As a blogger it’s one of the worst feelings in the world to wake up, check your rank tracker, and see that all of your rankings have tanked. Even worse, the same thing has happened on multiple sites. So what do you do if your Google rankings dropped overnight? In this article I’ll go over some of the things I check if this happens to me.
Let’s have a look.
Why your Google rankings dropped overnight
Here are the main things I look at if I’m noticing some volatility in the SERP and my site’s rankings.
1. Google update
If I notice that my Google rankings dropped overnight, the first thing I look for is a Google update. Google is regularly updating their search algorithm, so much so that we often don’t even notice it. However, a few times a year Google will roll out what’s referred to as a Broad Core Update and this can have both devastating and amazing impacts on niche websites.
If it looks like more of your rankings have dropped than what’s a normal fluctuation, look to places like Search Engine Journal and other publications that keep up with the latest Google updates. Here you’ll likely find out if there was a recent algorithm update, and if there was what was it targeting.
Some of the past Google updates have targeting things like:
- Health and medical sites – Sites that had no business giving medical advice lost rankings overnight
- EAT – This stands for Expertise Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness
- BERT – Meant to help understand search queries and search intent better
- Most recently was Core Web Vitals – Page experience update
Each one of these, in a way, penalized sites that were weak in certain areas. Not manual penalties in Google Search Console, but Google simply no longer ranked the content as well. After an update like this the difference will likely be seen instantly. If you are at some point negatively affective by a Google update, it’s your job to find out why and correct the issues on your site. Then resubmit your urls manually.
2. Normal fluctuations
Growth is rarely linear. A sudden drop in traffic may seem devastating and unfair, but we can’t forget about all of the increases leading up to it. One of my sites, this one actually, seems to have recently lost about 10% in traffic. It was also just after the most recent July 2021 Google update.
Is it simply a normal fluctuation or is it related to the Google update? I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that my site went from about 50k page views/month to over 150k in just a short period because Google was treating me very nicely for several months.
If traffic and rankings dip down a little before the next spike then I’m fine with that. I’ll just keep plugging away knowing that the downtrend is only temporary. For me, 10-15 percent fluctuation up or down on a daily or weekly basis is pretty normal. I may even have several months in a row where traffic is down.
Eventually though, I’m always confident that things will pick up again. In the meantime I can always concentrate on one of my other sites. The important thing is that we don’t give up.
3. Index status
Google has been notorious lately for having issues with indexing urls, I see a lot of chatter about it from other publishers. I force index my urls one time when I publish them usually and that’s it. I do notice that sometimes for no reason my rank tracker suddenly no long is able to find a url.
When this happens I’ve noticed a few things:
- It’s usually a newer post
- It wasn’t bringing in much (or any) traffic
- Left alone, it will show back up again soon
This is never a problem with older articles that have established rankings. It’s all part of the Google dance. I could freak out about it and waste time manually submitting urls to Google Search Console, or I can spend that time creating new content. I choose the latter.
4. Manual penalty
I’ve never had a manual penalty, but this is a possibility and it’s easy to check for. If you’re already in your Google Search Console, then just select a domain and choose manual action under Security and Manual Actions.
If you’ve received a manual penalty from Google, they will tell you here. As I mentioned, I’ve never gotten one so I’m not really sure how ambiguous they are about them. I’m sure they’ll at least give you a vague idea of how to fix the issue though.
5. Recent site changes
Ask yourself if you’ve made any recent or drastic changes to your site that could have messed something up. Something as simple as changing your permalink structure could have destroyed every url on your site. I’ve heard from some that even a theme change can negatively affect SEO, though that’s never been my experience.
I’ve changed themes dozens of times, maybe hundreds, and I’ve never taken an SEO hit because of it. The one golden rule above everything else when making changes to a site is protect the urls. Never under any circumstance alter your permalinks, and if you do for the love of god set up a redirect.
It can also be quite detrimental to alter the content on the page or post. If you have a post that is ranking well and for some reason you go in and change things around, then it’s likely that Google will no longer like it. At the very least they may send it to the back of the stack and have to reevaluate things all over again. If it’s not broke then don’t fix it.
If you want to make drastic changes to your posts, then do so on underperforming pieces of content.
6. Hacked site
I’ve had this happen once and Google will certainly take away your rankings if you don’t fix it quickly enough. In my case, I had an entire dedicated server get hacked. It had a couple dozen websites on it. I’m still not sure how they got in, but they were able to access all sites on the server once they did.
