Is your website no longer be found on google? Here’s How to Overcome Google Rankings drop?
It is a very exciting topic for us but mostly very annoying for those affected by it. It’s about when you notice that your own website or ecommerce store can suddenly no longer be found or the ranking is massively dropped. Here is a first introduction to the topic. Please do not hesitate to contact us for individual advice and help!
First the good news
Google is not interested in the fact that super content suddenly smears and is gone just because someone made a technical mistake. If it is (as is usually the case) a purely technical error, then it can usually be remedied without permanent damage! Unless it was noticed months later.
For which systems does the first information apply here?
These are general SEO topics that are detached from systems. WordPress, Magento, WooCommerce, Drupal, Laravel but also your customer programming and other content management systems and ecommerce systems can all be affected by falling rankings on google.
The causes are always the same. Part of the challenge is to determine the exact cause. Google can no longer find the content, google is no longer allowed to index the content or the content has been changed so massively that Google can no longer find the content. Or an attempt was made to trick the search engine, which logically ends up badly.
The symptoms can be:
- With your own main keyword, your page is suddenly no longer found on page 1-2, for example, or even over a few weeks (2-3 weeks).
- Search terms with which you googled yourself no longer show your own page.
- According to Google Search Console, the rankings have fallen dramatically.
- The page may no longer even be found using a direct search for the domain.
- The google Maps entry no longer appears.
- The ranks have fallen by more than 2-3 positions.
- Certain keywords are X pages, Further back than normal.
Classification of symptoms with falling placement
If one or more of these things are noticed, it is most certainly not a normal fluctuation. Usually, something went really wrong somewhere. Google rankings do not fall by several pages within 2-3 weeks. This mostly happened in the context of adjustments or revisions of the website or ecommerce. Something is overlooked or set incorrectly by mistake and the problems begin.
What to do if the ranking drops?
Analysis of the cause!
First a clean analysis, this does not mean that everything has to be checked X hours. But it is simply necessary that don’t panic and check the usual problem areas piece by piece. This is the only way to specifically exclude certain things and hopefully find the cause as soon as possible.
Eliminate the cause
If the cause is known and is really known for sure, it is usually a small thing to fix. Fortunately, the error often lies in the technically incorrect configuration or bug of an application/extension and nothing has been done wrong with regard to the content. However, if something has been done wrong in terms of content, correcting it can be quite time-consuming because it simply eats up time.
What can the causes be?
Be careful not to start adapting it without really being sure that it is the cause! Otherwise, there is a risk of dragging on the cause or even making it worse. A classic that can no longer be found on google is e.g. on WordPress on “no index”
With WordPress, test systems are usually set to “no index”. Unfortunately, this little tick is easily overlooked. The possibly new page goes online and the ranking drops massively.
URL change or no redirection
You actually have good content, but why always adjusted the URL. As a result, google can no longer find the content because the URL is different. However, this usually leads to a weak drop in the rankings. Because google usually finds the new URL itself.
Errors in Robots.txt in combination with errors in sitemap
URL/page is sometimes introduced via sitemap, but are excluded using robots.txt. Of course, that cannot work. The ranking can fall normal to strong, depending on what you did there. Check out the comprehensive guide to robots.txt file for SEO!
Massively changing texts leads to poor rankings
When texts have been massively changed. In the worst case, they were completely deleted and rewritten. Then for google, only the URL is available, but everything on it is different. This is understandably a reason for google to revise the ranking because it is simply no longer the existing page.
Did you try to trick google?
One reason is working with keyword densities and similar things that can quickly backfire. If, for example, every subheading and heading is spammed with keywords that are optimized for then this normally leads to falling rankings. However, these fall very slowly but continuously.
Exotic points lead to ranking problems
However, there are a number of individual causes. In essence, however, it is always about the fact that content is no longer there where google expects it, google is forbidden to record content or an attempt was made to fool google and thus there was a legitimate punishment.
How quickly can these errors be corrected?
First, a detailed conversation/phone call is necessary in order to rule out things in advance or to find them directly. Afterwards, Google Search Console is extremely helpful. Without suitable tools, it is tedious to narrow down the causes. We will be happy to support you with the setup.
If it is a purely technical error, the ranking can increase again within minutes. Of course, this assumes that it is first clear and determined what the error is. The search for the cause can take significantly longer!
If, for example, the WordPress page was set to “no index” or a robots.txt is incorrect, this only needs to be corrected and usually quickly tracked down. Then google is manually set to search the page again. Usually, google is “happy” that the error has fixed and that google can index again. As a result, the ranking is usually back to how it was before the error in a few minutes.
Google is not interested in the actually super content suddenly being dropped and gone, just because someone made a technical mistake. So, it can usually completely correct without permanent damage.
It gets disgusting when content has massively improved. Then it is sometimes difficult to get the old content back, but the ranking can also be moved in the right direction. There are also tricks to get most of the old content even without backups. However, there it takes days, weeks or months until it is the same as before because the content has to be corrected first. Check out Content Optimization Tips to Improve Google Rankings.
Do you need help with Google Rankings Drop Solution?
Talk to us. We look forward to identifying the cause and showing you how to solve it. In order to help quickly, we need the most precise information possible about what happened, Which keywords are concerned?
If, you have already set up Google Search Console and Google Analytics then give us access to it. So, we can identify and analyse it!
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