SEO Rankings Dropped Overnight

SEO Ranking Drop Key Takeaways

• Ranking drops are not a penalty, but a shift in priorities from search engines 

• Recovering lost rankings is possible, but not an overnight fix

• SEO consultants can provide insight into the cause and strategize a clear path to recovered rankings

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Why SEO Rankings Fall - And How To Recover

SEO rankings can be volatile for even the most established websites, and when search result positions suddenly drop for commercial keywords, your business will feel the impact of reduced organic channel traffic and therefore revenue, making recovery of those desirable positions a must.​

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The journey to recovering dropped rankings begins with understanding why those SEO rankings have dropped in the first place, as that is what dictates the recovery actions.

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Why Did My Organic Rankings Drop?

The root cause behind search rankings dropping can be any number of reasons; it could be a technical fault with the website, a poor response to an SEO migration, it could be that a Google algorithm update has determined that elements of your on-page content are low quality, for any number or reasons. The only way is to conduct an in-depth SEO audit of previous positions compared to current positions, both at a query level and at a page level. We do this because ranking drops typically come is several types, and that will help us to understand the work that needs to be done.

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Different Types of Ranking Drops

Position drops for keywords aren't all the same. Over the years and working on many websites, we've seen several types of problems when it comes to recovering lost ranks. In our experience it comes down to the below five types, with each requiring its own strategy for recovery. The types are based on North West SEO hands-on experience, and not any hard and fast rule.

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• Isolated queries

• Intent-based rank decline

• Topic-based rank decline

• Subfolder-based rank decline

• Sitewide rank decline

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Isolated queries

Isolated queries​ dropping their rankings is part and parcel of organic search. SEOs and business owners alike notice every specific query drop because we rely on organic searches for a successful business.

 

The fix to this usually requires tightening up optimization to the target keyword, and ensuring the content is up to date. Adding sections that provide more information may be helpful - this could be as simple as a bullet list or a table. However, it may be a backlink profile issue, in which case earning new links to the page will improve average positions for the pages affected. Recovery of positions here is generally expected in the next crawl of the page, although as with anything in SEO, nothing is guaranteed. 

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Intent-based rank decline

The next level of ranking drop is when a particular intent is the algorithm's focus. For instance, your informational content, such as blog posts may have improved rankings, however your pages that convert customers are the focus of average position decline. This suggests that your commercial pages have lost some trust with Google, and from there we must analyse why.

 

To recover these search result positions, we must ask if your content is too salesy. Is the content not clear? How are internal links to the affected pages? The reality is that Google has looked at your pages and judged them, so the role is to clarify to the search engine what we intend for the page.​

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Depending on the extent and number of affected pages, recovery can be a simple case of small updates to the affected pages, adding new backlinks to the commercial pages or can take many months of granular optimization.

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Topic-based rank decline

Topic-based rank decline is another way ranking can be hurt, and is similar to intent-based. This time, your rankings dip across an entire topic of keywords; this affects both commercial/transactional, and informational queries. In short, it affects any page about a specific subject matter or product offering. Other elements of your website may be largely unaffected or even improve.

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Again, this rank decline comes from how Google understands your website, and we need to find the reason it is choosing to say 'I don't trust you on this topic so much'. The job then becomes to prove and showcase that you are trustworthy for the topic.

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Subfolder-based rank decline

Subfolder-based might be confusing, but it is something we have seen. Generally, it means Google's understanding of a subject is at odds with how you present it. In short, your site hierarchy may be the problem.

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SEO best practise is generally to write for humans first, and the robots second, so your website structure needs to make sense to you first, and most likely does. However, from time to time the algorithm expects information to be relayed a certain way, its understanding of a topic may change and it may realise that a specific subfolder isn't well served for a range of queries. Perhaps your home page is, perhaps a similar folder is preferred. An example may be that for a business energy comparison website, there was an emergency when the 'business electricity' subfolder saw its rankings decline overnight, and the result was simply that Google's algorithm was seeing 'energy' and 'electricity' as synonyms, and now the 'energy' subfolder and the 'electricity' subfolder were all competing. The fix was to consolidate the electricity content into the energy content. Drastic, but we had exhausted all on-page and off-page fixes. On completing that, recovery was instant.

