Organic traffic is arguably the most important traffic type to get to your website, providing highly targeted users for free.
That being said, it does take both time and effort to generate, and a solid knowledge of SEO is needed if you want to enjoy organic traffic in the long term.
Yet, it is all worth it when you see the results of your hard work in the form of lots of new site visitors, especially if they are engaging with your site for longer than a brief glance over the home page.
However, what happens when these new customers suddenly start disappearing overnight?
You wake up in the morning, log onto your Google Analytics account and see a massive drop in traffic. You then check your rankings, and they have fallen dramatically or, worse, vanished completely.
Where are they all going? And more importantly, why are they all going?
If you are at a loss as to where all your hard-earned organic traffic has gone, the below guide can help you to uncover the likely reason for this.
Keep reading to find out the most likely culprits in your sudden and unexpected SEO ranking drop. Plus, you will find information on how you can claw your way back to higher rankings.
Manual actions
If you experience a very sudden and significant drop in your website rankings, the most likely cause of this is a Google penalty. As opposed to algorithm updates, manual actions are applied manually by real people who work for Google.
If your ranking has not dropped on other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo, Google has likely penalized you.
Fortunately, if you have been hit with a penalty, you do have the opportunity to talk to Google about it and try to fix the problem. Start by heading to Google Search Console, where you should find a manual action report. This will detail what you have done wrong and explain how you can rectify the issue.
Some of the most common reasons why you might receive a manual Google penalty include:
- User-generated spam
- Hidden text or keyword stuffing
- Pure spam
- Thin content that offers little value
- Unnatural links to and from your site
Depending on the severity of your violation, the restrictions imposed on your website will remain for either an allocated period or until you rectify the situation.
If you want to avoid manual Google penalties, simply practice good SEO and be vigilant of your Google Search Console account.
Algorithm updates
Another issue that will cause your rankings to disappear overnight seemingly, algorithm updates can result in algorithmic penalties. This type of penalty is not processed by a Google employee but is issued directly by Google’s algorithms.
You can receive an algorithmic penalty for violating any of the Google Webmaster Guidelines, with the Medic and E-A-T update hitting many websites hard.
In terms of avoiding penalties from algorithm updates, this is a tricky one, as Google is not known for advertising their minor updates. One way to be prepared for future algorithm changes is to enlist the services of a professional SEO management company that can help protect you from a massive ranking drop.
If it is too late and you have already been affected by an algorithm change, then your best course of action is to research the update in question and see how you can appease it. This will usually take a little more time and fine-tuning your website to get it right, but it is not impossible.
Lost links
Another common reason you may have seen a drop in your traffic and ranking is that you have lost links. Links are incredibly important for your overall SEO strategy, enabling you to gain trust and increase your authority within your niche.
However, it is much easier to lose a valuable link than it is to create a new one, and once you start losing links, it will not be long before Google starts to notice, and your rankings begin to drop.
Although you should check each link that you have lost individually, some of the main reasons why you might have lost a link include:
- The link was removed intentionally because it was an unnatural link
- The link became broken or changed during a site update
- An internal link was replaced with a new link to a different source
As a general rule, if you lose a few low-authority links, this should not affect the amount of organic traffic being driven to your site that much. When you start to lose one or two high-authority links, you will start to notice a significant drop in rankings.
If you have lost some valuable links, do not despair, you may be able to get them back by speaking to the webmaster for the site you have lost the link to.
Broken redirects
If you have just launched a new website or are migrating to a new server, you will likely see a drop in rankings if you do not have a proper 301 redirect in place.
Broken redirects can be a bit of a nightmare, as once a user has had a bad experience on your site, worst-case scenario, they do not come back.
Therefore, using a 301 redirect is vital if you want to keep your traffic numbers up and your rankings high. A 301 redirect essentially tells search engines that a page, multiple pages, or your entire website has moved and that you want site visitors to be directed to your new address.
If you set up a 301 redirect correctly, you should not experience a drop in your rankings or be penalized for duplicate content.
Outranked by competition
Even if you have successfully ranked for a certain keyword for many years, there is always the risk that someone will outrank you. This is just the nature of search engine optimization.
Google’s ultimate goal is to provide searchers with the best possible search result every time, and therefore if one of your competitors is producing content that offers more value, they will rank them higher than you.
The easiest way to maintain your ranking or improve it is to consistently strive to create great content that offers value to your target audience. Whether that be by hiring a professional content writer, increasing the number of blogs you publish, or incorporating video content into your content marketing strategy, whatever you choose to do, make sure you are consistent in your efforts.
Natural changes
Occasionally you will experience a drop in rankings that is not directly related to your website. Google often makes changes to the type of results they deliver based on user behavior.
For example, if something is trending and as a result, there is a sudden increase in searches for this topic, Google will bring up newer results which will ultimately push your content further down.
Check Google Trends to determine if any recent shifts may have caused your sudden SEO ranking drop.
Page speed
If your site loading speed is too slow, your user experience will be impacted upon and your long-term ability to rank well. Furthermore, websites with longer loading times experience higher bounce rates, lower average time spent on each page, and reduced conversion rates.
You need to consider two factors if you think your rankings are being affected by loading speed. Firstly, have you made any recent change to your website that has resulted in low page speeds? This may include the addition of new plug-ins or changing your site’s theme. Secondly, do some pages on your site load slower than others? If yes, you may have overloaded these pages. If one of these slower pages happens to be about a crucial keyword, this could lead to a pretty significant drop in your ranking.
You can check the speed of your site using Google PageSpeed Insights. This free online tool will also provide you with tips on how to improve your page loading times.
Conclusion
When it comes to your rankings, you need to be constantly on the ball. One moment of distraction, and you can find all your hard work undone in just one night. On a more positive note, most causes of ranking drops can be made right with a little know-how and effort on your behalf.
As you are probably all too aware, search engines are constantly changing to suit the modern searcher’s needs. While this may be frustrating for you as a business owner who is trying to improve your rankings, it is ultimately beneficial for all parties involved, as a satisfied searcher is more likely to make a purchase.
To avoid your website falling victim to an unexpected ranking drop, keep one eye on SEO trends at all times. Alternatively, use an SEO agency to do this for you.
Get in touch with our SEO experts here today and find out how we can help you avoid drop and improve your website’s overall ranking.
