Nothing can be as stressful as witnessing a sudden decline in search engine rankings. It can hurt the confidence of the best web developers and digital marketers. But the good news is, you can reverse it with some effective on-page and off-page SEO strategies. And, of course, a little help from professional SEO service providers will benefit a lot.
With thousands of websites competing for traffic and rankings, it is extremely important to recover the lost ranks. A little delay can make it worse. The key is to find out the reasons for the dip in the rankings and know what strategies to use to gain it all back.
Reasons why websites lose rankings on Google
Websites lose rankings on search engines for many reasons. We have listed ten reasons here:
- Using No-index tags
No-index tags tell search engine spiders not to index web pages. Web pages won’t rank on search engine result pages if they are not crawled and indexed.
- Disallowing robots.txt
Robots.txt instructs web crawlers to allow or block access to specific web pages. Disallowing robots.txt will prohibit search engine bots from crawling a web page, affecting visibility and ranking.
- Changes in Google algorithms
Every year, Google makes several small changes to its algorithms. It also rolls out a major update once in a while. The changes and updates in algorithms drastically affect some websites’ rankings.
- Duplicate content
When two web pages have similar content, Google selects the canonical version to display the master copy to its users. Adding the canonical tag to a page URL will enable Google to find the master copy and show it on the search engine result page.
- Lack of good quality backlinks
Backlinks play a key role in ranking a web page’s search engine and determining its domain authority. A web page with no backlinks, or many spammy ones, will have a poor ranking. Even when a site loses some of its high-quality backlinks, it will see a huge fall in its rank.
- Low user experience
Search engines calculate user experience after assessing load speeds, mobile-friendliness, website designs, and other factors. A web page or site that scores low in user experience will see a huge decline in its SEO rankings.
- Google penalty
Google penalty can either be manual or algorithmic. The former happens when a website resorts to black hat SEO practices such as keyword stuffing, manipulating SEO ranks, or hiding and spamming texts. The latter occurs when a few of the search engine’s updates penalize web pages that don’t comply with the guidelines.
- Poor search intent
When users type in a keyword, they look for precise information for their search. Some websites can give them the results they want, and some don’t. Websites that don’t satisfy users’ search intent see a dip in their rankings.
- Increased competition
The level of competition on the internet is huge. Thousands of new content and blog posts get published every day, and many outperform the older ones. When new websites have superior content quality and other ranking factors, they rank higher than others.
- Hacked website
A website’s security directly impacts its ranking. Google has listed strong HTTPS encryption as a key ranking factor. Moreover, when a website is hacked, much of its contents and other things get compromised. This is the reason why a hacked website drastically loses its ranks.
How to fix the problems
Here are some steps to fix the problems:
- Remove no-index tags and disallow robots.txt protocols
Use Seerobots or Robots Exclusion Checker extension to check for no-index tags on the web pages. Check robot.txt file to detect any disallow protocol. Remove all unintentional tags and commands.
- Go through Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and comply with all the major updates
Go through the Webmaster Guidelines to know Google’s major algorithm updates and make sure that the website complies with each one of them. Also, lookout for new updates and go through them soon after their rollout.
- Write original content
Ensure the content you create for the website is one hundred percent original. Use a reliable plagiarism checking tool to determine whether your web pages have duplicate content. If there is duplication, rework and create new. Hire one of the best SEO service providers to create good on-page SEO.
- Build high-quality backlinks
Make sure your web pages’ backlinks are good quality and link to high-authority sites. A website that links back to reliable sources ranks high on search engines. Leverage some free tools to check the quality of backlinks.
- Enhance user experience
Use responsive web design to make your web pages more user-friendly. As more and more people use mobile devices for web browsing, make your site mobile-friendly. Improve the website load time and make the design more engaging.
- Enhance search intent
Understand what information your prospective customers are looking for and create content accordingly. Use Ahrefs and SEMrush to view top keywords and the best websites. See their content and structure and try to up the ante.
- Increase security
Work with your developer to enhance the security of your website. Make sure it is secure, and no one can hack it. Use tools such as Google Search Console to check if anyone has installed malware and take corrective actions.
In a nutshell,
If you have seen a decline in your website’s rankings, find out what caused the drop. See if you can fix the problems or take the help of a reliable SEO service provider. At PeddleWeb, we have worked with many clients to regain their coveted rankings. We would love to help you with our solutions. To know more, contact our team of expert SEO professionals.
