Why Did My Rankings Drop?
Did your rankings suddenly drop? Maybe by a couple of positions or outside the top 100 on Google. So, what do you do? How do you go about diagnosing what the issue is? Well, it happens to all of us so don’t panic. This is definitely a part of SEO because every business like yours is competing for the exact keyword as you.
If your rankings suddenly dropped on Google, here are 5 reasons why your rankings dropped:
1. Wrong or Missing Robots.txt File
Search engines rely on robots to index websites regularly. If you fail to upload the right robots.txt file for your website, your site will be ignored. And if you upload the wrong file or a file containing errors, your site’s search ranking will be affected negatively.
2. Poor User Interface
The poor user interface is not the issue but the effects it has on users navigating your website. When users cannot navigate your site easily, or there are excessive links, they may leave your site in no time. This gives poor user experience, and it will cost your website its ranking on the search engines. Prune down the number of links on your pages and ensure a proper easy-to-navigate interface for your site so that visitors can navigate unassisted.
3. Removing Old Content
While it is crucial that you upload new content, removing old content from your website can affect its ranking on the search engines. The search engines usually require time to re-analyze and reposition a website when you remove old content. Before you remove my content, analyze it, and know its relevance to your ranking. Also, update optimized content using valuable keywords.
4. Changing a Website’s URL
An existing URL has already been indexed and ranked over the years. If changing the URL does not offer any significant benefit or relevance to your brand, products, services, or content, do not change your site’s URL. Changing your URL will affect your site’s ranking on the search engines. If you must change your site’s URL, track your SEO ranking and performance both on paid searches and organic SEO.
5. Seasonal Offers
During the festive period, some businesses offer discounts and other marketing techniques to drive massive traffic to their websites. As a result, users will prefer to visit the site that provides these offers regardless of their ranking on the first page of the search engine result pages. You also can take advantage of this particular period to up your game and use the SEO strategy that captures the moment to improve your ranking. Else, your site may drop in ranking while others move up.
