8 Factors That Could Cause Fluctuations in Your Search Rankings

Whether you have been engaged in an SEO strategy with an outsourced provider, or you manage your own SEO efforts, you are already aware that organic traffic isn’t always guaranteed. However, you may be wondering exactly why you are having trouble with maintaining a steady stream of traffic. In some cases, the cause could be out of your control. In other cases, there are some things that you should check to troubleshoot the problem and find a solution.

To help you diagnose the cause of your organic SEO problem, here are 8 factors that could cause fluctuations in your search rankings.

Your pages haven’t been indexed

It is fairly easy to tell if there are pages of your site that aren’t indexed by simply doing a Google search with the search query “site:example.com.” If you are noticing that some of the pages of your website aren’t in the SERPs, then you will need to visit Google Search Console to find out why.

You made recent changes to your site

If you recently made changes to your site, you will need to allow time for Google’s bots to re-crawl and re-index the pages for your site.

URL confusion

If there is more than one page that is optimized for the same keyword on your website, Google may decide to lower the rankings of some of the pages while choosing to rank only one page higher. Use a keyword tracking tool to check the URLs of your website.

You blocked Google’s bots

Another effect of updating your website that could lead to problems is if you blocked Google’s bots in the process. Check your robots.txt file for your site to make sure that you haven’t actually blocked out your own traffic.

You’ve been outranked

While this isn’t something that is your own fault, it does mean that you will need to become more aggressive in your SEO efforts if you want to regain your traffic numbers.

Paid ads are taking away your traffic

With paid ads earning more clicks than organic search results in some instances, the loss of your traffic might not actually be due to your failed SEO efforts, but due to paid ads that appear above your website in the SERPs.

You haven’t been keeping up with the latest SEO trends

It is not enough to simply engage in white-hat SEO, you must also take advantage of the SEO techniques that are most effective. If your main focus is running your business and not your SEO strategy, it may be time to consider bringing in a partner to help you restore your organic traffic.

Interest in your products or services is declining

While the popularity of brands come and go, your business should be prepared to deal with ebb and flow. That means that if you find that your organic traffic is waning for this reason, then it might be a good idea to conduct some research and consider a new strategy for your marketing or business that will regain the attention of your customers.

Do you need an SEO strategy that will provide reliable results over time? When you use white-hat SEO to obtain your search rankings combined with the latest SEO recommendations, you’ll never have to worry a huge shift in your rankings due to a Google update.

Brian Hong, an SEO for Infintech Designs, is ready to help you get better results. To request a quote and free SEO site audit today, call (504) 717-4837.