The Common Reasons Behind Sudden Drop in a Site’s Ranking and How to Fix Them

SEO Australia, you need to do it the right way.

Website ranking is a big concern for any business in Australia, regardless of size. Maintaining a website’s good ranking is precisely why businesses like to hire an SEO company in Australia. The leads and sales your business generates all depend on where you rank in the Google search engine. But the harsh truth is when it comes to SEO, things are extremely uncertain.

One day everything is going great, and the next day – your rankings have suddenly dropped. When faced with such a situation, it’s only natural to wonder – ‘why did this happen to me? But don’t panic. Because there are ways to make things work again.

First, it’s important to understand that SEO is an ever-changing landscape. What works today might not work tomorrow. So, it’s important to continually adapt and change your SEO strategy. Second, when your rankings drop, take a close look at your website and see if there are any changes that you need to make. It could be something as simple as adding new content or changing your titles and tags. Finally, don’t forget to keep an eye on your competition. If they’re doing something that’s working for them, there’s no reason why you can’t do the same.

With a little effort and patience, you can get your rankings back up again. And when you do, you’ll be glad you took the time to fix things.

This blog will help you to understand the common reasons behind a sudden drop in a site’s ranking and how to fix /prevent that from happening in the first place. Here are some common reasons for an instant decrease in your website rankings and what strategies and precautions every SEO company in Australia can follow to fix the situation:

1. ALGORITHMIC AND MANUAL PENALTY RANKING DROP

If you’ve noticed that your website has dropped a minimum of 10 positions for several keywords overnight, it’s likely due to a manual penalty. Manual penalties are imposed by Google when a webmaster has violated one of its guidelines. Some of the most common violations include spamming, cloaking, and unnatural backlinking. Algorithmic penalties, on the other hand, are automatically imposed by Google as part of their regular updates. The most common reasons for an algorithmic penalty include thin content, hacked websites, and cloaking. If you believe your website has been penalized, it’s important to immediately mitigate the damage.

Manual Penalties

  • Spamming – One of the most common manual penalties is imposed for spamming. This can include keyword stuffing, duplicating content, and creating doorway pages. To avoid being penalised for spamming, it’s important to create original and compelling content. You should also avoid using too many keywords or stuffed keywords in your titles and tags.
  • Cloaking – Cloaking is another common violation that can result in a manual penalty. This occurs when a website presents different content to users and search engine bots. To avoid being penalised for cloaking, it’s important to ensure that the content you’re presenting to users is the same as what you’re showing to search engine bots.
  • Unnatural Backlinks – Creating unnatural backlinks is another violation that can lead to a manual penalty. This includes buying links, link farms, and excessive link exchanges. To avoid being penalised for creating unnatural backlinks, it’s important only to create links that are relevant and come from high-quality websites.

Algorithmic Penalties

  • Thin Content – One of the most common algorithmic penalties is imposed for thin content. This occurs when a website doesn’t have enough relevant and original content. To avoid being penalised for thin content, it’s important to ensure that all of your pages have at least 300 words of high-quality content.
  • Hacked Websites – Another common algorithmic penalty is imposed for hacked websites. This occurs when a website has been compromised by a hacker, and the content has been changed. To avoid being penalised for a hacked website, it’s important to ensure that your website is secure and up-to-date.
  • Cloaking – Cloaking is also an algorithmic penalty, and it occurs when a website presents different content to users and search engine bots. To avoid being penalised for cloaking, it’s important to ensure that the content you’re presenting to users is the same as what you’re showing to search engine bots.

Identifying and recovering from Google Penalties

If you think a Google penalty has hit your website, the first thing you need to do is check your Google Webmaster Tools account. You can find messages or notifications from Google related to the manual actions applied against your website. To do this, go to the menu of website messages and look for any issues detected by GoogleBot.

