Top Reasons Your Website is Losing Rankings & How To Prevent It

Among a number of Search engine optimization issues one of the most cried about issue is drop in ranking. To me the issue doesn’t deserve much worry because issues like traffic and ranking are becoming dormant eventually after the launch of hummingbird update. Hummingbird has taken search results to a different dimension of presenting search results, after deriving the contextual meaning of the keywords entered, which is commendable and has brought in vogue long tailed keywords. I believe that if the intensity of traffic of a website increases over the time, let’s say every three months or a quarter, its SEO is going just in the right direction.

The fascination of ranking still dominate the hearts of businesses and they feel secure as they track it and assure their position on the top of the search results and for these very webmasters I am writing this blog. Here is a list of solutions on what you must do once you experience a decline in ranking:

Link Your Website Internally

It is indeed a very stupid fault made on part of webmasters when they either forget to do the internal linking of their website or opt not to. With the help of internal linking different pages of a website are linked with one another. Even if you have a website that is internally linked, another mistake that you might be making is using the rich anchor text which in my opinion is a big no-no for improving page ranking.

A particular phrase or long-tail keyword can be linked internally to a particular page, for example I have linked a long tail keyword I have mentioned in the first paragraph – ‘Hummingbird has taken search results to different dimension’ to a separate blog dedicated to hummingbird’s effect on SEO enlisted on our blog. . This is how websites are linked internally and when it is implemented it helps in enhancing the ranking of that very blog to which I am linking this long-tail keyword. Why am I against using rich anchor texts? Because avoiding them helps in supplementing and leveraging the internal linking of websites, which is why linking an article or a blog repeatedly with an anchor text is something I never recommend for the sake of enhancing rank.

Wikipedia comes as the first result for keywords in Google search because of its brilliant internal linking. In fact it’s an epitome for websites in terms of its internal linking. Among the reasons of it being in the top search ranking, its strong and authentic internal linking is considered as one of the biggest contributor by SEO experts.

The effect of linking your website internally, takes time to reflect. Keep in mind not to hasten and stuff the old posts and pages with a large number of internal links and rather take it one step at a time. Link the fresh pages internally as well and be patient, the results will definitely be fruitful.

Google as well as users love fast Websites

It was even before the launch of Panda when Google announced that page loading speed of a website is a very important determinant of its page ranking. Poor speed of loading of a website isn’t just a turnoff for users but it causes loss to Google as well in terms of people choosing it as a search engine. Google doesn’t compromise at all with the user’s search experience. A slow-loading website is ranked low by Google because, one- it leaves a bad impact on Google for presenting a website in search results, which is slow and two- users might choose to use other search engines than Google which will cause it loss in revenue. In short, a slow website is not tolerated by Google because it is a liability to it.

If you are worried that increasing the speed of loading of a website will require you to do a lot of technical modifications and spend a lot of money, relax. It’s very easy and won’t cost you a penny because it’s Google’s own solution to boost up the speed of your website. This service is called Google page speed service and anyone can use it easily. All that’s needed is logging in through Google ID and you will be presented with a procedure following which will help you boost up the loading speed of your website.

Or click on the following link and enter your URL to see customized recommendations for your website. You don’t need to even login.

http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Don’t attract penalty by building links for just home page.

The first measure adopted in the times of hopelessness in the ranking of a page is building new links. By doing so webmasters feel they can revive the loss which is a mistake because blindly adding more and more links to a webpage that has faced a sharp drop in ranking will take them nowhere, in fact, will bring them in the notice of Google but this attention will be paid on them in a negative light. Google has a superb mechanism of track keeping and this unnatural addition of a large number of links won’t go unnoticed by Google and it will at once take action to deal with them. So never hasten in taking actions to deal with the drop in ranking rather take each step cautiously.

Internal link building minus rich anchor text comes as a savior in this scenario as it not only helps in controlling the drowning pace of webpage ranking but helps in raising it too. When this happens the website in totality will gain authenticity thereby improving the keyword ranking. The bottom line is don’t make a decision to blindly add new links to a page that caused you low ranking rather act smartly and use link building mechanism to link website internally.

In fact, during optimization of our clients sites, we have often noticed that we cross a certain threshold then the ranking of that particular keyword start dropping so there make links to all your pages keeping in mind that one high-quality link is worth thousands of crap links.

In fact, initially we made the same mistake with SEO Corporation. Initially, we used to make links for home page only but when we noticed that It is not a good practice we started link building activity for all our sites, as a result, we saw tremendous improvement in Google page rank during the last update. Our page rank jumped from 3 to 6!!

So build links to all your pages, not just the home page.

Are You Using The Rich Snippets Properly?

