The first thing to do when your ranking drops is...DO NOT PANIC! I cannot tell you how many people want to get in there and change everything as soon as anything suddenly changes. The phone will ring and the first thing I hear is "what are you going to do?" Clients want quick action when their website drops in the rankings. That concern is understandable given the fact that for many businesses sales rise and fall with their ranking.
The thing to keep in mind is that often the changes which suddenly occur suddenly reverse themselves. This often occurs when a search engine changes its algorithm, then realized it had a negative impact and reversed the change. A momentary problem online which causes your website to go missing.
Here are some of the steps to take before you get into changing everything:
1. Identify the Problem
a. Check which rankings have dropped
b. Check to see if there have been significant changes to the SEO or content of the site in the past week or so?
c. Check which search engines rankings have changed
d. If limited to only one search engine, check to see if their algorithm has changed?
2. If your ranking remains lower for more than a couple of weeks there may be a reason to be concerned and research of your competition would be the next logical step. Perhaps a change in the way they optimize their site has affected your ranking or perhaps there is new competition in the market.
3. If your position has declined by just one or two competitors you should have a very close look at what they are doing.
4. Finally consider the volume of traffic for the keywords you have selected. If the normal traffic volume is low for your selected keywords and traffic to keywords your competition uses is higher, your competitor could easily move above you in the rankings with some simple changes to their website. The reason for this is because traffic to a website is the most important indicator Search Engines use to determine what website should be on top.
There will always be ups and downs in your page rankings. Remember that if you have been following Google’s Best SEO Practices you will usually be ok. When you get into the so called Black Hat SEO you can have big problems and even be “Black Listed” from a search engine.
Tim Bennett
Internet Marketing Consultant