Once you’ve found the Google penalties applied to your website, accept them and research how to solve them. The first step is determining what harmed your site. If the issue is related to on-page factors, look for duplicate content and linking issues. If it is an off-page issue, it might be due to unnatural linking. Remove any links present in the content that are causing problems. Regaining your position back can take some time, so be patient. By following these steps, you can hopefully recover from any Google penalties applied to your website.

Preventions against Google Penalties

There are many different types of Google penalties that can be issued to a site, and every online marketing company needs to be aware of them to avoid them. Some best ways to avoid penalties include regularly monitoring your site for violations, ensuring that your content is original and relevant, and building links from high-quality websites. By taking these precautions, you can help ensure that your site will continue to rank highly in Google’s search results.

2. THE ROLE OF COMPETITORS

When you get outranked by a rival, it’s not the end of your world. You will see some cracks in ranking; whenever something like this happens to one website while others remain in the same position – that is because they’ve been competing with those who show up before them on search engines via content marketing strategies such as blogging or social media platforms (for example Facebook). So how do we identify these issues? Be aware of what our competitors are doing online: monitor updates made concerning themselves through various sites, including blog posts and status messages across different networks, so if there seems to be any change that may affect rankings, then take action!

How to identify this issue?

Becoming aware of the competition is important in any industry. You need to keep yourself updated on social media and websites that your competitors might be used for information, updates or advertisements- this will help you make sure nothing bad happens without knowing about it!

How to prevent this?

As any business competitor knows, understanding your rival’s strategies is essential to long-term success. Analysing their moves can give you an idea of what their next step might be. Try to learn about their link-building tactics and content strategies. If they are growing steadily, it means their methods are effective. Understand them closely and mould your tactics accordingly. Taking the time to understand your competition and adjust your strategy accordingly can help you stay one step ahead in the long run.

3. THE LOSS IN LINKS – IT CAN BE A LITTLE OR BIG DROP IN RANKING

In the SEO world, we often talk about “link velocity.” This refers to the speed at which links are gained or lost. A sudden change in link velocity can have a significant impact on a website’s ranking. If a website loses a large number of inbound links (also known as “backlinks”), it can expect to see a corresponding drop in its search engine ranking. This is because backlinks are key factors that search engines use to determine a website’s relevance and authority. So, if a website suddenly loses a significant number of backlinks, it is likely to see a drop in its search engine ranking. Conversely, if a website gains a large number of backlinks, it can expect to see an uptick in its ranking. This is why it is so important for website owners to monitor their link profiles and work to maintain a healthy mix of high-quality backlinks.

How to identify & solve?

If you want to identify whether or not you’re losing links, the first place to check is your profile. In your profile, there should be a list of links that you’ve built up over time. If you notice that the list is getting shorter, it’s a good indication that you’re losing links. To determine if the links are being removed intentionally by the webmaster, look for patterns in the links that are being removed. If it seems like the webmaster is deliberately removing links beneficial to you, it could be a red flag to Google that something isn’t right. If you’re concerned about losing links, the best thing to do is to reach out to the webmaster and ask them what’s going on. They may be able to give you more information about why they’re removing the links, and they may even be willing to restore some of the links that have been lost. By keeping communication open, you can help to prevent further link loss and keep your site ranking high in Google.

How to prevent this issue?

One of the main issues internet marketing companies face is link rot. Link rot happens when links to a website’s content become outdated and no longer work. This can be caused by many factors, such as changes in a website’s URL structure or the removal of content that was previously linked to it. Over time, link rot can lead to a significant loss of traffic and web visibility. To prevent this issue, internet marketing companies should use specialised software to track the links a website has lost and monitor link velocity. By doing so, they will be able to identify and fix broken links before they cause too much damage. In addition, they can also take steps to avoid link rot in the future by regularly checking their links and ensuring their content is up-to-date.

4. GOOGLE FLUX

Google flux is a big or slight decrease in Google rankings, depending on the situation. This is something over which you have no control. Such problems are quite volatile and unpredictable. If you see a big decrease in your rankings, it’s probably because of Google flux. There’s no need to panic, though. Just wait it out and watch your rankings stabilise. In the meantime, continue to create quality content and promote your site in other ways. Eventually, the flux will subside, and your rankings will return to normal.