Google Webmasters tool is of great help in knowing the status of your website in terms of threats and opinions of audiences about it. It brings an interesting fact forward about the click-through rate and their impact on the ranking of your website as Google keeps a track of it.

Once ranking of a website rises, more and more traffic is derived towards it but improved ranking isn’t just solely responsible for increasing the click-through rate of your website. A low click-through rate is looked down upon by Google and damages your rank because it conveys that enlistment of your website on it isn’t adding much value to it.

One way to increase your search traffic is by increasing your rankings. Another way is by increasing your click-through rate. If a search engine detects that your click-through rate is extremely low for the position where your website is, it can easily drop your rank as this tells the search engine that your listing isn’t very relevant. Optimization of the title and Meta description tags play a very big role in raising click-through rate of your website. As mentioned earlier Hummingbird focuses on resolving queries and answering questions of users which is why the inclusion of Meta tags like- guidelines, how to, solution, free tips, blogs, tricks, etc. works really well.

• Google authorship gives the autonomy to present content solely in your name. It helps you get identified as an author among the lot and represent your website distinctly. With the help of Google authorship websites successfully witness an increment of 150% in their click through rate which no webmaster can overlook and you must implement it to witness the difference in your click through rate. With your image next to the Google result, audiences click your link instantly. Know how t implement Google authorship, click here.

Do You Like Stale Food? If Not, don’t expect users to like your stale content.

Law of diminishing marginal utility is a universal law and it applies to everything apart from some exceptions. I am not teaching you economics here but simply trying to make you understand how important it is to keep your webpage updated. So, the law of marginal utility states that ‘as more and more units of a commodity is consumed the marginal utility derived from its consumption tends to diminish’.

This law has a clear cut relation with keeping your website updated because if your audiences like a post- an article or a blog posted by you, ranking will increase later it will become stable, but as its effect wears out on audiences, it will start diminishing which is why you need to keep up the hard work and update images and content on your webpage frequently. Your users will be intrigued and get a frequent fresh surfing experience. Apart from this, they will link to your website and share its content via social networking platforms as you will successfully retain their interest. Businessmen might feel it to be a very basic suggestion, but it’s a universal law and it holds great significance.

A Responsive Web Design Is Need of The Hour

The mobile phone was once upon a time a device meant to call and send a message but over the time it has have revolutionized like frenzy and has taken the shape of tablets, phablets, Ipads, etc. Apart from mobile phones, there are plenty of other devices having different screen size and resolutions like netbooks, notebooks, ultrabooks, etc. Getting a responsive web design is nothing out of the box but an indispensable need for your website. Your website must be compatible with all forms of devices if you wish to keep it is ranking high. A huge chunk of the population- 55% of people that own a smartphone prefer using it to go online. Only a total naive will make a mistake of losing this percentage that it can get as traffic for its website. Last month I wrote a blog titled “What is Responsive Web Design and Top 6 Reasons You Should Adopt It Before Competitors”. You can read it here.

Google is always there for help and there you have – Google Analytics to understand and know using which device your target audience accesses your website mostly. After signing up click> audience>mobile> devices and you’ll have your answer.

Don’t Underestimate The Power Of A Common Man And Social Media

Benefits of Social media exposure have several opinions and judgments to it, some experts call it gaudy and stupid while others consider it imperative. I believe it sells! Social media is actually is a great facility towards which all webmasters seeking optimization must be thankful. The more you share it via social networking sites, the more exposure your content gets and the probability of getting traffic rises which automatically increases the probability of getting natural backlinks.

The outcome- Better search engine ranking.

• Add social widgets and buttons on all the pages of your websites that contains high quality and worth sharing content.
• Blogs are the best tools to reflect thoughtfulness of a business and they must have options for sharing them to social media because if your work is nice, a polite request to share the content might get considered by your kind readers and they might share it through their profiles.
• Take advantage of all your friendly and professional connections throughout the social network and ask them to share your web pages. Majority does that.
• Triberr.com is the next big thing for bloggers and influencers, its gaining attention, I recommend you to utilise it.
• Pay for facebook and twitter advertisements to get a share on them. It will give you a massive audience to please.
• Give perks to your audiences. An e-book, a free tutorial of their interest in return of sharing your content on social network.

SEO keeps witnessing changes and updates and it’s my belief that issues like traffic and ranking are fading away now. It’s the time to focus on long tailed keyword optimization and answering queries of audiences. If for a sense of security you wish to keep a record and track of your ranking, this blog will definitely come out to be helpful to you.

My final tip is to keep calm and patient! Every thoughtlessly hastened action has loopholes in it. Implement these and wait for the positive to happen.

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