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Sitewide

The most serious - while not a penalty, your entire site's rankings have dropped. That means, as far as SEO best-practises go, the search engine has determined that your entire site does not meet the criteria to hold on to it's existing rankings. It's likely a mix of issues - from duplicate content, keyword cannibalisation, unclear URL hierarchy, technical SEO issues, low quality content throughout, and any other issues that have so far flown under the radar.

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If your websites operational strategy relies on taking on technical debt, this is the stage where you re-pay that debt.

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Have I Been Penalised?

Your keywords' rankings declining does not mean that Google has penalised your site; a penalty comes with a 'manual action' notice to your search console and the results are much more severe. It simply means that other sites have simply been preferred to you, and the reasons why often requires some auditing and analysis to uncover why, and some elbow grease to address the issue, but recovery is very achievable, routine even. 

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How Do I Tell If My Rankings Have Dropped?

The first sign that your SEO rankings have dropped is that your traffic has declined, although the signs will have been there from before.

 

SEO tools such as Google Search Console and third-party SEO tools, such as SEMRush and AhRefs among many others, are instrumental in pin pointing if your rankings are in danger, so that you can act and protect your organic positions. By monitoring position changes for tracked keywords on third-party software, we can see if rank decline is happening at any level - although it always takes about a week's worth of data to establish a trend. Google Search Console offers average position data, and by using various filters, we can assess if average positions are dropping or improving.

 

When is a lower average position not declining rankings?

It is worth noting that when a page ranks for brand new keywords, these new keywords start at position 100 or below, so what may look like declining average positions is actually improves SEO performance. You need to check a sample of queries manually to establish search result that positions are falling or not. ​

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How Do I Recover My Lost Rankings?

The rank recovery process is often a slow burn process. Once we understand the cause, we can then commence any actions that might affect that - it could be in the form of re-writes, merging and consolidation, creating a sister page that targets a specific intent (for example, if your product or service commercial page has dropped rankings, and the reason is due to Google seeing the query as informational now, then we need to ensure your website targets the informational intent too; either on the page or on a sister page).​

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Ranking recovery is a tailor-made process that requires analysis of the issue, and North West has extensive experience in navigating this specific problem.

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Is There A Quick Fix For Lost Rankings?

In some instances the fix needed may be simple, but the nature of SEO is generally there is no guarantee in what task will work, but we will try the most likely action first and work until we achieve the desired result. Generally, we do not expect overnight recovery, even if decline was overnight. In some cases work done to improve website pages will only reflect not after the next crawl, but after the next algorithm update. 

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My Traffic Has Dropped - Is It Definitely My Rankings?

There are many reasons why SEO traffic may have declined, and ranking changes is just one of those. North West SEO can help troubleshoot the root cause of your organic channel performance and begin your journey to recovery.

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I Do All My Website Work Solo - Do I Really Need To Hire Someone?

Technically, no, eventually you'll get there, much of SEO is actions that can be done by an individual with the time and the knowledge of what needs to be worked on. But working with an experienced SEO will speed up the troubleshooting process and give you sign-off on any work that needs to be done.

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The North West SEO System

​North West SEO system is designed to work for you. Getting started with us is simple:

• Book your discovery call. You’ll walk us through your industry and what you want to achieve (such as launching new products or services, or recovering from a recent Google update or to solve traffic suddenly disappearing), and from there we’ll advise how we can assist 

• Following the discovery call, we’ll email you a more-detailed plan and price quote to initiate kick-off of our services, which can be amended.

• Once agreement on the final plan is made, a £100 deposit initiates work beginning, with the remainder being paid monthly once invoices are sent.

 

How North West SEO Can Help

​North West SEO is able to help businesses of all sizes recover their lost search result positions, and our three tier structure is designed to ensure that we do impactful work that suits your budget.​

• Page By Page

• Project-by-Project (One-Off Projects)

• Whole Website (Retainer)

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Learn more about our three-tier system.

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Case Studies

With more than 10 years experience in SEO, North West SEO has helped many businesses grow their SEO and recover lost rankings. Read our case studies to see how we can help you.

 

Contact us today for your free discovery call to troubleshoot your post-migration traffic drop.