31 Mar Have You Noticed a Drop in Your Google Ranking?
When you rank high in search results, your website runs a much higher chance of being seen. More traffic and clicks will increase your chances of gaining a bigger audience, conversions, and leads. Due to this, remaining aware of your website rankings is essential. You want to rank high on Google, and you especially want to rank higher than your competitors if you’re going to have an edge. However, while watching your site climb the ranks is what you should be doing, noticing when it drops is just as important. Seeing a drop in your Google ranking is frustrating, especially when you work hard at improving your rankings. However, not knowing why your Google ranking dropped can be terrifying.
You should be concerned if you recently noticed a drop in your Google ranking. While this drop can result from many factors, getting to the bottom of your site’s issues will help your rankings recover. Below are some of the most common reasons for a drop in traffic and rankings.
Have You Been Penalized?
If your website violates any of Google’s guidelines, a Google manual action penalty might be applied to your site. You can find this out by checking your Google Webmaster Tools account. View the “manual actions” list to see if there is a notice about your website. If you have received a penalty, you will receive a notification that states the reason for the violation. Some of the reasons why Google will penalize a site include keyword stuffing, thin content, duplicate content, artificial link building, user-generated spam, duplicate metadata, and not having a mobile-friendly website. Once you remedy the penalty, you will need to submit a reconsideration request. Remember that it can take some time to regain your position.
Indexed Page Decease
If you have noticed a decrease in your index pages, this can result in a lower rank. Typically, your site’s internal pages are crawled and indexed by Google’s bots, but your rankings will drop if your pages stop being indexed. Google may be unable to crawl your pages, or it doesn’t like the content and thinks it’s irrelevant. If you have noticed that your total number of indexed pages has dropped when doing a site search, log into Google Webmaster Tools and look for crawl errors or deindexed pages. Make sure you also look for nofollow tags and 404 errors on your website since they can make your pages invisible to search engines.
Algorithm Changes
If there are no technical issues with your website (and its host), and you are big on playing by the rules, your drop in Google ranking could be caused by an algorithm change. When Google adjusts some of its ranking factors, it affects your ranking as a result, look into what changed. After a Google algorithm update, SEO rankings can drop. Changes in the algorithm can cause a gradual shift in ranking, but if your site is heavily affected, you might notice an overnight drop. Learning about algorithm changes can help you adjust your strategy to compensate for the updates.
You’ve Been Outranked
Sometimes your ranking can drop for reasons other than negligence or penalties. You will be outranked if your competitors do a better job than you and have better SEO practices. Others will also be jockeying for the top spot on the search engine results page, so you must stay on top of your website if you want to hold onto your position. New and old competitors might be implementing tactics to make their sites more attractive to Google’s ranking algorithm, so you must constantly strive to step up your SEO efforts. Use website analysis and optimization tools to help improve your user experience and keywords.