How to identify?

The best way to determine whether or not your site is experiencing flux is to use the Google Search Console. In the Search Analytics report, look for significant changes in impressions, clicks, and average position. If you notice any major fluctuations, there’s a good chance that your site is being impacted by flux.

The first thing to do if you think you’ve been affected by the flux is to check for any internal linking issues. Ensure all your links are pointing to the correct pages and that there are no broken links. Next, check for any on-page issues that could be causing problems. This includes missing titles or meta descriptions, duplicate content, or non-optimized images. If you can’t find any obvious issues, you may have been hit by a Google update. Check to see if any known updates could have affected your ranking. Finally, look at your competitors to see if they might be doing something you’re not. If you can identify and fix the problem, you should start seeing your rankings improve within a few weeks.

How to prevent it?

There is no guaranteed way to prevent Google flux, but there are a few things you can do to help:

1. Make sure your site is of the highest quality. Publish original, informative content that people will want to read.

2. Promote your site on social media and other channels. Get as many people as possible to talk about your content.

3. Build links to your site from high-quality sources. The more reputable sites that are linking to you, the better.

4. Monitor your rankings closely and make changes as needed. If you see a big drop in traffic, analyse what may have caused it and make the necessary adjustments.

5. NEGATIVE SEO

Negative SEO activities are usually a work of a rival site and can involve several things.

The activities involved in negative SEO are:

  • Building spammy links for the site
  • building unnatural linking to the site
  • site hacking
  • content scraping, etc

Negative SEO is deliberately trying to lower the rank of a competitor’s website on search engine results pages (SERPs). Negative SEO activities are usually carried out by a rival site and can involve several things, such as building spammy links for the competitor’s site, building unnatural linking to the competitor’s site, hacking the competitor’s site, or scraping content from the competitor’s site. If the issue is related to backlinks, the best way to deal with it is to verify the spammy links generated for your site and work on them accordingly. If the problem is content scraping, then an effective way to deal with the situation is to file a copyright infringement report against the scraper from Google.

How to prevent it?

Negative SEO is a black-hat tactic that involves building spammy or low-quality links to a competitor’s site to cause their ranking to drop in the search engines. While this may sound like something that only nefarious internet marketers would do, it’s quite common. It’s estimated that over 50% of all link-building requests are negative SEO attempts in disguise. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to defend your site against negative SEO. One of the most important is to perform regular backlink audits. This will help you to identify any suspicious or low-quality links pointing to your site so that you can take action to have them removed. By taking these steps, you can help to ensure that your site remains safe from the damaging effects of negative SEO.

The best way to succeed with SEO in Australia is by following these simple steps. If you want your site ranked high on Google’s SERPs, then everything must be done properly from the start so as not to create any problems down the line.

SEO Agency Australia

SEO is short for “Search Engine Optimisation”. It’s the process of improving the visibility and organic search results of a website to generate more leads and sales. SEO is important for any business that wants to be visible online. If you’re not visible on the first page of Google, you’re missing out on many potential customers. That’s where we come in. Australian Website Development is a reliable SEO team of digital marketing experts that have worked with hundreds of businesses, large and small, to increase their online visibility and organic search results. Our SEO strategies are based on the latest Google algorithms and trends, so you can be confident that you’re getting the best possible service. Contact the best SEO company Australia today to learn more about our custom monthly SEO packages and how we can help your business grow.

SEO Services Australia

Contact Australian Website Development today for a no-obligation chat about how we can help you with your website development and online marketing needs.

We offer a full suite of digital marketing services, including Search Engine Optimisation (SEO ), Pay Per Click (PPC) Management, Social Media Marketing, Website Design and Development, cheap website hosting and more.

Get in touch with us today to see how we can help you take your business to the next level.

Australian Website Development has been selected among the Top Web Design Companies in Australia by Designrush