So here is the situation: you have given all of your best efforts on SEO and content marketing but your Google PageRank keep falling down. Internet marketers know this can be very frustrating, especially when their clients have been invested a big budget to get the best result.
There are some reasons why this can happen. Some are within our authority to fix, while others aren’t. Here are five biggest reasons behind the search engine ranking downfall.
1. Not Implementing the 3 Pillars of SEO
Content, links and social media are the three pillars in SEO. Here are some questions you should ask yourself if you find your rankings are consistently falling.
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Content Strategy: Are you consistently publishing properly-optimised, high-quality content, both on your own website and external publishers? Is your existing content optimised from a technical SEO standpoint? What keywords are your customers and website visitors searching for?
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Inbound Links: Are you using legitimate methods to build high quality links to your website? Or are you focusing on outdated link building methods that are ineffective, at best, and damaging, at worst? Is your focus on steadily building quality links to your site, or on getting as many links as possible, regardless of quality?
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Social Media: Are you actively sharing your content via social media? Have you implemented Google Authorship in order to build up your Author Rank and increase clickthroughs in the SERPs? Are you building strong social and brand signals by actively engaging with customers on social media? Are you building an audience? Social media is the great amplifier of SEO. If you aren’t investing in social media yet, it’s time to do so if you’re serious about competing in organic search results.
2. Your Competitors are Outspending You
SEO campaigns should not be performed all by itself. If you’re in a competitive niche, it’s likely that your competitors are spending a considerable amount of money on their SEO campaigns. So, even if you’re spending money on SEO, your rankings could actually drop if your competitors are spending more than you, and thus, climbing ahead of you in the rankings, pushing you down as a result.
This doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It simply reflects an insufficient budget allocation compared to stiff competition. Keep in mind that large companies in lucrative industries may be spending tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars each month on SEO and content marketing campaigns, along with hiring full in-house teams.
For smaller businesses with more limited budgets, try to focus your efforts on long-tail keywords. This will be far more effective and less costly than trying to compete with the big names on competitive keywords.
3. Your Competitors are Doing Better
Take a look at your competitors’ website and social media activities and see how are they doing in terms of:
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Implementing the 3 pillars of SEO?
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Engaging with their customers on social media?
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Consistently creating high-quality content?
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Getting more (or better) media mentions than you?
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Properly optimising their website content?
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Getting high-quality guest blogging opportunities?
Take a look at what your key competitors are doing well, and take the necessary steps to do it even better (where possible).
4. Bad SEO Efforts in The Past
Even though you may have geared up your SEO tactics and strategy now, it’s possible that outdated and spammy SEO practices in which you participated in the past are coming back to get you. This is most likely to be the main cause if you noticed a sudden drop in rankings at a specific point in time which correlates to a known Google algorithm change. To ensure you don’t continue to get penalised, clean up your site and links the best you can. Here is how:
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Removing bad quality backlinks. Another effective way is disavow them if necessary.
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Removing or rewriting poor-quality content from your site
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Stop using hidden keywords or keyword stuffing
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Changing the anchor text you use for internal linking to make it more natural
5. Natural Flow of Search Results
As with the stock market, rankings and algorithm fluctuations can change day-by-day, and even hour-by-hour. If you notice a slight drop in rankings, there’s likely no need to panic. As long as your overall trend is upward, you should not worry.
However, if you see a sudden drop in SERP, you may have a manual or algorithmic penalty. This case, you should take action as soon as possible by implementing the strategies outlined above to get you back on track.