Have
your rankings dropped recently?
Before you do anything, you should
try to find out what has caused
your ranking drop.
 |
The better you understand
the reason why your rankings
dropped, the better you
can prevent your website
from future ranking drops.
There are six major reasons
for ranking drops: |
1. Your website changes
Most webmasters update their
web pages regularly. As long
as the changes are only small,
this won't have a big effect
on your rankings. However,
if you re-design your web
pages or if you optimize a
page for a new search term
then search engines might
re-calculate your search engine
rankings.
Google even has a filter
for changed web pages. If
you change your web pages,
Google will temporarily apply
a filter to your sites. Details
can be found here.
Required
action: If you have
web pages with high search
engine rankings then you
should change these pages
with great care.
2. The links to your
website change
If you have an old website
with a grown inbound link
structure then it's not likely
that your site rankings will
drop because of a link change.
If the links to your site
are mainly paid links that
suddenly disappear or get
discounted by Google then
the loss of these links can
be enough to cause a significant
ranking drop.
In addition, sudden changes
in the linking structure of
a website make your website
suspicious.
Required
action: If you heavily
rely on paid links you might
want to reconsider your
linking strategy. Try
to get inbound links that
last.
Continually getting links
is essential to keep high
rankings. If you don't work
on your links then your website
will be replaced by better
linked web pages in the search
results.
3. The websites of
your competitors change
Everybody wants to be on
Google's first result page.
For that reason, it's only
natural that other websites
will be listed better than
yours if you don't react.
Many websites target the
same keywords as you do. If
these other websites have
better content and better
links than your site then
it's only natural that these
sites get better rankings.
Required
action: You must offer
better content than your
competitors. Make sure that
you offer many web pages
that are relevant
to your search terms and
that you have better
inbound links than your
competitors.
4. Spam elements on
your web pages
Search engines don't like
spam. If search engines find
out that you use cloaking,
hidden text, doorway pages
or any other spam technique
on your web pages then it
is extremely likely that your
website will be penalized.
Required
action: Remove all
spam elements from your
web pages. Just because
your website hasn't been
penalized yet doesn't mean
that search engines won't
find the spam elements in
the near future.
5. Search engine algorithm
changes
Search engines are continually
improving their ranking algorithms.
While most changes are rather
subtle, some ranking algorithm
changes can have a major impact
on the rankings of your web
pages.
Required
action: Wait for some
days to find out if the
ranking drop is not just
temporarily. Then optimize
your web pages so that they
reflect the
latest search engine algorithms.
6. Technical problems
Your web server can be the
reason for a ranking drop.
If your website is down when
the search engine spider tries
to access your website then
search engines cannot give
your web pages high rankings
because they don't know your
pages.
Some websites display the
correct web page in the web
browser but the server returns
an error code. In that case,
search engines won't index
the web pages.
Required
action: Make sure that
your website is hosted on
a reliable server that has
no downtime. Check the
HTTP status code that your
website returns.
Almost any website owner will
see a significant ranking drop
sooner or later. Don't panic
if this happens to you. Try
to find the reason for the ranking
drop and then act accordingly.
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