9 Causes of Google Ranking Dropped Dramatically
9 Causes of Google Ranking Dropped Dramatically
Google Ranking Dropped-Suppose you are checking the report of the website rank and notice that it is getting drowned!
Yours’s hard efforts of so many years are gone in vain! Have you ever thought what will you do then? Let’s get prepared.
At first, you shouldn’t get panicked because it is a normal thing that every website experiences at some point of time.
Then, with much patience and time you have to look after your site thoroughly to identify the potential causes of this dropdown.
If you are able to find so then, it’s good; just fix them appropriately. Otherwise, you should look for a professional who can do the job for you.
Within a few days or months, the site will bounce back to its position again providing relief to you.
This blog entails some common reasons of this dropdown, so that you can stay prepared and take necessary steps against it. Read on to know them.
1. Inaccurate Data
Prior to opt for making any changes, it is highly advisable to cross-check the rank of the site whether it has been actually fallen or not! Most of the time, it has been noticed that any unexpected shift in the ranking or traffic is actually false alarm resulting in mislead of the reported data.
It can occur due to the tools resetting or messing up with the settings.
Sometimes accidental exclusion of a page, a device or specific time can also end up with misleading data.
Hence, the very thing you should do is to ensure that the whole reporting is in proper order.
Secondly, it is mandatory to verify if the drop occurs outside normal traffic fluctuation range or not. Flow and ebb is common and continues to change with every fraction of time and can decline too.
Historic declination list must be preserved so that it can be compared with the latest experienced one for identifying the similar deterioration.
If a drop is observed then Google Search Console is there where any turmoil can happen.
Wait for a few days as the page gets recovered to its position automatically. The declination can occur due to the changing in algorithm of Google as well. However, it is impossible to detect the exact cause.
2. Manual Actions
Human reviewers create manual actions on Google if they found that the site hasn’t been made with the compliance with webmaster quality guidelines of Google.
Numerous penalties causes are there such as user-generated spam, user cloaking, thin content and unnatural backlinks.
Manual actions are taken against them to prevent the site as per need of the Google. If the rank drops down for about 10 positions with multiple keywords there is a high chance of prime suspect.
Manual penalty can be checked Google Search Console. To remove such penalties from on-page reversion of slight website adjustments is necessary
User-generated spam
Comment spam is really harmful for the website along with its rankings. Always, read the pages thoroughly allowing user-generated content such as forums, blog post comments and product reviews.
Even it comprises of the unlinked company or product, links and something else which is not a part of! In such instances, accounts must be banned and accounts should be removed to prevent the site from getting spammy.
Thin or scraped content
Manual action becomes necessary due to the sharing of low-quality content. Low-quality implies many things such as plagiarism, gibberish, insufficient volume and vagueness.
Copyscape Plagiarism Checker is there for checking whereas the written content is original or not! It can affect the SEO as well. Otherwise, originally written content comes of great use adding much value to the site.
Sneaky redirects
Website Auditor is reliable to use for checking the redirection of the users. It will let you know where the link lands the users actually. Accordingly, all irrelevant redirects should be removed.
Unnatural outgoing links
Paid links are always become part of the exchange scheme of the link. So, it is better to either close them with the help of nofollow tags from indexing or delete them permanently.
WebSite Auditor can be your ultimate companion in this prospect. You can be able to see all lists of links which are spammy and take necessary actions against those.
Basically this issue evolves unknowingly while you are managing the site all by yourself.
But during accepting content contributions pay much attention to review and check that the internal links are nofollowed and natural.
Unnatural incoming links
Website really gets hurt by the spammy backlinks and it can be the result of two possibilities. Either you have purchased low-quality backlinks or your competitors are attacking your site.
Irrespective of the cause SEOSpyGlass is there to examine the backlink profile along with associated penalty risk.
The rank and owner of the site can reveal the quality of the backlinks. In case any malicious link is found it must be submitted to the Google’s Disavow Links Tool immediately.
Compromised security Every website is prone to get invaded by the hackers and they do the task unknowingly to the owners of the website.
Therefore, it is imperative to know the essential steps to be taken for the prevention of the site from hackers.
3. Algorithm Update
The search algorithm is tweaked numerous times a year without notifying about its updates.
Although the major change is easily noticeable some are too minor that it becomes impossible to notice them.
Even some have the ability to create wreaking havoc on the SERPs as well. This can be the reason for which unusual ranking will need some time to get observed by SEOs.
