For anyone working in SEO, seeing a website climb the rankings is an exciting experience. But when rankings suddenly drop, it can feel like all the hard work has been undone. If this happens, it's important to stay calm and methodically address the issue.
In this guide, the steps to analyze the drop, identify potential causes, and effectively address them to reclaim a position in search engine results will be explored.
Let’s dive in.
Analyze the Drop
Before acting, it's crucial to assess the situation. Regularly monitoring rankings—ideally daily—can help quickly spot any fluctuations. Google's algorithm updates can cause changes, and tools like Ubersuggest can help track these shifts.
To start, users should add their domain as a project in the Ubersuggest Dashboard for detailed tracking.
Get a detailed information here: How to Create a Project and Track Keywords
Investigate Penalties
A drop in rankings could be due to a Google penalty. However, if the website hasn’t engaged in questionable practices like buying links, penalties are unlikely.
Still, it’s worth checking for common SEO mistakes. If any violations are found, they should be fixed to avoid potential penalties. Google's algorithms are complex, and even following best practices doesn't guarantee immunity from penalties.
Types of Penalties
Google issues two main types of penalties: Algorithmic and Manual.
Source: Slideshare.net
Algorithmic Penalties
Algorithmic penalties are harder to detect because Google doesn’t send direct notifications.
To check if an algorithmic penalty has affected a site, it’s important to understand how Google's algorithms work. These algorithms use many factors to determine rankings, and if a site follows practices that the algorithm dislikes, it could be penalized.
One way to spot an algorithmic penalty is by monitoring rankings and comparing them to the updates in Google's algorithm. Resources like Moz’s Google algorithm update directory can help track changes and identify potential penalties.
Additionally, staying informed by following industry experts like Gary Illyes, John Mueller, and Google Webmasters on platforms like Twitter can provide valuable insights into emerging penalties and algorithmic updates. By staying vigilant and responsive to changes, users can work to address any penalties and improve their site's search visibility.
Manual Penalties
Manual penalties are actions taken by Google’s webspam team against a website for violating Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
These penalties are applied by human reviewers when they detect specific violations, such as using unnatural links, thin or low-quality content, keyword stuffing, cloaking, or other deceptive practices to manipulate rankings.
When a manual penalty is applied, the affected website may see a significant drop in rankings or be removed from Google’s search results until the issues are fixed and the penalty is lifted. Site owners usually receive a notification in Google Search Console, detailing the violations and the steps needed to lift the penalty.
Address Link Issues
Link issues can significantly impact SEO, and a weak link profile can lead to lower rankings. Users should start by conducting a link audit to identify them using the Site Audit feature.
Ubersuggest’s backlink analysis tool provides a quick and effective way to locate bad links. If necessary, contacting sites for link removal or using Google’s Disavow tool as a last resort is advised.
Additionally, it’s important to be aware of lost backlinks. Links can be lost due to site changes or faulty redirects. Identifying and fixing these issues is crucial to maintaining a strong link profile.
Redirects and Outbound Links
- Redirects: It's important to ensure all 301 redirects are set up properly, especially after site changes. Faulty redirects can harm SEO.
- Outbound Links: If an outbound link becomes inactive, it should be replaced with a link to another authoritative source to maintain credibility.
To ensure a healthy link profile, checking for broken links is imperative. Tools like deadlinkchecker.com can assist in identifying and resolving broken URLs and optimizing user experience and SEO performance.
Optimize the Website
If penalties and link issues aren’t the cause, it may be time to focus on improving the website itself. Consider these factors:
- Design: Ensuring the website has a mobile-friendly design is crucial, as mobile searches now outnumber desktop searches. A mobile-optimized site is essential for good rankings.
- User Experience (UX): A seamless UX is critical for retaining visitors. Websites with outstanding UX—like Salesforce—set a high standard to follow.
- Speed: Slow-loading pages can hurt both user experience and rankings. Using tools like Ubersuggest's Site Audit to identify speed issues and take steps to optimize the site’s performance is essential.
After entering the website URL and initiating the search, navigate to the "Site Speed" section for a comprehensive overview of factors affecting speed. Ubersuggest offers detailed insights and recommendations for optimizing site performance.
Numerous factors can contribute to slow site speed, making it imperative to keep the site as lightweight as possible to mitigate delays.
- Content: Keeping content fresh and relevant is vital. Regularly updating old content and expanding on well-performing pages can attract more traffic. Using keyword insights from Ubersuggest to optimize existing content can also help.
A drop in search rankings is a common challenge in website optimization. It’s important not to panic, but instead to methodically analyze the drop, address any penalties or link issues, and improve the website’s design and content. With the right approach, recovery is possible. SEO is constantly evolving, so staying adaptable is key to maintaining and improving rankings.
Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions, suggestions, or complications at support@ubersuggest.com.