My Google Ranking Dropped Dramatically! What Happened?

You’ve spent tons of time working on your website and online presence in order to improve your ranking and drive more traffic to your website. But one day you wake up to find your ranking has dropped. What do you do now? Do you have to start all over again?

Don’t panic! A stumble in the rankings happens to everyone, and it can be caused by a variety of factors. Google’s algorithm is always changing, which means what worked for your website six months ago may not work so well now. Your rankings may even return to normal the very next day.

But if it’s been a few days—or if you just want to be sure nothing else is wrong—check out these reasons why your ranking may have dropped.

You recently made big changes to your site

One of the most common culprits of ranking drops are major changes to a website. If you’ve created a bunch of new pages, made changes to a lot of content or done any redesigning of your site, you’re likely to see your rankings fluctuate. If this is the case, there’s no need to worry—your rankings will likely return to normal.

Your website has technical issues that need to be fixed

A variety of technical errors can prevent Google from crawling and indexing your site correctly and have a negative impact on your ranking. Issues like slow load time or too many redirects can cause your ranking to fall. An SEO audit can diagnose any technical issues with your site, allowing you to build out a plan for correcting these errors.Get a Free SEO Audit to find out how well your site is performing.

Google updated its algorithm

In many cases, an update to Google’s algorithm is the culprit behind a change in ranking. Google makes hundreds and even thousands of changes to its algorithm each year, and while some are minor, others can have a huge impact on your online marketing. If your ranking has recently dropped, check in to see if Google has recently updated its algorithm.

Searcher behavior and intent has changed

Sometimes what people are looking for changes drastically, leading Google to adjust its concept of what a relevant website for a particular search query is. Similarly, the demand for a specific product or service can fluctuate over time, meaning certain search terms can become harder to rank for.

Your competitors are beating you out

Depending on your industry, you may have some pretty intense competition, and their own marketing efforts could push your ranking down. Take a look at what websites have taken your place in Google’s search results and research why they may be performing better than you. Do they have better, more keyword-rich content? Do they have more quality backlinks? Do their pages load faster? Once you know what your competition is doing to beat you, you can develop a plan to take back your ranking.

These are just a few of the reasons why your ranking may have dropped. An SEO audit can help you pinpoint some of the performance and technical errors that may be negatively affecting your ranking, and it’s the first step in building out a comprehensive content strategy to return to the top of the search results.