Is your ranking in Google search engine results dropping suddenly or steadily on certain pages with certain keywords? The best thing to do is to stop asking “Why does my website not rank on Google?” and instead begin researching “how to rank my website on search engines.”
When your web pages do not perform well in search engine results pages (SERPs), the visibility of your business can take a serious hit within a few days, weeks, or even months. This results in fewer organic clients finding and visiting your website. As a result, sales also fall.
Once you notice the first signs of a drop in your overall or local search engine ranking, you must act quickly to improve your SEO strategy. You will learn the cause of the decline and find concrete ways to increase your Google Search ranking potential as a result of this article. We also recommend setting aside some time each week to track and monitor keyword rankings.
Here are 9 reasons why your website ranking has fallen and how to get it back to where it should be
Reason 1: Some Pages Have Noindex Tags
It is possible that you overlooked a “no index” tag in the pages’ *head> section when tracking keyword rankings and discovered that some valuable pages aren’t appearing in search results. Google or any search engine web crawler will skip indexing a page with this meta tag. The SERPs ranking potential for your pages won’t exist without crawling and indexing.
Let’s first examine the possible causes of this problem. When pages go live, the “noindex” tag may have been accidentally added during development. There are also some content management systems (CMS) like WordPress that allow users to prevent pages containing sensitive information or shopping carts from being indexed by search engines.
Here’s how to fix it:
Remove the noindex tag from affected pages to improve their SEO rankings. Make sure the “noindex” error exists by looking at the Coverage report in Google Search Console. If your website is fairly new and there are not enough Search Console data, try to find tools that will crawl your website and show you the pages affected by this Google search ranking error.
Reason 2: Googlebot Is Unable To Crawl Certain Pages
Among other things, Robots.txt contains instructions for web crawlers like Googlebot. These instructions allow or block access to your pages. Therefore, if the document contains a rule that blocks Googlebot from crawling specific pages, the giant search engine won’t be able to find those pages. This may affect SERP rankings and visibility.
Here’s how to fix it:
Ensure that search engine bots can access critical pages, such as https://example.com/blog. Here’s a practical tip for improving Google Search ranking if you do not know where to find robots.txt: leave it up to the experts. They are familiar with the scope and limitations of a robots.txt file, which should help you avoid major technical SEO mistakes.
Reason 3: You Don’t Have High-quality External Links
Keep an eye on your backlinks. These services are designed to increase your visibility online (read: how to improve your Google Search ranking).
Research shows that backlinks, or links from other websites pointing back to yours, are a crucial factor in building your Google ranking and local SEO ranking. If a reputable site links to your page, it raises your credibility with Google, allowing the search engine to determine the relevance of your page.
You can rank higher in the SERPs if you have backlinks or external links. If you have zero, excessive, or spammy backlinks, your search engine results in position will be affected.
Here’s how to fix it:
Using tools like Ahrefs, Sitechecker, and SEMrush, keep an eye on your keyword rankings and link profile. There are many things you can check, such as the websites linking to yours, their domain authority, and the anchor text. Additionally, you can find suspicious links as well as lost links, so you won’t have to wonder, “What is wrong with my website? “Why does it not rank on Google?”
Reason 4: Search Intents Aren’t Prioritized
In the event you’re scratching your head and wondering, “Why is my website not ranking on Google?”, here’s a possibility. You may have created content for a popular keyword — a keyword that your target users are frequently searching for — but it doesn’t satisfy their search intent. What does that mean?
Imagine you are in the real estate industry and you prioritize a popular keyword like “how to buy a home in City X.” You decided to incorporate this keyword into your sales page. You simply mentioned that your property consultants could help readers by listing your housing options. Additionally, your competitors provide a list of housing options in blog posts that summarize deciding factors. They rank well on Google for that. Since their content was aligned with the intent of the target audience, who was still in the Awareness/Interest stage of the buying process, their content was effective.
Here’s how to fix it:
Track keyword rankings and top performers using tools such as BuzzSumo and SEMrush. Analyze the articles, their structure, and content, and create new content or update your page accordingly. Be sure to increase your SEO strategy if you want to go head-to-head with your main competitors.
Reason 5: Content Duplication
Duplicate content may appear on a website or across multiple websites. Google shows only one version of a URL that has almost the same content or leads to the same page: the canonical version, also known as the master copy of the source URL. With a canonical tag, you’re telling Google what copy to display when ranking SEO keywords.
