A few weeks ago, rankings for pages
on a key section of my site dropped an average of a full position in one day.
I’ve been an SEO for 7 years now, but I still ran around like a chicken with my
head cut off, panicked that I wouldn’t be able to figure out my mistake. There
are so many things that could’ve gone wrong: Did I or my team unintentionally
mess with internal link equity? Did we lose links? Did one of Google’s
now-constant algorithm updates screw me over?
Since the drop happened to a group
of pages, I made the assumption it had to do with our site or page structure
(it didn't). I wasted a good day focused on technical SEO. Once I realized my
error, I decided to put together a guide to make sure that next time, I’ll do
my research effectively. And you, my friends, will reap the rewards.
First,
make sure there’s actually a rankings change
Okay, I have to start with this:
before you go down this rabbit hole of rankings changes, make sure there was
actually a rankings change. Your rankings tracker may not have localized
properly, or have picked up on one of Google’s rankings experiments or
personalization.
Find out:
- Has organic traffic dropped to the affected page(s)?
- We’re starting here because this is the most reliable
data you have about your site. Google Search Console and rankings
trackers are trying to look at what Google’s doing; your web analytics
tool is just tracking user counts. - Compare organic traffic to the affected page(s)
week-over-week both before and after the drop, making sure to compare
similar days of the week. - Is the drop more significant than most week-over-week
changes? - Is the drop over a holiday weekend? Is there any
reason search volume could’ve dropped? - Does Google Search Console show a similar rankings drop?
- Use the Search Analytics section to see clicks,
impressions, and average position for a given keyword, page, or combo. - Does GSC show a similar rankings drop to what you saw
in your rankings tracker? (Make sure to run the report with the selected
keyword(s).) - Does your rankings tracker show a sustained
rankings drop? - I recommend tracking rankings daily for your important
keywords, so you’ll know if the rankings drop is sustained within a few
days. - If you're looking for a tool recommendation, I'm
loving Stat.
If you’ve just seen a drop in your
rankings tool and your traffic and GSC clicks are still up, keep an eye on
things and try not to panic. I’ve seen too many natural fluctuations to go to
my boss as soon as I see an issue.
But if you’re seeing that there’s a
rankings change, start going through this guide.
Figure
out what went wrong
1.
Did Google update their algorithm?
Google rolls out a new algorithm
update at least every day, most silently. Good news is, there are leagues of
SEOs dedicated to documenting those changes.
- Are there any SEO articles or blogs talking about a
change around the date you saw the change? Check out: - Do you have any SEO friends who have seen a change? Pro
tip: Make friends with SEOs who run sites similar to yours,
or in your industry. I can’t tell you how helpful it’s been to talk
frankly about tests I’d like to run with SEOs who’ve run similar tests.
If
this is your issue...
The bad news here is that if
Google’s updated their algorithm, you're going to have to change your approach
to SEO in one way or another.
Make sure you understand:
- What is Google penalizing, exactly?
- Why did Google make the change?
- Not to plug my own work, but the best way to avoid
algorithmic penalties is to make SEO strategies with what Google wants in
mind.
Your next move is to put together a
strategy to either pull yourself out of this penalty, or at the very least to
protect your site from the next one.
2.
Did your site lose links?
Pull the lost links report from Ahrefs or Majestic. They’re the most reputable link
counters out there, and their indexes are updated daily.
- Has there been a noticeable site-wide link drop?
- Has there been a noticeable link drop to the page or
group of pages you’ve seen a rankings change for? - Has there been a noticeable link drop to pages on your
site that link to the page or group of pages you’ve seen a rankings
change for? - Run Screaming Frog on your site to find which pages
link internally to the affected pages. Check internal link counts for
pages one link away from affected pages. - Has there been a noticeable link drop to inbound links
to the page or group of pages you’ve seen a rankings change for? - Use Ahrefs or Majestic to find the sites that link to
your affected pages. - Have any of them suffered
recent link drops? - Have they recently updated
their site? Did that change their URLs, navigation structure, or on-page
content?
If
this is your issue...
The key here is to figure out who
you lost links from and why, so you can try to regain or replace them.
- Can you get the links back?
- Do you have a relationship with the site owner who
provided the links? Reaching out may help. - Were the links removed during a site update? Maybe it was
accidental. Reach out and see if you can convince them to replace them. - Were the links removed and replaced with links to a
different source? Investigate the new source — how can you make your
links more appealing than theirs? Update your content and reach out to
the linking site owner. - Can you convince your internal team to invest in new
links to quickly replace the old ones? - Show your manager(s) how much a drop in link count
affected your rankings and ask for the resources it’ll take to replace
them. - This will be tricky if you were the one to build the
now-lost links in the first place, so if you did, make sure you’ve put
together a strategy to build longer-term ones next time.
3.
Did you change the affected page(s)?
If you or your team changed the affected
pages recently, Google may not think that they’re as relevant to the target
keyword as they used to be.
- Did you change the URL?
