performance check., You can use the Google’s page speed insights tool which informs you about First Contentful Paint (FCP) and First Input Delay (FID). You didn’t do anything like such? Don’t worry; there could an accidental or technical change. Head over to the next section.

 

2. Is there any technical or accidental change?

 

 

If you haven’t changed anything, the error might have occurred due to accidental change. For instance, someone might have accidentally deleted text, incorrectly formatted the robots .txt file etc. you can fix the problem by merely reverting the settings and gain the rankings.

 

Some factors can cause recurring issues or can affect your website for long term. They may be the errors in the server log, which can hurt your website ranking or you might have to move to a new hosting or get a new service provider.

 

3. Have you lost the links?

 

 

Backlinks are one of the most preferred ranking factors in Google algorithm. If you lost the significant number of links, your ranking would drop automatically. You can ask the SEO services USA about the links you have lost over a given period. Also, you should know the links which are removed or redirected, causing significant damage to your website.

 

Once you know the lost link from your webpage, then the next should be to determine the cause and learn an adequate remedy. One method could be to ask the linking website to replace the broken links with the newly updated ones

 

4. Did your competitor change the ranking strategy?

 

 

There could be a scenario that your competitor has changed the ranking strategy, and that pushed your website or webpages down the search engine results.  Most probably, it affects a few of your webpages instead of the whole website.

 

The SEO services USA can help you analyze the factors and implement them to your website to enhance the performance.

 

5. Determine if Google algorithm got updated

 

 

Google frequently updates the algorithm which may affect your website. Get in touch with expert SEO in USA to know about any recent update in Google. They will provide you with the strategies, tips and find ways to bounce back with an updated website.

 

Ways to deal with an unexpected drop in website ranking

 

Never panic! Also, please don’t take it lightly. Whether you are facing a sudden drop in ranking or it is happening gradually, you should be well-prepared before the situation worsens. Here is what, this section will answer you!

 

• Is your search engine ranking dropped overnight or dropping gradually?
• What to do if a few of your webpages are not performing well?
• How to perform better than your performance?
• Need answers? Implement these strategies.

 

Solution 1. Find if your ranking actually dropped?

 

Sometimes, the error in your ranking tracker tool pretends the drop in your ranking, which rectifies automatically. Once you find that the website is not performing well, you should reverify after an hour or so, to be sure about the metrics. Also, you can use multiple tools to know the actual status. Here are some tips:

 

• Use multiple tools: Before reaching out to the conclusion, re-verify the data with other authenticated tools like Google search console and Google analytics. Check the ranking data and organic traffic data in these tools.If you find that just a single tool is showing a drop, then potentially there is an error with that tool which will rectify itself.
• Analyze the week-to-week trend: Another way to deal with the ranking drop is to analyze the movement and compare the week-to-week and daily fluctuations. Collect the data to identify the lowest drop in your website ranking.
• Find the external factors: If you have tried both these solutions, then probably an external factor is causing your website ranking to decreaseand impacting the traffic.

 

Solution 2. Identify the root cause

 

Once you determine whether your website ranking is actually dropped or it’s just pretending, the next step is to find the root cause. The best way to find the real reason is asking a question to yourself and brainstorming with your team. After discussing with each other, you can reach out to the real reason that’s impacting your website. Your discussion conclusion may fall under these categories.

 

• You have made some changes: If you learnt that you and your team had made some changes in the past, then rectify those things to fix the problem. Or investigate the root cause by conducting the brainstorming session. It will help you catch the real culprit.
• Google has made some changes: Discover the points that Google has changed recently and then align your website as per those aspects. Sometimes, Google issues the manual penalties, thus impacting your website to rank low on the search engine.
• Your competitor has changed the strategy: Google regularly indexes the websites and examines them on several aspects. If it founds your competitor’s website is better optimized as per the latest update, it will then pull up that site to top the charts. Taking affordable local SEO services will help you align your site with the latest Google algorithm so that you never lose your ranking due to Google update.

 

Solution 3. Rectify the potential cause

 

Knew the reason? Its time to work on it. Whether, your ranking dropped due to Google, competitors or because of you, working on the right reason will eliminate the issue. As a thumb rule, you should always consider changing the strategy as per Google’s latest algorithms, which eventually will help you regain the rankings and bounce back strongly. It covers all the aspect and rectifies errors which are the culprit for low performing website.

 

Solution 4. Strongly monitor your website performance

 

After rectifying the potential cause, you need to monitor your website’s performance for several weeks intensely. Your ranking won’t improve overnight; instead, it will take some time to show the real effect. However, if you can’t see any improvement after the significant period, you need to go back to solution two and identify the root cause.

 

Please take a note, mere identification, and elimination of root cause won’t solve the issue. Instead, pairing it with strong monitoring strategy will help you in long term scenario. Even after you experience some improvement, you need to keep tracking the metrics to kill the potential error before it stems up.

 

Are you looking for a reliable SEO agency to boost your website ranking? Here we are

 

We know that pain when the website’s ranking drop, it can be frustrating and at the same time annoying. Don’t be afraid when you experience a similar sort of issue. Take this guide as a reference and implement the steps to resolve the problem.

 

If still, you need help, you can take our affordable local SEO services not only to prevent the ranking drop but to enhance it as well. We are a team of digital marketing experts with rich experience in restoring the organic traffic. Contact us to know more.