Website Dropped in the Search Engine Rankings?

Has Your Website Dropped in the Search Engine Rankings?
What’s the first thing you do when your website rankings drop off the search engine radar? Do you wait a few days, review any recent changes to your Internet Marketing campaign and calmly monitor the situation.  Or do you reach for the panic button and start updating content, chasing keywords and all of the other Internet Marketing processes we are supposed to do.

Of course, there could be any number of reasons why your rankings might drop and the reality is, you may never find out exactly why. Google, as the most important (at the time of writing) of Search Engines is known to update its ranking criteria on a regular basis and then not tell anyone of the changes

So how can you be sure any changes you make won’t make the situation worse.  Here are a few top tips if your rankings plummet.

Waiting a while might be the best thing you can do. While the major engines are getting better than ever at ranking sites, fluctuations and algorithm shifts do occur and it could simply be that the changes to the search results are temporary. If after a week or so your rankings remain low for key search terms you previously ranked well for, double-check your site’s content, site structure, navigation and, if you have one, talk to your Internet Marketing consultant.

Look at your competition to see what they’re doing differently, review their website content and site structure for example, and evaluate who’s linking to you. It might be advisable to monitor the ongoing rankings of your main competition. Have they gone up or down? Can you see any obvious changes they made have made to their website?

Ensure your site is free of spam or anything that the major Search Engine may not like, for example, ‘keyword stuffing’ or ‘hidden content’. The Search Engines are now quite clever at identifying these black hat techniques. They should be avoided.

Most importantly, monitor the changes you make and the impact they may have, and use it to your advantage when there’s an upturn in your site’s search engine success.

Remember, Search Engine rankings will change – sometimes on a daily basis, so try to look at your rankings as an ‘ongoing guide’ to your current performance. Reacting in a measured and considered way will probably help you get back to where you want to be in the Search Engines.