Some common causes of rank drop that are easy to diagnose

[This article was written by Alexander Fernandise.]

Search rankings are very fluid in nature, and you might experience frequent fluctuations. As long the fluctuation happens within some tolerable limit there is nothing to worry. However, if the rank drop is quite significant and persistent, you should try to find out the reasons for it. It might lead to a situation when you tend to press the panic button especially if it happens for high-volume generic terms no matter even if it happens for a short while.  Be assured, that there is really nothing to panic because in the majority of instances it is possible to determine the exact reason for the rank drop.

Knowing the reasons should give you satisfaction because you can know what actions to take to recover from the setback. Below, you would find some reasons that normally contribute to loss of ranking.

New links can push down rank

Backlinks do help to improve ranking, but it is also true that a sudden influx of new links can result in temporary loss of ranking.  How the new links impact ranking depends on the trustworthiness of websites and also the authority of the linking domains.  The disturbance in ranking that results from new links is especially applicable for websites that might have received Google’s notification for unnatural links earlier. Even if the new links are relevant and natural, this can happen.

To be sure that the rank drop is due to the surge of new links you can use a backlink tool like Majestic and Ahrefs that helps to view new links.

Algorithm changes affect ranking

Search rank volatility can increase after the launch of any Google update when many websites lose their ranks temporarily. However, it is never easy to determine the impact of updates on search rankings because algorithmic updates have become more complex and sophisticated as admitted by the Philly SEO experts.  You must be able to identify if the timing of rank dropping coincides with the rollout of algorithmic update which proves that the update is the reason for losing rank.

Changes to the website

The ranking is linked to the website design and the optimizations done on it, and if there is any rank drop after any such web development activity, you know what has caused it. Sometimes web developers make changes to websites without informing the key stakeholders and marketers which you can take care of by arranging for scheduled crawls for comparing crawls that focuses on the structural changes done to the website.

In addition to the above, keep a close watch on the basic technicalities that control the crawling as well as the indexing of the website. If there are no-index tags, incorrect canonical tags or content that cannot be rendered, any or all of these can have an adverse effect on ranking. Keep an eye on the robots.txt file and homepage by conducting hourly checks to ensure that the basics are done right. However, doing the basics right is often the toughest task on hand as we tend to take it for granted.

Author Bio:

Alexander Fernandise is an experienced blogger who has written articles for several renowned blogs and websites about various uses of social media to engineer more business traffic on business websites. He specializes in devising digital marketing methods and strategies for companies and researching Iton how marketing methods can be made more enhanced.