Are you aware of the current ranking of your website in search engine results pages or SERP? Have you noticed any changes in SERP that might have negatively impacted your website traffic and revenue even without receiving any penalty, notification and other related problems? Have you lost your website’s ranking and would like to get it back on track? You’re not the only person to might have experienced this but there is always an explanation as to what could be going on.
There are multiple reasons why search traffic undergoes major changes and not all of them are related to Google’s algorithm update as what most people would think. Below are the top 6 reasons for SERP changes that you should know:
1. It’s Not Your Site, It’s the Searchers
Keep in mind that there are many websites in the search results, so it is never a case that all websites get demoted and are no longer visible in the search anymore. Such changes can be pointed to an algorithm changes or it could be because of the changes in how people search.
Understanding this means you can try to build your website for the audience rather than for yourself. If a certain topic is no longer interesting to the searchers, you’ll most likely have lesser traffic for such queries for the reason that people don’t search for them any longer.
2. It is Your Site
Do you remember the importance of having a good quality website? A change in SERPs could be due to a change in the quality of your website or it could be on Google’s part where they changed how they recognize quality based on their algorithms. You could be losing traffic due to these reasons.
It can be hard to guess. So be careful in making any changes on your website and make sure that the quality of your site meets the requirements of Google’s algorithms.
3. Competitors Are Improving
The search engine results pages or SERPs are in a constant state of change. You should understand that your competitor will become more active on the Internet. At times it could be due to the rise of new competitors too. With this, you can’t expect the search results to stay the same.
4. Change In Search Habit
Another factor that you need to think about is the search habit of searchers. If this changes, then expect a change in the search traffic too.
Think about the offline world particularly in the supermarkets. For whatever reason, a lot of supermarkets are not carrying goat’s milk but they are stocked with different brands of cow’s milk. It can be possible that the sales for ‘goat’s milk’ has decreased, therefore they stopped carrying it.
In the online world, using the same example, there could be changes in the search trend between consumers who are looking for ‘goat’s milk’ and ‘cow’s milk’. The search trend for ‘cow’s milk’ could be double or more than the goat’s milk search activity. The supermarket simply responded to the demand of the consumers by providing them what they want.
The point here is that you should do your best in keeping an eye on consumer use of keywords. One factor could be a change in consumer popularity. If there is a change in taste, you will have to update what your users are attracted in. It can surely cause an undesirable change in the search traffic.
5. Change in Website
There are times wherein Google understands it less when there’s a change in your website. A hypothetical example is if your website is a SEO marketing site and you start publishing unrelated content, it’s highly possible that Google might start to perceive your website as being less authoritative in marketing.
6. Change in Google Algorithm
At times, Google changes its ways on how it understands web content and search queries. This has been constantly changing for the past years.
One thing that you can do is to check the search results. Give time in understanding why they are ranking on the top and you are not.
