When you’re trying to rank your site higher in search engines, it can be challenging to know which variables give you the most value for your efforts. However, even when you’ve managed to get certain web pages to the top of SERPs, this doesn’t mean they’ll stay there forever.
Understanding the reasoning behind keyword ranking changes is critical to ensure you’re implementing a more sustainable SEO strategy.
What Is a Keyword Rank Change?
Keyword rank changes are when individual pages of your website move up or down their relative positions in SERPs after the same keywords or phrases are used. Rank positioning itself is identified by counting the number of links from the top to the bottom of each page before you come across your own.
Why Keyword Rankings Fluctuate
Once you’re able to rank your pages on SERPs, they’ll often move up or down the ranks dynamically. Sometimes these shifts will be minor, while other times they can be quite significant. There are several different reasons why this is the case:
Google and Search Engine Factors
Google’s algorithms used for crawling and indexing new information online are constantly changing. Some of these changes may not have a large impact on ranking changes, while other “core” updates can completely change the way web crawlers evaluate sites.
Also, the way Google displays results on SERPs can also change. For example, Google has now introduced AI Overviews, which take up a larger portion of real estate on the first page results of Google, which can shift even higher-ranked pages lower down the list.
Website and Content Factors
If you’ve made new changes to your website’s structure or web content, this will likely lead to certain changes in your page rankings. Changes to meta titles and descriptions, keyword placement, site loading performance, or other technical changes can all have a bearing on where and how Google chooses to list a website in result pages after users type in specific search queries.
External and Competitive Factors
Google rankings aren’t just impacted by what’s on your website or even things you can directly control. For example, competitors that have put significant investments into their own SEO strategies could mean they’re starting to take over the spots you’ve currently ranked for.
Also, over time, your site may gain more high-quality backlinks from other authoritative websites. This could be helping to boost your rankings higher as Google starts to view your site as more reputable than others.
When Should You Worry About Keyword Fluctuations?
The important thing to remember is that keyword fluctuations are completely normal as you start to introduce more comprehensive SEO strategies. However, while smaller movements are rarely something to be concerned about, you should keep an eye out for some changes that might mean something bigger is going on.
Pay attention to your rankings over time and look for sudden spikes, such as a major decrease in rankings that causes you to lose 10 or more positions. If your rankings don’t return after a few weeks and you're noticing a large impact on your organic website traffic numbers, it may be a sign that there are deeper issues you’ll need to look into.
How to Diagnose the Cause
If you start seeing a consistent drop in your keyword rankings, you don’t need to panic. There are some proven steps you can take to diagnose the issue and come up with a plan of action to address it:
Step 1 – Check for Algorithm Updates - The first thing to look for when you have a consistent change in rankings is if Google has recently released any new algorithm updates. Look at different SEO news sites and see if there are other reports of changes happening that might point to the reasons behind the rank changes you’re seeing.
Step 2 – Review Site Changes - In most cases, when you see a drastic change in your rankings, changes made to your website will be the culprit. Keep accurate records of the different updates you make to your site, as well as the date the changes were published. This helps you to create benchmarks you can use to gauge your SEO performance as you move forward.
Step 3 – Analyze Competitor Movements - It’s a good practice to keep an eye on your competitors’ listings as you try to improve your own. Have a look at their content strategy and see what types of backlinks they’ve collected. If you notice your competitors are regularly outranking your pages, this could be a sign that following some of their strategies could be beneficial.
Step 4 – Audit Your Backlink Profile - Make sure to closely audit your backlink profile. A sudden loss of high-quality links can lower your authority, while an influx of low-quality links from questionable websites might lead to Google penalizing your rankings. You can use a wide range of backlink analysis tools to spot any significant changes that could be affecting your site's credibility and rank.
Step 5 – Evaluate Local or Seasonal Factors - Take note of any local or seasonal factors that might shift your rankings over the year. For example, if your business has established seasonality, it’s only natural that your rankings and associated web traffic may start to fall during certain times of the year.
How to Fix Keyword Rank Changes
After you’ve identified various reasons for your ranking changes, it’s important to take certain steps to address them. Below are some various techniques you can use to improve any ranking losses you’ve experienced:
Run a Full SEO Audit
When your rankings shift, conducting a full SEO audit can be really helpful in helping you discover the underlying cause. This process involves checking your site's technical health for issues like slow speed or mobile-friendliness errors, as well as evaluating your content to ensure it's relevant and up-to-date.
An SEO audit is also the perfect time to analyze your backlink profile to clean up any harmful links you may have gained. Tools like Google Search Console can help you achieve this while also providing you with additional information on your site's performance, which is worth looking into.
Improve or Update Key Content
Since your content is a primary driver of rankings, regularly refreshing and improving it over time is essential.
Take a look at your most important pages and make sure the content fully answers a user's question relevant to your primary keywords. You can increase the effectiveness of your pages by adding new information, up-to-date statistics, and long-tail keywords. You should also improve your readability with better formatting and add engaging visuals.
Build and Maintain High-Quality Backlinks
Focus on earning new backlinks for your website that come from reputable sources. To do this, a common best practice is to offer to create valuable content for web owners in exchange for a link back to your own site.
However, just as important as gaining new links, you also need to protect your site’s authority by regularly monitoring your backlink profile over time. This means finding and disavowing any toxic links that could be hurting your rank and credibility.
Stay Aligned With Google’s Guidelines
Another important strategy for establishing better long-term rankings for your website is to make sure you’re following all of Google’s Webmaster guidelines. This means making sure all of the content you post on your site follows E-E-A-T principles (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).
On top of ensuring the content you create is high quality, you should also leverage tools like Google Search Console to evaluate the performance of your site. This helps you to identify potential areas of improvement that may be needed to increase the speed and usability of the site to benefit your users.
FAQs About Keyword Rank Change
How often should I check keyword rankings?
Invest in tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to help you keep daily tabs on your keyword rankings. While tracking movement every day may not be possible, at the very least, you should be checking them at least once a week and closely follow their trends.
Can I predict when rank changes will happen?
No. Even when following SEO guidelines closely, there is no telling if and when your search rankings might change day-to-day. However, if you know about a core Google algorithm update coming, it’s a good idea to plan for changes to some degree.
How fast can I recover from a drop?
It depends on the reasons for the drop in rankings. In some cases, your rankings could return to normal within 24 hours or the next time Google crawls your site. In other situations, it may take several days or even weeks for rankings to return to normal. However, this will all depend on the cause of the drop and any remediation efforts you make.
Is it possible to avoid ranking volatility altogether?
No. Page rankings are controlled exclusively by Google’s proprietary algorithms, and they will always have full control over where and when your page listings appear on SERPs.
How does local SEO affect keyword rankings?
Local SEO adds geographic relevance to search results. Because of this, your rank for a keyword can be completely different for someone searching in another city, depending on the type of terms being used.