By Jayne Schultheis

If you've ever checked your search engine rankings and started panicking due to an unexpected dip in your content's performance, you're in the right place. We're going to explore the reasons this happens, and give helpful tips for getting your content back to its peak performance.

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Let's start with some SEO basics that affect your content's performance and, if not handled well, cause ranking drops.

Understanding SEO fundamentals

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving a website's visibility and ranking on search engine results pages (SERP). This is accomplished through techniques like keyword optimization, proper content creation, and technical improvements to websites and individual pages. The goal is to attract organic traffic by making the website more relevant and authoritative in the eyes of search engines and users. Here's a look at some important types of SEO.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to the optimization of individual web pages to improve their search engine rankings and attract more relevant traffic. It involves elements like content quality, keyword usage, meta tags, and internal linking. Its effectiveness can be measured through metrics such as keyword rankings, organic traffic, bounce rates, and page speed, that indicate how well the optimized pages are performing in search engine results and user engagement.

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On-page SEO must be in the bones of your content production.

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Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO involves factors outside of the website itself that affect its search engine rankings. It primarily focuses on building high-quality backlinks from other reputable sites, social media marketing, and online brand mentions. The effectiveness of off-page SEO can be measured through metrics like link building, domain authority, referral traffic, and social signals, which collectively indicate the website's credibility and popularity on the internet.

Local SEO

Local SEO is part of off-page SEO. It focuses on search results for location-specific queries, helping businesses attract customers from their geographic area. It involves strategies like optimizing Google My Business listings, using local keywords, and acquiring customer reviews. How do you measure the effectiveness of local SEO? Through metrics such as local search rankings, online reviews and ratings, local citation volume, and the amount of traffic from local searches.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO refers to the optimization of a website's infrastructure to enable search engines to crawl and index it effectively, boosting overall performance and user experience. Key elements include:

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• Configuring the robots.txt file to guide search engine bots
• Creating and submitting an XML sitemap to outline the website's structure
• Implementing canonical tags to avoid duplicate content issues

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The success of technical SEO can be measured through improved crawlability, faster page load times, and enhanced search engine indexing efficiency.

Mobile SEO

In this subset of SEO, you set up your site to rank for searches on mobile devices and to provide a great user experience. It's hard to overstate the importance of mobile website design, because Google uses mobile-first indexing. The mobile version of your site is what counts for SERP. A key element in mobile optimization is using responsive web design (RWD) so your pages adjust to the size of the display window.

What caused my ranking drop?

Don't panic! There are plenty of reasons that content droops in the rankings. Some might be an oversight on your part, but the factors may be out of your control. Either way, you can solve the puzzle.

Your competitors are outpacing you

One significant factor that leads to a ranking drop in SEO is the efforts of your competition. They, too, are launching new pages, updating content, and producing fresh content. When competitors optimize their websites with high-quality, relevant, and engaging content, search engines may re-evaluate and rank these newer pages over yours.

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If your website fails to keep pace, you might see a drop in search engine rankings. In content marketing, you are either gaining ground or losing it. Standing pat means your content becomes comparatively outdated and less relevant to user queries.

Search engines have updated

Google and other search engines update their algorithms periodically to make sure users get the most relevant and useful information. As digital marketers know all too well, a core update by Google can damage SERP rankings. Google adjusts how bots evaluate and rank websites based on things like content relevance, site speed, and backlinks. Even websites that are well-optimized can see lower search rankings if they don't meet the updated standards.

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It's not just the search engine algorithms that change. Google regularly changes its format and SERP layout. For example, it has been exploring how generative content will be integrated into results and featured snippets. Such changes can affect your visibility, perhaps by giving more space to Google "rich results" like images, rating stars, featured snippets, and knowledge panels.

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Online marketers must stay up-to-date with these changes and react if they coincide with changes in web traffic KPIs.

Broken links

Broken links disrupt the user experience and prevent search engine crawlers from accessing and indexing site content effectively. These dead links can lead to higher bounce rates and reduce a website's credibility. They signal to search engines that the site is poorly maintained, and search engines prioritize websites with seamless navigation and functional links.

Your product team is making changes

Changes made by the product team, such as a new product release, could inadvertently affect SERP rankings. Such changes might disrupt key elements like site structure, SEO-friendly URL patterns, and on-page content. They also could create broken links or modify previously optimized content, leading to decreased crawlability and relevance in search engines. If your rankings drop after updates and similar events, check for unintended SEO changes.

On-page oversights

Sometimes, nitty-gritty details get overlooked in your content production. For example, pages are pushed out with a "noindex" tag, which tells search engines not to index these pages. Of course, that leads to reduced visibility in search results. Heavy use of JavaScript can impede search engine bots from effectively reading and indexing pages, as not all bots can process JavaScript well. Also, changes in internal linking can disrupt the site's structure and navigation. It causes search engines to misinterpret the website's hierarchy, reducing the effectiveness of internal link signals and hurting rankings.

How do I fix a drop in rankings?

We're so glad you asked, because this is Rellify's bread and butter! It's hard to keep up with all the problems that can plague a website's performance, but Rellify's experts specialize in SEO audits. As content optimization experts, we're able to quickly assess your web content and content marketing efforts. We can identify exactly where pain points are, and how to best address them.

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We can generate for clients a Relliverse™, a custom-AI subject-matter expert trained on their relevant focus topics. With that, we show you how to choose the best topics to write about. You can create relevant content at scale and fully leverage generative AI faster than ever before.

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If the rankings for that content ever slips, our monitoring will alert you. Check the top rankings for the search terms that you used to rank higher on. What is your competition doing with that content that you aren't? Are you missing important information? Is something out of date? Our AI-powered platform will guide you to update your content effectively. Our R-Score grades the effectiveness of each article and gives detailed instructions on how to improve readability and SEO.

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Within the Rellify platform itself, you can monitor insights imported from Google Search Console and Google Analytics for each article and your entire domain. You don't need a mishmash of outside tools. Rellify gives you the power to analyze your site and the individual pages, pointing out issues like duplications, missing redirects, broken links, missing ALT tags, and much more.

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We can give you the keys to Rellify so you can do this all yourself. However, finding the root cause of ranking drops can be a highly-technical puzzle. It's not necessarily cut and dry. Rellify's experts know how to analyze the insights from our SEO tools, and we can address Google ranking drops and employ conversion rate optimization for you.

Rellify knows what to do!

We know that a drop in SERP rankings can be a setback when you're trying to reach potential readers and customers. Fortunately, Rellify has all the tools, knowledge, and resources you need to conduct a full-scale content audit and re-vamp content.

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No more guessing. No more headaches. Just informed choices. Unlike Chat GPT and similar models that excel in general tasks, our Relliverse™ is a specialized language model meticulously crafted to address your unique content strategy needs.

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Create content that's relevant, optimized, and ready to be found by the right people. And never miss an opportunity to improve your content. Ready to see how Rellify is different? Schedule a free consultation and demo today to find out exactly how your company could benefit from our custom, AI-powered content solution.

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