7 Common Reasons Why Website Rankings Drops
Consistently receiving steady traffic to your website can help with getting the leads or conversions that you are targeting. However, the moment you begin to experience a constant drop in the traffic flowing to your site, especially if you are relying on the organic ones, you are less likely to hit that targeted lead or conversion goal.
Good organic traffic is strongly determined by how well you rank on search engines, especially Google, which is the biggest and most used. If you are concerned about why the traffic to your website is dropping, the assistance of a good content marketing agency will come in handy. The following possible reasons will be addressed.
1. When links are lost
Lost links are one of the main reasons why the traffic of a website could drop. The URL links of published content on a site are very prone to be lost. You need to check through all links to verify that, from your end, they are working. There are many software’s that you might need to invest into that would make this process easier. If you have created a structure of powerful internal links on your website, a good check to see that those links are functioning will be required.
Next, check all inbound links that were driving traffic to your website to be sure that all they are still active. In the process of a website upgrade, or when updating certain aspects of your website, or moving your website, you could lose some links. After any change, ensure that you check through all links on your website so that inactive ones would not cause a drop in traffic flow.
2. Having a poor redirection plan
There are many reasons why you might want a different URL link that your visitors were used to or have known before. Rather than informing customers individually or collectively by making announcements through the different channels that are used to keep in touch, you can simply create a 301 redirection plan. This allows you to easily redirect your new URL link without losing the regular traffic you are used to getting. However, the moment you notice that there is a huge drop in traffic or ranking on search engines (for certain keywords that your website used to dominate) or even a little drop that increases over time, you need to check through the 301 redirects. It is also essential to update the XML sitemap of your website when using a 301 redirect.
3. Changes in search engine algorithms
This is a huge problem for most websites hoping to get more organic traffic through search engines. In a bid to improve user experience, these search engines are consistently updating their algorithms which affects the ranking of websites that do not fall in line with the updates. You need to keep looking out for new changes in their algorithms so that you can align your website appropriately to get back your ranking.
4. Very slow page load time
If your website is slow to load it could affect your ranking on search engines. Google, in particular, frowns at websites with pages that load very slowly. Even if you have the best content, a very slow website puts visitors off immediately, and they are less likely to come back. So Google and other search engines trying to improve the experience of their users are less likely to rank such websites high.
You need to look into the possible reasons why your website is loading slowly. First, start by compressing heavy content and images scattered around the site. There are plugins that can assist with this. Then also check your website compatibility with all browsers to be sure it opens fast and properly on popular browsers at least or the ones that your visitors use a lot.
5. Competitors in the same niche
Competition is good because it keeps you on your toes while constantly trying to be better and ahead of your competitors in the same industry or niche. The downside to having a lot of competitors is that you are all going to be competing for the same high rank on keywords peculiar to your niche or industry. If you were ranking high on a certain keyword, a competitor could hijack that spot from you if they are performing better with their SEO. So you need to be on the lookout for the things that your competitors are doing, employ some of their SEO strategies and keep improving your SEO performance.
6. Poor hosting platform
Where you decide to pitch your tent would determine the quality of the audience that you will get. You should be mindful about the kind of hosting company that you use for your website. It could positively or negatively affect your ranking on search engines. If for some reason your website has a lot of unusual traffic that your hosting platform didn’t envisage, it could make your website load slowly or crash; especially if the traffic is more than what their server can handle. It is also possible for websites sharing the same server with the one that had an unexpected traffic flow to also be affected causing such websites to experience downtime often. All these can affect your website rank on search engines.
7. Poor click-through rate
When visitors come to your website do they leave immediately? How many links on your website are they able to click on before exiting? Which landing page has the highest percentage of bounce rate? The behavioral pattern of visitors is very important if you want to rank high and get more organic traffic. Google, as well as other search engines, are very keen about the experience of their users. If the bounce on your website is high or the click-through rate is low, it sends a signal to these search engines that there is something about your website that is putting people off. If you don’t fix it quickly it will affect your ranking as search engines would rank another website in the same niche as yours higher.