Drop In Rankings, What Is The Reason?

by drzun
20 replies
  • SEO
  • |
I have been working with a seo company do improve my rankigs. Everything went well for about 8 months, all the keywords went up slowly but surely.

I just received the report for September, and 90% of the keywords dropped in ranking. Some dropped a few places (from spot 85 to 89) some quite a few (from 19 to 116).

The SEO company told me it's because of the speed of the website (it doesn't load fast) and I should fix this issue.

We implemented Wordpress 3 months ago, and yes, the webiste is a bit slow, but how come we've seen an actual increase in rankings
after we implemented Wordpress for 2 months., and now in the 3rd month we're seing a drop in rankings?

Before I move my website to a faster server, I just want to make sure that the SEO company is right and it's the speed that't the issue, and not something else.

What do you guys think?
#drop #rankings #reason
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    A couple of things.

    First of all, I really wouldn't pay attention to things like drops from #85 to #89. I could probably check the rankings at 4 different times during the same day and see a site at 80, 88, 85, and then 89. Out that far, you are entirely irrelevant, and sites tend to fluctuate a good bit.

    As for the site load speed, unless your site takes a minute to load, it is a very, very small factor in rankings. Plus, it makes no sense that your site was fine for a few months and then all of a sudden the load speed knocked the rankings down.

    Now, if you added some plugins or something that significantly slowed Wordpress down, then yes I could see that. If you have not made any changes for the past few months, the SEO company is full of crap.

    And 8 months to get to #19? That is either a really competitive keyword or you are not paying much for SEO.
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    • Profile picture of the author drzun
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      A couple of things.

      First of all, I really wouldn't pay attention to things like drops from #85 to #89. I could probably check the rankings at 4 different times during the same day and see a site at 80, 88, 85, and then 89. Out that far, you are entirely irrelevant, and sites tend to fluctuate a good bit.

      As for the site load speed, unless your site takes a minute to load, it is a very, very small factor in rankings. Plus, it makes no sense that your site was fine for a few months and then all of a sudden the load speed knocked the rankings down.

      Now, if you added some plugins or something that significantly slowed Wordpress down, then yes I could see that. If you have not made any changes for the past few months, the SEO company is full of crap.

      And 8 months to get to #19? That is either a really competitive keyword or you are not paying much for SEO.

      Thanks!
      I don't check my rankings daily. I only do it once a month, when I receive the report. This time, 90% of keywords dropped so it's concerning.

      Yes I am in a very competitive niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author webdevpro
    If you are on a shared hosting, a gradual increase in traffic may slow down your website speed. So this may be a factor of consideration but still i think it should not have that much impact. Another reason could be the sites your are linking from lost their ranking and causing a dilution in your backlinks and hence SERPs.
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  • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
    If you have Google Analytics installed on your site you can verify if you are having issues due to load speed, you need to go to:

    Content / Site Speed / Speed suggestions

    There you will see a report as this one:



    These report will give you the average loading times of yout pages, it will give you specific suggestions to improve it and a score, the lower the score the more room for improvement you have.

    Now I am in a very competitive niche as well, and yes sometimes it happends that speed may be a factor, BUT I am not sure that you will lose as much ranks as you said you did.
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  • Profile picture of the author online only
    Although I'm biased to site speed and I do believe it has a great impact on search results, I do have guts that this is nothing to do with site speed.

    As I can see, you paid SEO company to perform SEO for your site. Doesn't that mean it should be both: onpage/offsite SEO?

    Companies usually deliver both, not only links. Great SEO starts from creating content, improving site speed, removing any sort of errors etc. But they just build links? Alright, but now you need to investigate a bit and see what KIND of links did they build.

    If they were rubbish, you are out of luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnben1444
    Speed can attribute to drop in ranking but there are also many more reasons why site lose ranking like low quality links, poor content, irrelevant links, poor onsite SEO and more..

