Transcript
Hi guys, and welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is how long does it take for my rankings to recover if my rankings have dropped? This is a really common question in SEO. Everyone gets asked this left and right. Because if your business used to rank well, and then you've dropped, usually the leads will drop as well. So a lot of people get nervous or they get concerned. They want to be able to make sure that their rankings are back up, so I want to spend some time talking about that today.
But before we begin, I want to introduce the tea we have today. Today we have a jasmine green tea. This is a very common guest on our tea channel. It's because usually when I film, I get pretty hot, so jasmine green tea is brewed at a lesser temperature, but it just has a really nice flavor, so in the morning, as I'm filming, have this nice, floral Jasmine green tea flavor. If you're wondering how it tastes, if you've ever had a green milk tea or anything like that from a Boba shop, usually jasmine green tea is the base. But let's go ahead and get brewing guys.
So the question is, how long it'll take for my Google rankings to recover if they've dropped? So the question is very common in the sense of the answer is usually, it depends. But let me give you a quick high level view of how I usually diagnose.
If your rankings have a drops and it's been two days, you can usually see your rankings recover in one or two days as well. It's been pretty quick. You can pretty much bet that your rankings could go back up, but usually in those cases, Google is messing with their search algorithm a little bit and you might be dipping and increasing.
But where it gets concerning is if your rankings have dropped, and then for a week straight they have been dropped, and you've kind of been monitoring and they haven't been going back up. Then the second week they've continued to be in that same position, I would say after the second week is when you guys, you need to start being a little concerned and start acting quickly.
Anytime I see a site that has dropped in rankings, and the rankings have been in that position for longer than two to three months, it's an entire other SEO campaign to get it back up. So generally what I say is if your rankings have fallen and it's only been about three days to a week, there's not heavy concern just yet, but start making sure you're doing some different optimizations to recover.
But once we get two to three weeks you really need to start getting your team together and start planning for how you're going to recover. Because after two to three weeks, it might mean it's not a momentary thing. It's going to be something that your site maybe was deemed that there was some quality issues with it. Maybe with the new search algorithm update, the site did not pass the filters and the new criteria. In that case, if it takes longer than two or three weeks, and you've been dropping, then I'd say you got to start really responding quickly.
Because like I said earlier, for websites that come to us and they say, "We're ratings have dropped and we want to know if you could help us get it back, and we want to quick." I'll ask them, how long have they been down there? If they say anything longer than three months, generally I'll tell them, SEO, the average campaign takes six to nine months to get to the first page. If you've dropped in rankings for three to six months now, you're going to expect about six to nine months worth of SEO work to recover to get back over there.
Because three to six months of dropped rankings means that you've not only dropped, but you've been stabilized down there. Whoever's been on the top now has been stabilized up there. You can't just swoop in all of a sudden, because there is some level of consistency that Google wants. So therefore, I'd say if your ranking is dropped for two to three weeks, okay, you might be able to recover quickly if we can identify problems quickly and then work on it really fast.
However, if it's been sustained and even if you respond fast doesn't mean you can't prevent sustained ranking issues. But anytime you feel like, okay, it's been over a month and our ranking still have been a little bit, down there ... When I mean down there, let me just clarify.
When I mean down there. I mean if your ranking dropped from the eighth spot to the 12th spot, we can figure this out pretty quickly. We're talking about if you're ranking dropped from the eighth spot to the 70th spot, or the eighth spot to the 50th spot. If it's more than four pages down, that's what we're talking about, your rankings have dropped to a level where, like I said, if it's longer than three months, this is going to be a whole new SEO campaign that we got to figure out what went wrong, we have to do more work to prove ourselves to Google and it gets you on that first page.
So again, there's different nuances, so it really depends. But what I find is if it's a penalty by Google, it's going to take a while. If your rankings have dropped to the fourth or fifth page, and it's been a while, like a month or two to three months, it might take a while. If your rankings have dropped from the fifth spot to the, I don't know, the ninth spot or the 11th spot, it's not going to take six to nine months. It's just going to require some level of work to focus in and get you up there.
Now, how fast is it going to be? It's how fast the business can respond. How fast can you go out and get high quality analytics? How fast can you get content rolled out on your website? These are the answers that will ultimately dictate how quickly you go.
But in terms of, if you really want a quick answer, if it's a penalty by Google, it's going to take a while, six to nine months. I've heard people take years to get back. If you are dropping from the first page to the fifth page, it's going to take maybe six to nine months worth of work. If you're dropped from half a page, we can probably get you back in a month to two months to get you back to where you need to be.
Those are the general rules of engagement. But again, it's very nuanced, very dependent on many factors of, if Google went through an algorithm update? Who were the competitors that beat you out? What is your website looking like? Where are you doing anything spammy? Many considerations. But usually, this gets asked all the time, so there's not a perfect answer, but I do want to film this video and talk about this so you guys can have a general insight into how an SEO's mind diagnoses these things and figures out how long it's going to take.
So hopefully that was helpful, hopefully that was valuable, and hopefully it'll help you guys when you're trying to diagnose your own situation. If you found the video valuable, please like and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and enjoy my tea now, and I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks, everybody.