Every url on all of the sites were directed to unsavory adult content that wasn’t representative of a business… it was bad. I think it was due to one of their users having a ridiculously weak password, but I couldn’t prove it.
Anyway, if you discover this has happened to you then brew a pot of coffee and clear your schedule. Oftentimes the backups you have do no good, because they’re infected as well. The hacker may have hacked your site 6 months ago and left their code in your database all this time so that the only backups available are all hacked.
In my case, I tried restoring back ups that were over a month old and the sites were reinfected almost immediately. So be prepared for complete fresh reinstalls and rebuilds of everything. It’s a nightmare.
7. Negative SEO
This isn’t as common today as it was once was. In fact, Google has said on several occasions that we shouldn’t even worry about spammy backlinks as they can tell the difference and they won’t negatively affect our sites.
I for one believe Google, I rarely check for spammy backlinks. There is always going to be at least some of those spammy links pointing to a decent sized site. Yes, you can go into GSC and disavow links, I’ve done it a few times. I think it’s largely a waste of time though and again, time is better spent creating new content.
If this worries you though, here’s where you can disavow spammy links.
How to stay safe from Google updates
There are many reasons you have to be on your toes as a blogger, but if we’re being honest this is what most of us are probably worried about. To keep your site(s) safe from Google updates there are a few things you can do to mitigate risk. While no one is truly immune from the being the victim of an algorithm update, there are some things I do to decrease my vulnerability.
- Steer clear of YMYL – I try and stay away from “your money or your life” type content. It’s often hard to rank and competitive anyway.
- Publish original content – Publishing original content in some way is crucial. Even the same type of article is already on page 1, publishing my take on the topic from my point of view is original content. People may prefer my explanation over what was previously there.
- Publish evergreen content – I understand that not all niches have a lot of opportunities for evergreen type content. I choose my niches with this in mind because to me, the longer a piece of content remains relevant, the more valuable it is. The longer it’s relevant, the better chance it has of weathering Google storms.
- Patience – By patience I simply mean that I wait for Google to rank me naturally. There are some shortcuts you can take and corners you can cut to get traffic faster than you might normally, but this can come with risk. Having unnatural links can result in a manual penalty which can result in an instant loss of rankings. I don’t risk it.
What to do if your blog’s rankings have dropped
First, don’t panic. You can’t stop your heart from sinking, I know that feeling. Asses the damage and see if it’s really as bad as it seems. Go straight to your rank tracker, I use Serprobot.com, and take a look at the numbers.
Hopefully you are tracking all of your primary keywords in your trackers so you can see which of your articles have dropped. In serprobot, you can see at the very top all of your rankings broken down into top 3, top 10, top 30, and top 100. You can also see things like average position and number of improved keywords vs the ones that have declined.
The first one I always look at is the top 3. If my top 3 haven’t changed drastically then I know things are OK. Same for top 10, if there hasn’t been too much movement there then that’s all that really matters. Everything else is on the second page or beyond and is only going to account for a tiny percentage of your overall traffic.
If your top 3 or your top 10 have dropped significantly, then it could be a simple fluctuation or it could be one of the other things mentioned above. At this point I would manually search the keyword from an incognito browser and see where your site is. Look at the position on the page and determine why it dropped and why other sites may have jumped above you.
You can make necessary improvements to try and improve the ranking if you wish, but only after waiting a few days to see if the new ranking is going to stick. I usually leave things alone in most cases. If my content was already in a good position for a keyword, then chances are it may see that position again without me doing anything.
Final notes
In the end, we’re at the mercy of Google and that’s why it’s good practice to stay as diversified as possible. There are a number of ways to do this. You can have multiple income streams, multiple traffic sources, multiple web properties, a couple of Youtube channels, or even other income streams outside of the online ones, such as rental properties etc.
I am doing a mixture of as many as I can, and feel comfortable doing. I have several different income generating niche websites, though all rely on Google for traffic, the chances of all of them being hit by the same Google update are slim. I am also diversified with my revenue sources since I work with Ezoic, Mediavine, Adthrive, Amazon Associates, and several others.
In the future I may even create a WordPress plugin, or hire someone to create one for me rather. My WP plugin idea would help publishers of all skill levels bridge a gap I see in the publishing process. I spent all morning writing on the whiteboard and drawing out the plans. So that could be another potential income source that doesn’t rely on Google organic traffic.
Just keep your mind open and think outside the box.