Scoosh Web Design

Don't Panic! Search engine rankings are not set in stone.

Search engine rankings are constantly moving and changing.   As your website and your competitors websites are indexed, analysed and ranked by the search engines, they are in a constant state of flux.

Achieving a a high ranking is what we all desire, but what happens when your site starts to drop and is no longer on the top or even on the first page.

Do Nothing

The first thing you do is absolutely nothing. That's right, nothing.

Search engines are constantly updating their algorithms and the weighting of ranking factors.

Sometimes a change can occur that doesn’t have the desired effect and penalises sites that were previously well ranked. When this happens, changes may be rolled back or amended and you may find your site jumps back to its previous position.  Always give it a couple of weeks or so before you start making any major changes.

When did you last SEO Audit your website?

Do an audit of your on-site SEO to make sure you have covered all the areas you can optimise.

Your website doesn’t exist within a vacuum and there are thousands of websites working to take your position. 

Make sure you are using your target keyword(s) across these areas

• title tag
• H tags
• image alt tag
• image file name
  
• internal link anchor text
  
• internal link alt tag
• site map
  
• first paragraph of copy
• page URLs
• page descriptions
  

Don't be naughty

Remove any ‘black hat’ tactics you or your web designer may have used.

Read Google’s guidelines for webmasters which spell out what Google expects from a website as well as what not to do. (Contact us and we will send you a copy) If you have recently undertaken any of the following methods you may have been penalised by Google and this will explain the drop in your rankings.

• Bought links
• Used hidden text or hidden links
• Introduced cloaking or underhand redirects
• Created pages stuffed with irrelevant keywords
• Added multiple pages, sub-domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content
• Set up a “doorway” page created just for search engines

Watch your advertising space

This is not necessarily a ‘black hat’ technique,  but if a larger proportion of your website is now allocated to advertising space rather than original copy this can affect your Google ranking.

Update your content regularly

Google likes fresh content and sites that are updated regularly. If you haven’t made any changes for a long time review your web copy, update it and  investigate ways you can introduce regular content to your site e.g. articles, news, a blog, twitter etc.

There is more to life than Google

We are all 'Googling' and because Google dominates search it is easy to think it is the be all and end all.

Not all traffic to your website is through Google.  What about direct traffic? Build a following on social media sites e.g. Twitter, Facebook. Look at websites in your business community e.g. forums, blogs.