Let’s take a look at what you can do when things go wrong. I’m speaking of when your website drops in Google’s rankings. You have to take a fine-comb approach to figuring out what went wrong. If you don’t, you’ll end up feeling down emotionally, and you might not even take the steps necessary to set your ship back on its’ proper course.
There are several areas to look at when your rankings drop in Google
I’ll break them down into the following areas:
1) Your on-page factors
2) Website administration issues
3) Off-page factors such as your incoming links
The first set, on page factors, is something that you can control completely. Generally, there won’t be much that you’ve done to sink you entire website, based on on page factors, but there could still be some issues. Most notably, look for any outgoing links you may have added that could be causing problems. If none exist, chances are your actual on-page optimization efforts are not causing issues. Now, if you never ranked highly in Google, I’d start by tweaking these factors, but if you were ranking and dropped, and you haven’t added outgoing links, this is probably a non-issue.
The next thing to look at is obvious, but can easily be missed. This is a system administration screwup that’s effecting your whole web page.
System administration screwups can effect the whole site across the board
Because most websites are template driven, it only takes one mistake to roach all of your listings and rankings. An improper 301, a typo in the wrong template, on and on. There are numerous issues which could effect a website negatively across all of the pages. A key to finding out if you’ve made any mistakes in this area is to check out Google Webmaster Central and look for any error messages. Seeing what’s actually wrong from Google’s end is one quick way to fix problems.
Last, but not least, incoming links may be an issue. For years it was stated that incoming links could never hurt you. But in the last few months this common wisdom is being analyzed again to see if its’ faulty. In particular if you have had a drop in rankings, and you know you’ve been responsible from some sort of dodgy linking technique, check into it. Remove the links and see if your rankings are restored.
You can always also write an email to Google. Their automated response should at least tell you if you’ve been penalized, or might offer a nudge in the right direction. Above all else, remain calm and work through the situation methodically. If you can’t find anything wrong, then just ride out the storm and wait for a return.
