Have you noticed a sudden or constant drop in your search engine keyword rankings for certain pages? Stop focusing on the question “Why is my website not ranking on Google?” and instead start looking for expert tactics on “how to rank my website on search engine results pages”.
If your web pages do not perform well in search engine results pages (SERPs), your online visibility can be severely affected within a few days, weeks or even months. This means less organic traffic will find and visit your site. And you know what happens next: your sales suffer too.
You should act quickly to improve your search engine optimization strategy or SEO strategy once you notice the first signs of drops in overall or local SEO rankings. This article will walk you through the reasons for rejection and support you with concrete tips on how to improve your Google Search ranking potential. We also emphasize the importance of setting aside time to track and monitor keyword rankings.
9 Reasons Your Website Rankings Have Declined and Ways to Get Back to the Top
Reason 1: Some important pages do not have index tags
When you track keyword rankings and discover that some valuable pages are not visible at all in search results, you may have missed a “noindex” tag in the of the pages. This meta tag tells Google or any search engine web crawler to skip indexing a page. Without crawling and indexing, your pages will have no chance of SERP ranking.
First, let's look at the possible causes of this problem. The "noindex" tag could be added to certain pages during development and mistakenly left there when the pages are published. Some content management systems (CMS) like WordPress also have an option to prevent search engines from indexing pages, such as those containing sensitive information and shopping carts.
How to solve it – Improve the SEO rankings of affected pages by removing the “noindex” tag. Verify that the "noindex" error exists by consulting the Coverage in Google Search Console. If you have a relatively new website without enough Search Console data, try tools that crawl your site and show the pages affected by this Google search ranking error.
Reason 2: Googlebot cannot crawl certain pages
Robots.txt is a text file that contains instructions for web crawlers, including Googlebot. Block or allow access to its pages. So, for example, if you contain a rule to prevent Googlebot from crawling specific pages, the search giant will not be able to discover those pages. This can affect SERP rankings and visibility.
How to solve it – Make sure search engine bots can access critical pages, for example https://example.com/blog. If you're not sure where to find robots.txt, here's a handy tip on how to improve your Google Search rankings: leave the solution to the experts. This should help you avoid major technical SEO mistakes by understanding the scope and limitations of a robots.txt file.
Reason 3: You lack high-quality external links
Pay attention to your backlinks. They exist to improve your online visibility (read: how to improve Google search ranking).
According to studies, backlinks, links found on other sites that point to your pages, are a critical Google ranking/local SEO ranking factor. Having a reputable site refer to your page in its content increases your credibility, which helps Google determine how relevant that page is to a keyword or user query.
In short, backlinks or external links can affect your SERP rank. If you have zero, excessive, or spam backlinks, your position in search results is compromised.
How to solve it : Monitor keyword rankings and audit your link profile using tools like Ahrefs, Sitechecker, and SEMrush. You can check details like the sites linking to your pages, your domain authority, and anchor texts. Plus, you can discover suspicious links and link loss, so you won't have to wonder, "Why isn't my website ranking on Google?"
If your problem is due to a thin link profile, read more about how you can improve your overall link building strategy or include link building in your online marketing efforts.
Reason 4: Search intent is not prioritized
Here's another likely reason if you've been scratching your head and asking, "Why isn't my website ranking on Google?" You may have created content for a popular keyword, a keyword that your target users search for frequently, but it doesn't satisfy the users' search intent. What does this mean?
Let's say you're in the real estate industry and you prioritized a popular keyword like “how to buy a house in City X.” You decided to integrate this keyword into your sales page. In the text, he simply mentioned that his real estate advisors could help readers buy a home and proceeded to list their housing options. Meanwhile, her competitors wrote blog posts listing deal-breakers before providing a list of housing options. And they ranked at the top of the SERPs because of it. That's because they aligned their content with the intent of the target audience, who was still in the awareness/interest stage of the purchasing process.
How to solve it – Use tools like BuzzSumo or SEMrush to track keyword rankings and top results. Analyze the articles, their structure and content and update your page or create a new piece of content accordingly. If you're going head-to-head with major competitors, be sure to improve your search engine optimization strategy.
Reason 5: you have duplicate content
Duplicate content can appear on one website or multiple websites. When two URLs have essentially the same content or lead to the same page, Google chooses only one version to display to users: the canonical version, also known as the master copy or source URL. When you add the canonical tag, you are telling Google what copy to show in SEO keyword rankings.