    I think the SEO company is just buying time for themselves...
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  • Profile picture of the author marketingking872
    It's hard to tell with such little details but yes, a website's load speed can certainly cause a drop in rankings. Google works in mysterious ways, you may have started to creep up the rankings but as the site started to get more traffic, this would cause an even bigger load delay. It would not be an instant drop in rankings and would take time. I'm sure if the SEO company helped to improve rankings, they know what they are talking about and have probably ran checks etc..
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  • Profile picture of the author kpmedia
    Odds are the "SEO" company was just spamming sites. Now you have to deal with it.

    Site speed should not be more than 2s max. Andything higher, and the server sucks. (Common at the EIG hosts.) But it doesn't always create drastic differences like mentioned here.

    The other obvious answer is that the site has no value, and was de-ranked (as it should be) accordingly. If you outsources "articles" and junk like many clueless WF members suggest, that usually happens. Google doesn't want crap, nor do the people that use Google.

    And that's just 3 possibilities.
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  • Profile picture of the author herisetiyawan
    Sorry..Why do you just think site's speed. Yes it do affect..But it's not the only one..You'd better to check your posts for duplicate content(internal or external)...Find out maybe your posts get scrapped by someone. In my experience..Duplicate content issues will cause rank drop..
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  • Profile picture of the author affilorama-portal
    A site speed can greatly affect your ranking. I suggest you conduct a speed test then try to minimize the file size of your content- for pages that takes a bit time to load.
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  • Profile picture of the author fancyworks
    i think because of the latest google update, you are experienced the dropdown again. I am sure, no one can tell exactly why it happened.
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  • Profile picture of the author dynamyt100
    I have been a victim of exactly the same issue. According to the Warrior Forum members it seems that the new Google algorithm has a lot to do with it. In the past SEO companies would use automated back linking methods which are now being hit by Google. Im currently looking on this forum to see who can offer quality manual backlinks to boost my site back to where it once was.
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  • Profile picture of the author webzie
    Impossible to say without taking an in-depth look at your site and analytics. Depends on what the SEO company was doing for you. If they were doing old fashioned SEO, then it's likely that's what hurt you.
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  • Profile picture of the author HeadStartSEO
    Site speed can affect your rankings to some degree, but I wouldn't say that's the nail in the coffin.

    Did the redirect all the old pages over to the new URL structure?

    This could be a number of things it's hard to tell without the site itself. If you need some help private message me. I can take a look at it for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author neha12
    I think, It's because of recent Google hummingbird update..
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  • Profile picture of the author seobuzz
    Ups and down is part of every business, and your online business is no exception. Anyway you should know the exact reason behind the ranking drop and should not believe the SEO company blindly. To do that you can check their SEO report to find the backlinks they are building.

    Although website speed is one of the factors which decides ranking but its a minor one. So I am afraid there is/are other reason(s) behind your ranking drop. You need to find that.
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  • Profile picture of the author KrunalDoshi
    It issues with your website, You need to analyse your website again to find errors and then fix your website errors. Also find spam links which you create by mistake to your website.
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    • Profile picture of the author Intrepreneur
      Shared hosting isn't so good for Wordpress any longer.

      The speed of database requests just aren't cut out for it.

      What you need to do is get a shared hosting that isn't flooding the server and DB servers with requests,

      Try LightningBase or WpEngine.

      Both were able to speed my site to load in under 2 seconds. From a 14 second load time on MediaTemple and Bluehost.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by drzun View Post

    I just received the report for September, and 90% of the keywords dropped in ranking. Some dropped a few places (from spot 85 to 89) some quite a few (from 19 to 116).
    Doubtful you had much traffic at your best position (#19). You wasn't really ranking before the drop, you was indexed, two completely different things.

    Unless your keyword is super competitive find another SEO, 8 months into a campaign & your dropping like a brick from an already poor SERP position isn't doing you any good. At this point your just wasting money, even for a medium comp. keyword.
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  • Profile picture of the author patco
    A reason for a ranking drop could be if you stopped working on your site or you did anything wrong (like bombing is the most common reason for this!)...
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