However, there's always the risk of losing that sweet spot - and when that happens, every effort to recover rankings must be made swiftly and accurately.
So, let’s take a closer look at some effective strategies to recover your SEO rankings promptly.
Why Should You Immediately Recover Your Rankings?
Your SEO rankings are the key indicators of your website's health and digital visibility. In principle, the higher up you are on those SERPs, the more attention you grab, and the more traffic you attract.
Losing your SEO rankings can translate into lost traffic, and subsequently, lost customers or clients.
The faster you recover rankings, the quicker you can restore consistency in traffic and preserve your online reputation.
What are the Common Causes of Declining Rankings?
Noticing a decline in rankings can be disheartening. However, understanding the root cause is the first step to recovery.
Many factors can contribute to dropping rankings, and addressing these issues head-on can reposition your site where it belongs—at the top of SERPs.
Let’s break down the common reasons behind ranking drops:
The Keywords Just Got More Competitive
A key reason for dropping rankings is increased keyword competition.
The digital marketplace is continually evolving, and competitors might be targeting the same keywords more aggressively, with newer and more optimized content:
📉 Fresh Content: Competitors may be constantly updating their content, making it more relevant and valuable.
📉 Higher Authority Links: They may have garnered high-quality backlinks that bolster their authority.
The Content on Your Page is Outdated
Search engines prioritize content that is current and relevant.
If your website content hasn't been updated in a while, it may start to lose its value in the eyes of search engines:
📉 Irrelevant Information: Outdated facts, figures, or data can diminish the credibility of your content.
📉 SEO Trends: SEO best practices evolve; what worked a few years ago might not be effective today.
Your On-Page SEO is Off-Key
On-page SEO is a critical component of how search engines interpret and rank your content.
If your on-page optimization is lacking, your rankings are likely to suffer:
📉 Missing or Poorly Written Meta Tags: Title tags and meta descriptions should be compelling and keyword-optimized.
📉 Inadequate Keyword Usage: Ensure key phrases are seamlessly integrated within your content, headers, and subheaders.
💡 You might want to read: Understanding On-Page and Off-Page SEO
Your Technical SEO is Missing Crucial Pieces
Technical SEO is another pillar of a robust SEO strategy. Overlooking this can result in your site not being crawled or indexed adequately by search engines:
📉 Slow Loading Speed: A slow website can result in higher bounce rates, causing Google to penalize your pages.
📉 Mobile Unfriendliness: With mobile-first indexing, a site that isn't mobile-friendly can significantly lose rankings.
💡 You might want to read: Mobile-First Indexing: What is It & How it Works
There Are Manual Actions Against Your Site
Manual actions are penalties inflicted by Google when it believes your site has breached its webmaster guidelines. These can have a drastic impact on your rankings:
📉 Unnatural Links: Engaging in link schemes or buying backlinks can flag your site as manipulative.
📉 Thin Content: Producing low-value or duplicate content can also attract penalties.
You’ve Lost Backlinks
Backlinks are like votes of confidence from other websites. Losing them can weaken your site’s authority and trustworthiness:
📉 Link Degradation: Links from outdated or low-authority sites can lose their value.
📉 Manual Removal: Webmasters can remove links, either due to site restructuring or policy changes.
Search Engine Algorithms Have Changed... Again
Finally, search engines, especially Google, regularly update their algorithms. These changes can shuffle SERPs and impact your rankings:
📉 Core Algorithm Updates: These are significant and can shift the SEO landscape overnight.
📉 Minor Algorithm Tweaks: Smaller updates can still upset your keyword rankings.
9 Steps to Recover SEO Rankings
Understanding why rankings decline is only half the battle. Now, let’s move on to how you can actually recover your SEO rankings.
Here’s a strategy designed to help you regain your position on SERPs swiftly and effectively:
Step 1: Acknowledge the Drop
Acknowledging the drop in rankings can be a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s a crucial starting point.
Taking a data-driven approach, utilize tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to identify significant drops. These platforms will help you pinpoint the exact keywords that have fallen and understand the scope of the impact.
Once you have the data, it’s essential to assess how widespread the issue is. Has it affected just a few keywords, or is it more extensive?
Understanding this will help you prioritize which areas need the most immediate attention.
💡 You might want to check your current SERP ranking: Free Google SERP Rank Checker
Step 2: Identify Violations
Search engines like Google have stringent guidelines to ensure that websites offer valuable and relevant content to users. Violating these can result in penalties.
Common violations include keyword stuffing, cloaking (showing different content to users and search engines), and indulging in paid link schemes.
Regularly review Google Search Essentials to stay compliant. This involves revisiting your SEO strategies and making necessary adjustments to align with the best practices recommended by Google.
Ensuring that your website adheres to these guidelines will help avoid penalties and lay a solid foundation for recovery.
