It can be scary to find that the ranking of your website has dropped drastically. This is especially true if you are into digital marketing or eCommerce development and tracking your website progress regularly. However, do not panic as there are several ways to recover from this rankings drop.
It is crucial to track the ranking to make sure whether the ranking is going up or down. Google makes thousands of algorithm changes every year so staying up-to-date with the latest standards is a must. Identify the cause of the drop in ranking before taking any step.
Check out these steps to recover from a drop in Website ranking and traffic.
1. Was your website penalized by Google?
When the ranking of a website drops, it is a possibility that it is the outcome of being penalized by Google. However, this is not the case most likely so there is no need to worry until you are sure. If you were not engaged in unethical activities such as purchasing links, you do not have to fret about being penalized. In case you got a manual penalty, a notification would be sent in Google Webmaster Tools.
2. Your website could be having link-related issues
Your website will have a high ranking when its link profile is high. On the other hand, when the link profile of a site is weak, it will get low rankings. You need to conduct a proper link audit of the website to know about its link profile. A backlink tool can be used to detect where the bad links are. Once the bad links are found, you should get them removed immediately.
3. Update links, XML sitemaps, and canonical tags if you made a structural change in your website
Did you make some significant changes to your website? The alterations made by you could be one of the reasons for the drop in the site’s rankings. The ranking can be affected when the website migrates to another server or if you made big structural changes in your website. In case you are making alterations that need a 301 redirect, ensure that your canonical tags, XML sitemaps, and links are also updated. If you have recently uploaded several images and videos to a webpage, it can which can slow it down, causing a drop in the ranking. The Page Speed Insights Tool can identify if your page slowed down due to changes and give recommendations to improve its speed.
4. Your website perhaps needs refinement
If all other steps fail, you may have to devote some time to improve your website. In short, you need to enhance the user experience and design of your website. All these are crucial for the high rank and performance of your website.
5. Take the help of SEO experts
A major reason for the drop in your website ranking could be due to the Google updating the algorithm. Google keeps on updating its algorithm continuously, which can affect the rankings. If this is the case, consult specialists offering SEO services for the best efficiency. If there are no clear SEO issues, you may need to have patience for some weeks for the rankings to recover.
6. Keep a tab on your competitor websites
There is a possibility that your rival made significant changes in their website that pushed its ranking above yours. However, the issue will possibly affect a few of your web pages instead of your entire website.
7. Ensure that your website does not host malware
If your website has been hacked, there will be damage done to the SEO ranking of your website. You need to clean your website and eliminate the security loopholes. To improve the ranking, ensure that the hacked website does not host spam, malware, or any other harmful content installed by the hacked.
8. Fix problems with the website navigation
Your site’s ranking may drop if several internal links have been removed suddenly. You can run a crawler on the site’s old and new version if you enjoy access to the site’s older version. This way, a comparison can be made on the count of inbound links. It is advisable to fix the problem in the navigational structure.
9. Improve the site speed by using Google PageSpeed Insights
Slower sites can be penalized and trigger their lower rankings. Google decreases the number of visitors sent to a site in case the response time of the server is more than two seconds. Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that measures and tracks your website performance. The tool can work on mobile, as well as, desktop versions of your website. It will send alerts for web pages that are not optimized properly.
10. Revert accidental changes to improve rankings
There is a possibility that you did not make any recent changes to your website intentionally. The drop in ranking can be also because of technical errors or accidental changes. For instance, someone might have accidentally formatted the “robots.txt” file incorrectly or deleted the text accidentally. Just revert these changes to gain back the previous rankings.
If you wish to get help to recover from a recent drop in your website ranking, look no further. Get in touch with a specialized search engine digital marketing agencies in Maryland to boost your website ranking!