- DO NOT CHANGE URLS. URLs act as unique identifiers for
Google; a new URL means a new page, even if the content is the same. - Has the target keyword been removed from the page
title, H1, or H2s? - Is the keyword density for the target keyword lower
than it used to be? - Can Google read all of the content on the page?
- Look at Google’s cache by searching for
cache:www.yourdomain.com/your-page to see what Google sees. - Can Google access your site? Check Google Search
Console for server and crawl reports.
If
this is your issue…
Good news! You can probably revert
your site and regain the traffic you’ve lost.
- If you changed the URL, see if you can change it back.
If not, make sure the old URL is 301 redirecting to the new URL. - If you changed the text on the page, try reverting it
back to the old text. Wait until your rankings are back up, then try
changing the text again, this time keeping keyword density in mind. - If Google can’t read all of the content on your page,
THIS IS A BIG DEAL. Communicate that to your dev team. (I’ve found dev
teams often undervalue the impact of SEO, but “Googlebot can’t read the page”
is a pretty understandable, impactful problem.)
4.
Did you change internal links to the affected page(s)?
If you or your team added or removed
internal links, that could change the way link equity flows through your site,
changing Google’s perceived value of the pages on your site.
- Did you or your team recently update site navigation
anywhere? Some common locations to check: - Top navigation
- Side navigation
- Footer navigation
- Suggested products
- Suggested blog posts
- Did you or your team recently update key pages on your
site that link to target pages? Some pages to check: - Homepage
- Top category pages
- Linkbait blog posts or articles
- Did you or your team recently update anchor text on
links to target pages? Does it still include the target keyword?
If
this is your issue…
Figure out how many internal links
have been removed from pointing to your affected pages. If you have access to
the old version of your site, run Screaming Frog (or a similar crawler) on the
new and old versions of your site so you can compare inbound link counts
(referred to as inlinks in SF). If you don’t have access to the old version of your
site, take a couple of hours to compare navigation changes and mark down
wherever the new layout may have hurt the affected pages.
How you fix the problem depends on
how much impact you have on the site structure. It’s best to fix the issue in
the navigational structure of the site, but many of us SEOs are overruled by the
UX team when it comes to primary navigation. If that’s the case for you, think
about systematic ways to add links where you can control the content.
Some common options:
- In the product description
- In blog posts
- In the footer (since UX will generally admit, few
people use the footer)
Keep in mind that removing links and
adding them back later, or from different places on the site, may not have the
same effect as the original internal links. You’ll want to keep an eye on your
rankings, and add more internal links than the affected pages lost, to make
sure you regain your Google rankings.
5.
Google’s user feedback says you should rank differently.
Google is using machine learning to
determine rankings. That means they’re at least in part measuring the value of
your pages based on their click-through rate from SERPs and how long visitors
stay on your page before returning to Google.
- Did you recently add a popup that is increasing bounce
rate? - Is the page taking longer to load?
- Check server response time. People are likely to give
up if nothing happens for a few seconds. - Check full page load. Have you added something that
takes forever to load and is causing visitors to give up quickly? - Have you changed your page titles? Is that lowering
CTR? (I optimized page titles in late November, and that one change
moved the average rank of 500 pages up from 12 to 9. One would assume
things can go in reverse.)
If
this is your issue…
- If the issue is a new popup, do your best to convince
your marketing team to test a different type of popup. Some options: - Scroll popups
- Timed popups
- Exit popups
- Stable banners at the top or bottom of the page (with
a big CLICK ME button!) - If your page is taking longer to load, you’ll need the
dev team. Put together the lost value from fewer SEO conversions now that
you’ve lost some rankings and you'll have a pretty strong case for dev
time. - If you’ve changed your page titles, change them back,
quick! Mark this test as a dud, and make sure you learn from it before you
run your next test.
6.
Your competition made a change.
You may have changed rank not
because you did anything, but because your competition got stronger or weaker.
Use your ranking tool to identify competitors that gained or lost the most from
your rankings change. Use a tool like Versionista
(paid, but worth it) or Wayback Machine
(free, but spotty data) to find changes in your competitors’ sites.
- Which competitors gained or lost the most as your
site’s rankings changed? - Has that competition gained or lost inbound links?
(Refer to #2 for detailed questions) - Has that competition changed their competing page?
(Refer to #3 for detailed questions) - Has that competition changed their internal link
structure? (Refer to #4 for detailed questions) - Has that competition started getting better
click-through rates or dwell time to their pages from SERPs? (Refer to #5
for detailed questions)
If
this is your issue…
You’re probably fuming, and your
managers are probably fuming at you. But there’s a benefit to this: you can
learn about what works from your competitors. They did the research and tested
a change, and it paid off for them. Now you know the value! Imitate your
competitor, but try to do it better than them this time — otherwise you’ll
always be playing catch up.
Now
you know what to do
You may still be panicking, but
hopefully this post can guide you to some constructive solutions. I find that
the best response to a drop in rankings is a good explanation and a plan.
And, to the Moz community of other
brilliant SEOs: comment below if you see something I’ve missed!
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