Over the last few years, the phrase “our SEO ranking has dropped” has become far more complex than it once was. While normal fluctuation is always common, the proliferation of AI search has made tracking a drop in rankings or mentions all the more difficult to notice as Zero Click has taken over on Google, while ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools are providing top- and middle-of-funnel information to users who previously had to click through to sites with ease.
But by the time conversions start to fall, the reasons your SEO ranking has dropped have often been developing behind the scenes for months, making it difficult to understand why rankings fell in the first place.
Understanding what caused rankings and conversions to drop requires a deep diagnostic process to fix the potential issues and rebound traffic.
To determine what issue may have caused the drop in rankings, follow these steps:
- Confirm the rankings drop is real and not a seasonal fluctuation, SERP changes, or a monitoring tool update.
- Determine if Google has implemented any SERP updates during the decline.
- Check the technical health of the website to see if any drastic issues have arisen.
- Utilize the revision history to map on-page changes to the drop.
- Research the domain’s backlink profile to determine if there have been any major changes.
- Double-check dropped keywords to match the current search intent.
Step 1: Confirm your SEO ranking has dropped
It is common for those who look at rankings and website traffic often to be worried about every fluctuation that happens. Before you worry about a sharp decrease in rankings, it’s essential to confirm that the rankings have meaningfully dropped and that what you are looking at isn’t a result of seasonal fluctuations or an update to your monitoring tools.
On a day-to-day basis, not only can AI tools adjust their reference points and change who is cited, but the standard SERP can be highly volatile. Wholesale changes should not be made based on one or two days of dropped rankings – if nothing else major changed, then it’s highly likely the dip is due to testing or indexing, and the pages will be back to normal without any issues.
The other potential issue, if a drop in traffic has been detected, is if seasonality comes into play for the site in question. Not only do major holidays tend to direct traffic one way or another, but some industries (like many B2B industries) see a dip during the summer months when employees are taking more vacations and are searching less. The best way to confirm seasonality is to compare year-over-year traffic and rankings, rather than just recent periods.
Step 2: Check for a Google algorithm update
One of the largest, and most problematic, reasons for a drop in rankings is when Google implements an algorithm update to the SERP. While these updates happen multiple times every year, they often go relatively undetected for most legitimate businesses, as they tend to be directed at websites utilizing manipulative tactics.
There are two main types of updates currently: Core Updates and Spam Updates.
- Core updates typically focus on a broad evaluation of a domain, encompassing an entire website’s quality and relevance. These updates are typically larger and cause significant issues for websites that are no longer deemed creators of quality content or are not relevant to their specific niche.
- Spam updates, while typically smaller, are targeted at specific manipulative tactics that are used when creating content. Since this update is targeted, it typically does not cause issues domainwide and will instead focus only on the pages that are utilizing those specific tactics.
If a website is hit by a Core Update, it will likely take structural changes to get the domain back into top ranking positions. This takes the addition of high-quality, audience-relevant content – quality over quantity is imperative when a Core Update causes issues.
If a Spam Update is matched to the rankings dip, it can often just require updates to the domain to stop the manipulative tactics, which in turn will help move the needle in the right direction. For example, if Google releases a spam update that targets some of the content a domain has previously written and ranked well for, we can often see rankings rebound when edits are made to highly important metadata and internal content to address the tactic.
The best way to keep track of Google Updates is by checking Google’s Search Status Dashboard. This can not only help match dates of when updates happened, but also whether they are still in the process of implementation.
Step 3: Assess your website’s technical SEO health
If your SEO ranking has dropped and there is no obvious algorithm update to blame, the issues could be on the backend of the website itself. Identifying technical issues can require a few different steps, but they are all highly important in order to understand the health of the website – both from a user perspective and a crawler’s.
Tools like Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Sitebulb, and more have the ability to crawl a website in a way similar to Googlebot (or other search/AI crawlers) to help determine what issues are arising. These tools are essential for finding potentially detrimental issues that may otherwise go undetected, like potential 404s, Robots.txt issues, and orphaned pages that can’t be easily visited by users – just a few examples of problems that can be causing massive ranking drops.
In addition to these third-party tools, Google Search Console’s Indexing report can help a team understand if there has been a spike in excluded or error pages that are not crawled or indexed by Google. This tool can help determine exactly why pages may not show up in the SERP, like an accidental noindex or missing a proper canonical tag.
Step 4: Review recent on-page content changes
Sometimes, rankings fall that aren’t related to Google Updates or any technical issues – that’s when the problem likely lies in issues with the content of the page itself.
There are three main issues that can cause on-page issues: content decay, active regression, and cannibalization.
- Content decay happens when a page is no longer fresh, and the content is not as relevant as it once was. As the content gets older and newer pages are published by other domains, the fresh content is often given priority, as it is more relevant to users.
- Active regression is when the page has been updated, but it no longer targets the keywords that it once did. Sometimes, this is due to brand updates or adjustments to add in new topics a domain wants to discuss, but it dilutes the importance of the page.
- Cannibalization can decrease a page’s relevance because overindexing on content focused on the same keywords will confuse a crawler, making it difficult to decide what will rank. Over time, these pages will lose their rankings as they all fight for the same positions.
Understanding and tracking all changes made to the content of a website is imperative to finding what content changes may have caused issues. Additionally, keeping content fresh by updating a page, rather than continually creating new content on the same topic, will help a website stay relevant and avoid cannibalizing pages that are ranking well.
Step 5: Analyze changes to your backlink profile
While it is unlikely to drop the rankings of an entire domain alone, changing backlink equity could cause a decrease in site authority in the eyes of the crawlers.
One issue could be the loss of high-quality backlinks that previously showcased a domain’s topical authority. These could come from something like a new website that linked to a report or a partner that had linked to a shared blog. Without these backlinks, it can be difficult to showcase topical authority to outside entities.
On the other side of the coin, it is possible to be the victim of toxic, spammy links that raise red flags to crawlers about an untrustworthy domain. These websites are often highly manipulative and provide no user credibility, creating a large issue for your own domain. If you find a sudden spike in spam links or have been hit by a Manual Action from Google, use Google Search Console’s Disavow Tool to stop them from causing issues to your domain.
To understand what is happening with these links, tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help showcase your domain’s current backlink situation. By comparing the current links to the state of links before rankings dropped, you can determine if there may have been a small drop in authoritative backlinks or if there is a spike in spam.
Step 6: Check whether search intent still matches your content
If your SEO ranking has dropped, a shift in search intent is often an overlooked factor that can significantly impact visibility. As often as Google and AI tools update internal systems, it is not uncommon for the search intent to change over time. This change could happen because user intent has changed, or it could happen because the SERP intent has shifted.