However, if you leave the canonical tag off your page URL, Google will display the content it deems to be the canonical version. There is a possibility that the page listed in Google rankings is not the right one for you.
Here’s how to fix it:
This duplicate content can be removed. In cases where you have different URLs, such as for certain products, you should add the rel=canonical attribute to the head section of the master copy and the duplicate pages.
In both cases, the canonical tag is used as follows:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com />
Reason 6: You Were Penalized By Google
Manual Actions
It is rare, but a sudden drop in SERP rankings may be caused by a manual Google penalty. If you didn’t do anything drastic like spamming or hiding text or stuffing keywords to manipulate SEO rankings, you’re fine.
If Google detects a hit, it will notify you. To check the issue, open Google Search Console. The penalty, its description, and all affected pages can be found in the Security and Manual Actions section.
Here’s how to fix it:
Considering how long it would take to cover every manual action, we already covered the basics in this article about Google penalties. It is recommended that you search for all pages that have been penalized and apply the fix thereto. The SERPs ranking algorithm will evaluate your web pages anew as a result of the quality issue and is not likely to return to past levels (quickly).
Algorithmic Penalties
Google rolls out algorithm updates periodically, so tracking keyword rankings is important not just after a change. Panda and Penguin are recent ones that check for unnatural links and the quality of content. The SERPs position may drop significantly and negatively affect your organic traffic and search engine keyword rankings.
Here’s how to fix it:
Make sure your content is well-written, in-depth, and overall high-quality (Panda). The problem of unnatural links is related to spammy and low-quality backlinks. Also, Google may find it suspicious when links are acquired in a short time frame. When you replace low-quality content and remove problematic backlinks, wait for Google to recrawl your site or pages, and your SERPs rank performance to improve.
Reason 7: Your Location Isn’t Optimized
Have you noticed that local SEO rankings vary from user to user? That’s because Google factors in their location along with other factors. For franchises or multi-location businesses, it’s critical to target location-based keywords or find and bid on them in search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
Here’s how to fix it:
Focus on keywords that relate to your franchise subunit or business branch. Additionally, you should leverage local listings to boost your local SEO strategy.
Reason 8: Your Website Is Not Updated For Page Experience (Core Web Vitals)
Page Experience includes the Core Web Vitals, which emphasize page load speed, visual stability, and interactivity as ranking factors. The new SEO keyword guidelines were implemented in June 2021. Putting Page Experience optimization into motion can take a few weeks, and it takes around four weeks to see its effects.
Here’s how to fix it:
In case you have not audited your site or updated your SEO strategy, now is the time. If you want to keep up, you can also partner with an internet marketing agency that can monitor keyword rankings and update them simultaneously.
Reason 9: Your Site Is Brand New
Even though this might seem obvious to some, others may still be confused about search engine keyword rankings or lack an SEO strategy for their brand-new site. Please note that your pages will not rank and reach the top of the SERPs immediately. As soon as your website goes live, Google should start crawling it. In addition, you need to consider factors like content quality, user experience, security, and even presence on listings like Google My Business (GMB) and how they affect when your SEO services kick in. The time frame could range from a few months to a year or more. Depending on your search engine optimization strategy, some pages may rise quickly, while others may take longer.
Here’s how to fix it:
“Then, how do I rank my website?” you ask. Don’t forget to submit your sitemap to Google if you haven’t done so yet. Use any of Google’s supported formats, such as XML, text, RSS, mRSS, and Atom 1.0.
Fix the Problem with a Reliable Partner
As a result of reading this article, you should be able to answer the question “how to rank my website.” Of course, the implementation is much more complex. However, we hope you have an understanding of how it’s done and how to begin.
You can expect the following benefits if you’re short on time or would rather hand over the complicated parts to professionals: no guesswork regarding errors, proper prioritization, and improved optimization. This combination produces positive results and is cost-effective when it comes to managing your page rankings.
Mac J Web has extensive experience delivering search engine optimization services that optimize time, effort, and money for our clients. Our Las Vegas SEO experts detect issues strategically by tracking keyword rankings. As a result, we respond, mitigate risks, and provide solutions proactively. Put all the lessons you learned here into practice. You can reach our experts by email or phone at (858) 598-4909.
