9 Possible Reasons Why your Site Rankings Dropped [2024]

Have you noticed a decrease in your rankings? Lower rankings mean reduced traffic. So if your website traffic is dropping, then it is a serious concern to look upon.

Whether you are working as a digital marketer or a business owner, it is your responsibility to understand the possible reasons that can impact your rankings largely. Once you are able to identify the problematic areas, you can significantly figure out what needs to be done to improve your rankings.

Here in this article, we have listed some of the common reasons that might contribute to your lower rankings:

1. Not tracking your website rankings the right way

If it’s been a long time since your website is online, there are greater chances that you are using the old keywords that are no longer serving the purpose. Nowadays, people use more natural words to make a search, so it is important to include those words in your content.

The search engines have also started ranking websites based on complete sentences and not just specific keywords. So, it’s time to upgrade your old strategies and employ new methods of keywords research for improved results.

Also, it is important to keep an eye on your search engine rankings from time to time. Use Zutrix to track your website rankings and understand your user behavior in a better way.

2. Lost and broken links

Broken or lost links could be another possible reason for a drop in your rankings.  Check your website thoroughly for any lost or broken links and fix the as soon as possible. Understand why your links have been lost of broken and either replace or remove them.

If your links have removed intentionally, then they might not used naturally so leave them. Sometimes, you will see that some links broke due to site updates so you can fix them. If your internal links have replaced with new links, then update it.

So it is important to keep a track on your broken and lost links so that it won’t impact your rankings in the long run.

3. Competitors Analysis

There can be a possibility that your website rankings drops even after doing everything right. In this case, your competitor is doing a better job than you are doing on your website.

To take a note of your competitor’s work, properly analyze your competitor’s keywords, link building techniques and content management strategy with the help of SEO tools. They might be making more Backlinks, using long form content or using good interlinking structure.

Once you will understand how your competitor is ranking at a higher position in search engine, you can easily outrank them with better strategies.

4. Google algorithm

It happens many times when your website traffic suddenly drops due to Google algorithm updates and changes. As you know, Google keeps on changing its algorithms to enhance the user experience. As a result, many websites notice changes in their rankings – either increasing or decreasing.

So, to maintain your website traffic, you can adopt a stable ranking strategy or do cross channel marketing to secure traffic from reliable channels.

5. Internal linking/navigation

The internal navigation of your website will inform your users how and where they will get the required information.

Make sure you have made a clear and easy to navigate structure on your website so that your users do not face any problem using it. If they will not get to the required page within two or three clicks, they will most likely to leave that page.

Moreover, search engines do not crawl the content that is deep buried inside your pages, thereby affecting your traffic and rankings significantly.

6. Meta Information

Meta information is of huge significance as it tells search engines as well as users what your content is all about.

One of the most important elements of Meta information is ‘title tag’. Headers and Meta descriptions are also relevant as it can also affect your Google rankings.

So, always remain consistent in providing the Meta Description for all your articles and include focus keywords in it for better SEO growth.

7. Traffic sources

The traffic on your website is not only determined by the number of visits made on your website but also from the number of page clicked and time spend on each page. You receive your website traffic from multiple sources like referrals, direct clicks, paid searches, social media etc.

Which source is best to get traffic largely depends upon where you get the most engagement and more readers for your website. To get maximum traffic on your website, consistently deliver the valuable and useful advice on your brand or niche to establish yourself as an expert in your industry.

8. Page speed

Page speed is a crucial factor that not only affects your search rankings but also impact your user experience and engagement. Faster load pages and readily provided content always get more visitors and high traffic. One the other hand, if your content pages load slowly, then there are high chances of increased bounce rate on your website.

To check the page speed of your website, you can easily check it from Google page speed tool. It will give you a report about slow, medium and fast loaded pages so that you can improve your page speed accordingly.

9. Duplicate content

Using duplicate or copied content on your website will not only lower your rankings but can also lead to permanent ban on your website. In the worst case scenario, your website will be removed from Google index and will not show thereafter.

So always write high quality, unique and original content for your website that can fulfill its purpose and user’s intention. Remember it is always the content that can either make or break a website. If people like your content, they will come again and vice versa.

Final words

It is important to understand that there is no shortcut or hack to increase your website traffic. You need implement the right strategies and put it a lot of effort to improve your search rankings.

So, analyze your rankings carefully, find out the reasons that are affecting your rankings and start working on it to get the desired results.