Navigating Google's SEO Changes: A Practical Guide to Recover (and Maintain) Your Ranking
In recent months, Google’s newly implemented SEO algorithm updates have had a huge effect on sites worldwide. For our affiliates, this could mean reduced visibility, lower traffic, and ultimately, a dip in sales figures. The key to mitigating these effects lies in understanding how they influence search rankings, and adapting your strategies accordingly.
We’ve come up with a practical guide to help you maintain your website's health and bounce back from any setbacks, whether you're dealing with a steady decline or a sudden drop. Each suggestion is outlined in order of relative importance, but ideally they should be implemented together rather than individually.
Read on to use these tips and get your site back on track!
Scenario #1:
Steady traffic decline
When faced with a consistent drop in traffic, there are several long-term causes that could be involved. If your site is experiencing a steady yet significant decline, consider implementing the following actions.
01
Review your current SEO strategy
Although this may seem like a given, there are often so many considerations to take into account when it comes to SEO strategies that it is important to keep reviewing them. Most importantly, in order to successfully improve your ranking you must comply with Google’s (albeit fast changing) rules.
As such, seek to ensure your SEO practices align with Google's essential recommendations. Regularly consult the guidelines on the official Google Search Essentials page to keep your strategies updated.
02
Check the actual situation in SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
If you examine performance by page, keyword, country and device, you will be better equipped to identify where your losses are coming from. Analyze your actual traffic losses using the Google Search Console (GSC).
Check data for specific pages, keywords, countries, devices, and other relevant segments.
Then, examine the current state of the search results for your target keywords. Investigate whether your organic performance decline was caused by changes in the SERP layout, such as AI Overviews, Google's featured snippets, paid ads, or increased competition. Identify which competitors have taken your position in the search results and analyze why Google has prioritized them over your website.
03
Stay updated on Google algorithm changes
Google’s constantly-changing features mean it is important to stay in the loop so as to avoid slipping away from key compliances. To do so, regularly check if your website complies with time-sensitive algorithm adjustments. This can prevent unexpected penalties.
You can check the Google Search Status Dashboard here, or subscribe to receive focalized updates from high profile marketing expert sites such as Search Engine Roundtable or Search Engine Land.
04
Conduct a content audit
When it comes to SEO, content is king. Part of refining your strategy in light of recent changes is to evaluate your content’s relevance to current search intents, as well as ensuring its uniqueness. Identify any stagnation and update your content to better meet audience expectations, using the following pillars as guidance:
- Relevance: Evaluate your existing content to ensure it aligns with the current search intent of your target audience. Search engines and user preferences evolve, so your content needs to stay up-to-date.
- Update: Refresh your existing content by updating information, adding new insights, or improving its overall quality. This can help re-engage your audience and improve search rankings.
- Uniqueness: Check for duplicate content within your own website and across the web. Search engines penalize duplicate content, so ensure your content is original and provides unique value.
- Stagnation: Identify underperforming content that isn't attracting traffic or generating engagement. This could indicate that the content is outdated, irrelevant, or poorly optimized.
- Audience Expectations: Analyze your target audience's needs and preferences to ensure your content meets their expectations. Consider their search intent, pain points, and preferred content formats.
05
Address technical issues
In addition to content quality, creating fixes and being optimized on a technical level is also key to securing performance in Google’s shifting scene. As such, follow Google's best practices for crawling and indexing to enhance site performance. Resolve any indexing errors using the Google Search Console, and proceed with addressing issues such as slow page loading times, broken links, or mobile optimization bugs.
By taking the time to address these technical considerations, you can help ensure that your website is both user-friendly and search engine-friendly. This, in turn, can lead to increased traffic, improved search rankings, and ultimately, greater success for your affiliate marketing efforts.
06
Monitor backlink decay
Backlinks are links from other sites that direct back to your website. To maintain a healthy backlink profile and improve your site's SEO, it's crucial to regularly audit your backlinks and take corrective action. This involves identifying and deleting any spam or low-quality links that could harm your site's reputation.
You can also add these harmful links to your disavow list, so that search engines like Google know to ignore them. This will help prevent them from negatively affecting your website's ranking in search results.
Additionally, you should attempt to recover any lost backlinks from valuable websites that may have disappeared due to site redesigns or other changes.
07
Resolve keyword cannibalization
When you implement the same keywords on multiple pages for optimisation, there is a risk for keyword cannibalization. This means that the keywords you implement compete against each other, leading to internal competition within your site.
To avoid this, ensure that multiple pages do not focus on the same keyword or topic. The greater variety of keywords, the more you avoid competing with yourself.
Addressing the impact of Google's recent algorithm changes starts with understanding and adapting to this changing landscape.
Scenario #2:
Rapid drop in organic traffic
If your site experiences a sudden fall in organic traffic, there could be a number of different reasons. Resort to the following steps in order to address and resolve this rapid drop:
01
Check for manual actions and security issues
A Google Penalty, also known as a manual action, happens when a human reviewer at Google finds that pages on a website have violated Google’s spam policies. These violations can result in the demolition or removal of the affected pages (or the entire site) from Google search results. This can cause an immediate and dramatic drop in a site’s Google ranking.
To identify whether this applies to your site, enter the GSC and check for any manual actions or security issues affecting your site. If you see a green message as below, then no manual action is applied. In the absence of this green check, you’ll be shown the details of the issues detected and will need to follow the specified procedures to resolve them.