Step 3: Check for Algorithm Updates
Algorithm updates are an inevitable part of the SEO landscape. Google frequently rolls out updates, some minor and others more significant, which can impact your rankings.
Staying informed about these changes is essential for diagnosing drops in your keyword rankings.
Follow reputable SEO news websites to stay updated on the latest algorithm changes.
Additionally, keep an eye on official announcements from Google, especially those related to core algorithm updates. These updates often come with guidance on how to adapt your SEO strategies to mitigate any negative impacts.
Step 4: Audit Your Backlinks
The quality and quantity of your backlinks significantly influence your site's authority and ranking. Conducting a backlink audit is a crucial step in recovering SEO rankings.
Utilize SEOmator’s Free Backlink Checker Tool to conduct a thorough audit of your backlinks. This tool can help you identify the sources of your backlinks and assess their quality.
Look for authoritative sources that are relevant to your niche. It's essential to identify and disavow any toxic backlinks that might be harming your site's reputation.
Step 5: Rebuild Lost Backlinks
Losing backlinks can weaken your site's authority, so rebuilding or replacing them is critical. Revert to effective link-building strategies to regain lost ground.
Guest blogging is an excellent way to earn valuable backlinks. Write high-quality guest posts for reputable websites in your niche, ensuring that your content is informative and provides value to the readers.
Additionally, focus on creating high-quality, shareable content on your own site that naturally attracts backlinks.
Outreach is another effective strategy. Reach out to webmasters and bloggers in your industry to establish mutually beneficial link-building relationships.
By providing valuable content and building strong connections, you can regain and even surpass your previous backlink profile.
Step 6: Conduct a Website Audit
An SEO website audit emerges as a comprehensive examination that provides an in-depth analysis of a website's visibility in search engines.
To understand the areas of your website that need to be improved, simply use SEOmator’s Free SEO Audit Tool. This tool will provide you with a detailed report that includes the efficacy of content in relation to targeted keywords, backlink quality, ensuring that the site is easily navigable, verifying that all web pages are secure and load effectively, and much more.
Ultimately, with an SEO audit you can ensure that your website is optimized to achieve the highest possible search engine rankings, steering a path that boosts your rankings.
Step 7: Solve Technical Issues
Technical SEO is equally crucial. Even the best content can struggle to rank if your site has technical issues.
A slow website can hurt your rankings as user experience (UX) is a critical factor for SEO.
To improve your page loading speed, you can compress images to reduce load times, implement browser caching to speed up your site for repeat visitors, and reduce the size of CSS and JavaScript files by minifying them.
Google has adopted a mobile-first indexing policy, meaning it prioritizes the mobile version of sites in its rankings, so make sure your website is optimized for mobile.
Moreover, ensure your website is responsive and offers a seamless experience across all devices and implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for faster mobile loading times.
Finally, it’s crucial to implement structured data (schema markup) to help search engines understand your content better. This can also make your search results more informative and engaging through rich snippets.
Step 8: Fix Indexation and Crawling Blockages
Search engines must be able to crawl and index your site efficiently. Any hindrances in this process can cause your rankings to drop.
Ensure that your robots.txt file is not blocking important pages from being crawled and create and submit an XML sitemap to ensure that search engines can easily find all pages on your site. This is like a roadmap for search engine bots.
Furthermore, correct any canonicalization issues to avoid duplicate content penalties. Use canonical tags to tell search engines which version of a page is the preferred one.
💡 You might want to read: Canonical Issues: How to Find & Fix and Avoid Them
Step 9: Leverage Social Media
Social media can indirectly impact your SEO by driving traffic, increasing engagement, and elevating brand visibility.
Use platforms like Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Instagram to share your content regularly. This increases your reach and can drive traffic back to your site.
Don’t neglect to tailor your content to fit the platform. For example, short, engaging posts work well on X, while in-depth articles are better suited for LinkedIn.
Lastly, actively engage with your followers by responding to comments and participating in discussions. This builds a loyal community and encourages sharing and referrals.
Final Thoughts
The journey to improve and recover your SEO rankings is undoubtedly challenging, but it is also immensely rewarding.
Rankings fluctuate for various reasons, some more complex than others. Identifying the exact cause can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack, but being aware of the common culprits can simplify the task
By systematically addressing these potential problem areas, you can troubleshoot effectively and move towards recovering your lost SEO rankings. The key is to be thorough and methodical in your approach, ensuring that nothing is overlooked.
While attempting to recover your rankings, it's vital to underscore that SEO is an ongoing process. The strategies and steps outlined here are not just one-time fixes but should be integrated into your continual SEO practices to ensure long-term success!
💡 You might also want to read:
- How to Rank a Website in a Specific Country