Now, here's the thing: if you don't add the canonical tag to a page's URL, the search giant will display what it considers the canonical version of the content in question. The page in Google ranking may not be the one you want to rank for.
How to solve it - You can remove duplicate content. But in case you have multiple URLs, like for certain products, you need to add the rel=canonical attribute to the section of the master copy and the duplicate pages.
This is how the canonical tag is used in both cases:
Reason 6: Google penalized you
Manual actions
This is rarely the case, but a sudden drop in SERP rankings can be caused by a manual penalty from Google. So unless you've done something drastic to manipulate SEO rankings, like spamming or hiding text/keyword stuffing, you're fine.
Google will let you know if you get a hit. Go to Google Search Console to check the issue. Under Security and Manual Actions, you will find the sanction, its description, and all affected pages.
How to solve it : It would be too long to go over all the manual actions, but we've already covered the ground in this article on Google penalties. We suggest you look for the penalty and apply the corresponding fix to all pages involved. Your Google ranking may not return to previous levels (quickly) after recovery because, minus the quality issue, the SERP ranking algorithm will evaluate your pages again.
Algorithmic sanctions
From time to time, Google implements algorithm updates, so it is worth tracking keyword rankings not only after such changes. The most recent ones (Panda, Penguin, etc.) check the quality of content and unnatural links. Your SERP position can drop significantly and impact your organic traffic and search engine keyword rankings.
How to solve it – Look for detailed, well-written, high overall value articles or copy (Panda). As for unnatural links, the problem is related to low-quality and spammy backlinks. Google may also find acquiring tons of links in a short period of time suspicious. After replacing low-quality content and removing problematic backlinks, wait for Google to re-crawl your site or pages and your SERP ranking performance to change.
Reason 7: You are not optimizing for your location
Did you notice that local SEO ranking is different from one user to another? This is because Google takes your location into account, among other things. If you are a franchise or business with multiple locations, it is essential to target or bid on the right location-based keywords in search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
How to solve it : As we said, target the keyword that applies to your franchise subunit or business branch. You should also expand your local and franchise SEO strategy by leveraging local listings.
Reason 8: Your Site is Out of Date for Page Experience (Core Web Vitals)
Page Experience comprises Google's latest range of ranking signals, including Core Web Vitals, which focuses on page loading speed, visual stability, and interactivity. The new guidelines for SEO keyword rankings were released in June 2021. It takes several weeks or more to get page experience optimization going and about four weeks to see its impact.
How to solve it – If you haven't audited your site or updated your SEO strategy, there's no time to waste. Read our Step-by-Step Guide to Google Page Experience and Core Web Vitals for complete information. To catch up, you can also partner with an Internet marketing agency that can monitor keyword rankings and apply the update at the same time.
Reason 9: Your website is hot off the press
Some may find this obvious, but others may still be confused about search engine keyword rankings or lack an SEO strategy for their new site. Keep in mind that it takes time for your pages to rank and reach the top of the SERPs. From the moment your website goes live, give Google some time to crawl it. Additionally, consider factors such as content quality, user experience (UX), security, and even presence on listings like Google My Business (GMB) and how they affect when your SEO services are activated. It could take at least a couple of months or four months. to one year Some pages may rise quickly in SEO keyword rankings, while others may arrive later, depending on your search engine optimization strategy.
How to fix it: “How to rank my website then?” you ask. First, submit your sitemap to Google if you haven't already. Use any of the formats supported by Google, such as XML, text and RSS, mRSS and Atom 1.0.
In Google Search Console, click Sitemaps under Index and enter the URL of your sitemap.
If you hired a digital marketing agency for strategy development, your site should be optimized before launch. It's up to your agency or in-house team to manage the moving parts, like on-page optimization, link building, technical SEO, and local SEO.
Fix it with a trusted partner
After reading this article, you should know the answer to “how to rank my website.” Of course, the implementation is much more complicated. But we hope you have an idea of how it's done and how to get started.
If you're short on time or prefer to leave complicated parts to professionals, here are some of the benefits that await you: no guesswork about errors, proper prioritization, and improved optimization. The combination of all of these leads to positive results and profitable management of your page rankings.