02
Align with Google's restrictions
Similar to mitigating potential incompliances with Google restrictions as specified in Scenario #1, in the case of a rapid decline in traffic it is important to verify that your site isn’t already being penalized for overlooking any new restrictions. Examples of neglecting Google restrictions include creating a site only to sell ads from it (in other words, over-spamming users with affiliate links) or creating a site related to “sensitive” topics.
Rule out whether your site is being penalized for overlooking any of Google's new restrictions by checking this in the Google Search Status Dashboard. If there are penalizations listed, address them using the indications provided.
03
Review technical accessibility
Certain technical issues could be an explanation for a rapid decline in your site’s traffic. While with a steady decline in traffic you should check for website performance overall and improve related issues, in the case of steep declines you must check to exclude the possibility of heavier issues – such as server/hosting drops and domain accessibility being affected.
To ensure your website is healthily accessible, perform a technical audit exploring whether your website is accessible to users and search engines. Check for the server status, blocking in robots.txt, redirects, site migration, website security measures, etc.
First, check for any server errors that might prevent pages from loading properly. Next, make sure that all redirects on your site are working as intended. Broken or incorrect redirects can lead to a poor user experience as well as negatively impact your search rankings. It's important to double-check that redirects are pointing to the correct pages and that they are implemented using the appropriate HTTP status codes.
Additionally, you'll want to review your robots.txt file to confirm that it's not inadvertently blocking search engines from accessing important pages on your site. The robots.txt file is a simple text file that provides instructions to search engine crawlers about which pages they should and shouldn't access. If critical pages are blocked by robots.txt, this may cause issues with their scanning, thus causing a rankings downtrend. For more information, check out Google’s manual on creating robots.txt files.
04
Investigate indexation issues
To pinpoint pages that may have been de-indexed from search engine results, use the "site:yourdomainname.com" search syntax. This will generate a list of pages that the search engine currently recognizes as belonging to your domain. Cross-reference this list with your sitemap and internal records to identify discrepancies and pages that may have been inadvertently removed from search engine indexes.
Furthermore, regularly consult detailed reports on the Google Search Console (GSC) to stay informed. These reports offer invaluable insights into your site's overall health and performance within search results, including information about indexed pages, crawl errors, and potential indexing issues. By staying proactive and regularly reviewing these reports, you can promptly address any emerging problems and ensure your web pages remain accessible to search engines and potential visitors.
05
Assess content health
To keep your website's content in good shape, it's important to regularly check for any accidental changes or deletions. This includes things like broken links, missing images, or content that may have been accidentally deleted or changed. Also, be mindful of any penalties your site may have received for using bad SEO tactics like keyword stuffing or cloaking, which can get your site penalized by search engines.
Because search engines prioritize delivering the best possible results to their users, they frown upon any tactics that could be perceived as deceptive or manipulative.
These can include practices such as:
- Keyword Stuffing: Overloading your content with keywords in an unnatural way to manipulate search rankings.
- Hidden Text: Hiding text from users while making it visible to search engines to manipulate rankings.
- Cloaking: Presenting different content to search engines than what is shown to users.
- Link Schemes: Creating artificial backlinks to your site to inflate its perceived authority.
- Excessive Affiliate Links: Overloading your content with affiliate links, especially if they are not relevant or valuable to the user.
These practices are considered "black hat" SEO tactics that can result in severe penalties, and be a possible explanation for sudden declines in traffic. Avoid any tricks that search engines might see as manipulative by reading more on which features are threatening here.
06
Examine your backlink profile
If you’re experiencing a rapid decline in traffic, you should also check your backlinks for toxicity. Toxic backlinks could include spikes of backlinks from unclear resources, or backlinks with spam anchor texts. An over-optimization of anchor text, especially with keyword-rich anchors, can trigger search engine penalties. Aim for a natural and diverse anchor text profile that includes branded terms, generic phrases, and naked URLs.
Check for toxic or suspicious on course backlinks via SEO monitoring tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs and the GSC. If you find any toxic or suspicious backlinks, you can begin the process to disavow them following this link on the GSC.
07
Consider domain migration
If all the steps discussed above unfortunately do not yield results, you may want to consider migrating your website to a new domain. As a last resort, this may help reset your site’s authority score. This can be a complex process, but it may be necessary to reset your site's reputation and start fresh.
Migrating to a new domain involves several steps, including choosing a new domain name, transferring your website's content and data, and updating your website's DNS settings. It's important to carefully plan and execute a website migration to minimize any negative impact on your website's search engine rankings and traffic.
Before migrating to a new domain, it's crucial to weigh the potential benefits and risks. While a new domain can provide a fresh start, it can also lead to a temporary loss of traffic and search engine rankings. It's essential to consider all factors before making a decision.
If you decide to migrate to a new domain, be sure to follow the best practices to ensure a smooth transition. This includes creating a redirect from your old domain to your new domain, updating your backlinks, and monitoring your website's performance after the migration.
Regain your footing and watch your traffic return
By aligning your SEO practices with Google's recommendations, analyzing your site's performance, and continually optimizing your content and technical setup, you're setting yourself up to recapture any traffic and engagement you've lost. These efforts will not only act as a quick fix to help you recover, they will also enhance your site's authority and user experience in the long run.
As you reconnect with your audience and solidify your standing in this ever-changing Tiqets is here to support you in navigating these changes. If you have further questions or need detailed guidance tailored to your specific situation, do not hesitate to reach out to us on affiliates@tiqets.com.
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