What to do with keywords that have dropped out of the rankings
I track keywords and phrases for websites even though I have had a long held belief that it's partly a waste of time. But I do it all the same because I like to watch the long term trends - it can be fascinating!
A long term high ranking keyword dropped
The image above show the ranking position of the keyword "unable to verify account name or password hotmail" which one of the pages on this site ranked well for a number of years, then started declining and then vanished from the top 50 positions in the Google SERPs.
People will say this is terrifying and that the site got penalised but the reality is that this page really should not have been ranking for that keyword as it is actually about fixing an issue with Apple Mail and is not appropriate for a hotmail user.
Google is getting worse
Is it? The correlation here is that Google is getting better and providing results in the SERP that are more targetted to the search phrase! Anyone searching for that phrase and gets my page as a result will have been excited and then disappointed in the result so I'd argue that Google is actually getting better in situations such as this.
Another example is "simon cox linkedin" where this site had gained well and was recently ranking 4th but has now dropped completely. If you look at the SERP for that term all the SERP is dominated by Linkedin results - which makes perfect sense as the searchers intent was a Linkedin result - why they didn't do that search on Linkedin though is another matter.
Brands
One noticeable similarity between the examples I have given so far is Branded terms. Trying to rank for a brand term that is not yours is difficult at best so you might want to consider the branded terms you are rank checking.
What to do with keywords that have been dropped
Going through the keywords I track there are about 10% that that are now showing as being dropped. There are good few of those that ranked well for years but they are past their sell by date on the site and need to be pruned out.
Some of those keywords I have been trying to make some indent into the rankings but they have turned out to be a lost cause - nice to have but didn't blossom and that's probably my fault for not doing enough research in the first place. Apparently grabbing the queries your site has ranked for from Google Search Console and plonking them in your ranking checker isn't a sure fire process. (but it is quick and easy...)
Review each keyword in the SERP to see if your page deserves to be one of them.
- If it doesn't then remove it from your rank tracking. You will save resources and money by not tracking irrelevant keywords. – When you cut out the dropped keywords you will notice that your overall visibility increases - that's because it is an average, of course.
- If it does deserve to be in the SERP then you are going to have to look deeper into why your page has dropped out.
Other reasons your page may have dropped out of the SERP
- Keyword is too generic. There will be a lot of other sites vieing for the generic keywords as they will have a huge number of searches. But they rarely convert as you have no idea of the intent of the searcher.
- The competition has heated up and you niche is no longer niche! – Technical issue. Audit your site and ensure everything is in good shape - check GSC and review changes made in the weeks leading up to the drop. – Google Algorithm change. If you were ranking before and have now dropped then you probably had got lucky and didn't deserve to be there - like in my first example. Google always tells you what it's going to do , often years in advance, so it will not be a surprise. Unless they had an issue - but that never happens does it.
Keep on tinkering!
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