Search Rankings Go Down As Well As Up [ANALYSIS]

Search Rankings Go Down As Well As Up [ANALYSIS] Make Money Online Queries? Struggling To Get Traffic To Your Blog? Sign Up On (HBB) Forum Now!Search Rankings Go Down As Well As Up [ANALYSIS]Updated On 23/04/2017Author : Jess SpateTopic : SEOShort URL : http://hbb.me/2ozqpcX CONNECT WITH HBB ON SOCIAL MEDIA Follow @HellBoundBlogMost people trying to make money online rely at least partly on ranking well in relevant search terms. The site that has the top spot usually gets about 40% of the traffic relating to that specific search term, and if youre not on page one or at least page two, you probably wont get much traffic from it. Ideally other visitors should arrive through social media, paid advertising (optional!), links from other sites, and even directly when theyve learned about your brand offline, but organic search is still the biggest source of income for many bloggers and online shops.SEO is the process that will help a site rank well for relevant, valuable search terms. There are thousands of details to consider but the b asic idea is that if you build a great site, fill it with relevant, interesting, and useful content, and build links with other quality websites, your authority will go up, youll rise through the ranks towards the top of the first page on Google, Bing, and the other search engines, get more visitors and make more money.So far, so good. But it doesnt always work that way. SEO experts and pro bloggers usually keep a close eye on their rankings, and sometimes what they find isnt a reward for all that hard work. Rankings can go down as well as up.Google Dance your CompetitorsThere are many reasons a website could lose ground in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). In most cases, its a temporary blip and nothing to worry about. Google makes about 400 algorithmic changes a year, some small and some colossal. The resulting pattern of shifting rankings is called the Google dance, and its nothing to lose sleep over. Unless a site completely dominates a particular search term, a little bit o f up and down is quite normal. If you lose a position or two on your favorite search keyword, dont worry about it. Keep working and youll probably go back up soon enough.Your competitors may be looking at SEO too. Even if they arent, theyll be adding new content, building the occasional new link, and making changes to their websites. All those things can shift their ranking up and push yours down. If someone else is suddenly doing very well and pushing your pages off the top spots, take a good look at them. What changes have they made recently? They might be using a strategy you could adopt too.READ3 Easy Efficient Ways To Increase Website TrafficMost blogs and commercial websites will go through their whole lifespan without a serious and sudden drop in search rankings, but they do sometimes happen. The most recent major shakeup saw thousands of affiliate marketers suffer huge losses- one of my sites was among the losers.Googles Farmer/Panda UpdateGoogles Farmer/Panda update comple tely changed the playing field for plenty of legitimate websites as well as the content farms it was meant to target. A lot of people lost rankings, traffic, and income, and the true impact of this algorithm change hasnt really been explored yet.However, Farmer/Panda only affected a relatively small number of sites operating in a fairly specific way. Usually, if a site experiences a sudden and severe drop its a private problem, not a global policy change. The first thing to do if your rankings crash is to find out. Ask friends and colleagues with similar sites what theyre seeing, keeping in mind that algorithm changes roll out gradually, so sites in the US and the UK may not see them at the same time. Check out the SEO forums for news of major updates and see if the official Google Blog has anything to say. It usually doesnt take long for bloggers both at Google and elsewhere to respond to an algorithm shift.If it looks like youre on your own, its time to think back over recent acti on. Have you been involved in less-than-ethical SEO or bought a bunch of links? If so, you could be finding yourself in JC Penneys position, being punished for black hat activities. In this case, the best thing to do is own up, get rid of the links or shady on-site tricks, and keep to legitimate SEO in the future. If you think youre innocent and cant find evidence for an algorithm change, contact Google and say so.In most cases, drops in rankings are small and perfectly natural- nothing but bumps on the road. Even if theyre not so small, dont panic. There is always plenty you can do to lift your site back up and start gaining ground again.This article is written by Jess Spate. She is an SEO professional, a mathematician, and an online entrepreneur. Among others, she represents Marriott timeshare points resale consultants and companies that buy Wyndham timeshare units. If you wish to write for us, kindly check this.