Actually, they wait for the representatives of Google to comment on comparable things.
After the update gets confirmed by Google, it will be informed to SEO via Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land. Remember, that updates can be niche-oriented affecting only a few sites.
However, it is important to cover up the news so that certain things can get fixed on time.
Otherwise, you are recommended to ask it on the SEO community on Reddit for fast response.
4. Competitor Activity
Sometimes, there isn’t anything wrong with the website except for the betterment of the competitors.
It may lead the rank of your site to decline dramatically thereby instigating you to inquire about the competitors’ positions as well.
Rank Tracker is there to give you full access to the SERP history to check its sudden change.
In case, it is found to be chaotic representing numerous movements, frequent shifts and new websites then you are encountering Google dance.
High volatility of SERP is there for short term due to the minor tweaks in the algorithm.
Avoid doing any change in such situation as it will get normal within a couple of days.
However, if the position is being snatched from you by certain websites then there is obviously something you have to look into!
If you found that there is a trace of outranking then you should open the competitor’s website via SEO SpyGlass and WebSite Auditor for reviewing their technical optimization trends and backlink profile quality.
It must be done with the improvement of HTML tags, headers, keywords optimization and content.
5. Lost Backlinks
The performance in SERPs can get greatly affected by the low-quality new links.
It may end up with losing of the high-quality backlinks as well. SEO SpyGlass is there to check the quality of your backlinks.
The past record of the site can be also found there for detailed assessment for preventing it from further major losses.
By clicking on the Backlinks tab of the Links Back column the status of link is missing can be reviewed well.
Last Found Date can be contacted for reporting the presence of the missing link (if any). Webmaster is the powerful weapon for reclaiming the lost backlinks from your site.
In case, you are newbie to Webmaster then either LinkedIn or Twitter can be your suitable option.
6. Site Changes
Ranking can get messed if certain necessary changes are made to the site.
It includes shifting of HTTPS, CMS change or redesigning of the site. Even if somehow you overlook a minor shift it can lead to severe consequences on the SEO ranking.
As a result your site can experienced drastic drop down in its position in the SERPs.
Google Search Console is the ideal tool to check the leveraged changes in the site. From there you can easily determine the warning signs or errors resulted from the changes (if any).
This will confirm your suspicion of declination of the website’s rank.
Even every indexing and crawling issue will be stated there by the Google logs so that fixation becomes pretty easier than ever.
7. User Behavior Changes
Behavioral metrics are usually too risky for influencing the position of the website in SERP.
Although as per many agencies of SEO services in Las Vegas, it has been beneficial yet a few mistakes can drop the rank of the site drastically.
Even the affect can be observed in the click-through rates as well.
CTR can be reviewed by accessing to the Google Search Console.
It is done either by page or by query to find out the minute changes.
CTR dropping is possible if the competitors improve the snippets or steal any click share of your website.
Mainly this is done for matching the intensity of the snippet as the respective ones seem irrelevant.
Inquiry can be done for the measuring way of snippet along with snippets of the competitors.
Accordingly, you may have to optimize the Meta data or making use of the schema markup for enhancing the snippet by using rich components.
8. SEM Traffic Cannibalization
Paid advertisement is the only reason to acquire the SEM traffic. On the other hand, organic search is the reason for the SEO traffic.
However a couple of the ways are also there to obtain some eyeballs at the same time.
In SERP your ads will be given top priority always to receive more number of traffic from organic results.
Visit the PPC campaigns and contrast the keywords that help you with organic traffic.
If any copied keyword is found there then PPC campaign should be stopped immediately otherwise it may end up with the deterioration of the website’s rank in the SERPs.
9. SERP Changes
Recently, the search results has been enhanced by Google with tons of stuff like job ads, products pages, video clips, Q&A sections, rich snippets and knowledge panels.
Although these are highly beneficial for the users yet they consume organic search results number greatly.
To check whether your site has been a victim to any of these enhancements, Rank Tracker is ideal to use.
Its dashboard will let you see the SERP enhancement history; so that you can identify correspond of the ranking changes of your site.
If any new SERP features affect the position then know the ways of using structured data for enhancing the snippet.
Even you can go for a competition with its enriched features or become a key part of it as well.
So, these are most common probable causes of sudden declination in the SERP rankings.
There are numerous other hidden causes too which can affect the rank of your site unknowingly.
Hence, to retain your original position, you can hire any reliable SEO company in Las Vegas. They will identify the exact reason of drop down so that necessary actions can be taken accordingly.