In this Digital world, getting a top position in SERP is important to increase visibility as well as sales for your concern. Not many are aware of the reason for ranking drop and why it happens to the site. If you are struggling with ranking then, here are some reasons and solutions that help you with your ranking drop.

What Is Ranking Drop?

The ranking drop is nothing but a sudden drop or slow drop in ranking which results in lost rank or missing from SERP.

Reasons For Ranking Drop:

Google Penalty:

If your site suddenly drops 10-20 position in a short period of time then, it indicates Google penalty. The ranking drops may happen due to algorithmic change or due to manual action by Google employee.

How To Find If Your Site Is Penalised?

You are notified by Google in Webmaster if your site is penalized or manual action. In the site messages, Google provides details of any action or error found by Google bots. There is also a manual action menu where google notifies of manual action taken on your site.

Key Points On Google Penalty:

• You can easily find the cause of the imposed penalty and try to correct it.
• If an error is on-page, then try to change your content and links.
• If an error is due to off-page, think about disavowing spammy links.
• You can submit reconsideration if your site is imposed to the manual action.

Manual Action:

How To Diagnosis Manual Action?

You can diagnose manual action using search console messages. In some cases, Google specifies the reason for manual action and in some cases, they won’t. Google also specifies that only a page or whole website is under manual action.

You Are Hacked:

The ranking drop may happen if your site is hacked. If you find any messages like “This site may be harmful” in SERP then, your site may be hacked.

Cloaking & Irrelevant Redirects:

The cloaking is the process of showing different content to google bots and users. It will also affect the ranking of your site. While irrelevant redirects may lead to ranking drop and also provides a negative experience to the users.

Remove User Generated Spam Links

It is important to remove spammy links from your site. Because it may cause a ranking drop to your site and provides a bad user experience.

Unnatural Links:

Unnatural links can be formed in your site either by buying backlinks or by backlinks from spammy sites. Either way, it is important to remove this backlink to prevent from backlink drop.

Negative SEO:

Some links are automatically build to your site and it may be toxic enough to affect your ranking. It is important to keep your eye on your backlink profile and remove it using Google disavow if needed.

Note: You can also make use of tools like SEO spyglass from link-assistant if needed.

Disavowing Links:

Google itself said that “ it is good for a site owner to disavow unnatural links build by negative SEO or by some bots.

Note: There are tools like (https://cognitiveseo.com) helps you to find out unnatural links.

On-page Issue In Your Site:

If your site has any on-page issue then, you can find slow ranking drop even though good content and link building.

• Use GWT to understand if there is any problem.
• You have to take a deep look at link structure and any other problem in site links.

Losing Links:

Losing links may also be the reason behind the ranking drop and its strong signal of losing your ranking. If links are removed by Google webmaster then, there is the possibility of Google penalizing you.

• Track your lost link with any software.
• Check whether it is removed by Google.

Google Algorithm Update:

Google Algorithm update may cause a slight drop or a big drop in the ranking. You can find a sudden ranking drop or continuous ranking drop for your site. Here are ways to prevent your site from algorithm rank drop.

• Build your brand and backlink.
• Keep an eye on your community and other factors on site.
• Check for on-page errors.

How To Diagnosis Algorithm?

The algo updates may be the reason for the ranking drop. Particularly, you have to keep an eye on both panda and penguin updates. You can find the effect of algorithm update in sites like search engine land, Moz and other news sites will give insight about the update.

If you can’t find a solution for ranking drop due to an algorithm update, ask search engine communities where you can find a solution.

Note: To prevent from ranking drop from algorithm update, avoid grey hat SEO techniques.

Google Flux:

The google flux is a sudden or slight rank drop off your site without any reason. Google flux is wrongly interpreted as negative SEO.

How to know its Google Flux?

• No on-page issue.
• No linking problems.
• No known updates.
• No competitor issues.

There is no method that you can tackle Google Flux and you have to work hard to get your ranking back.

Conclusion:

Ranking drop is one of the common issues that every SEO has to tackle. There is nothing will help an SEO other than patience, finding a solution and putting all your effort into it. If you want to know more about the related topic then, take a look at Digital Marketing Blog.

Thanks.