Assume you get up one morning, check your ranking report, and discover that your site's hard-earned rankings have completely altered. It vanished from Google's top 10 and top 100 lists, leaving no trace. I'm sure it's not the most pleasant sensation in the world.

This is not a fear story; simply accept that it will happen one day and that you must be prepared to deal with such situations. To be on the safe side, we've compiled a list of find-and-fix SEO tips. There is no need to panic or mess things up; simply be prepared to recover from whatever caused the rankings to slip like a superhero.

The ranking drops over the weekend, Why?

Examine the precision of your data.

When dealing with SEO traffic decreases and ranking changes, the most important item to double-check is your data accuracy. Check that you are not barking up the wrong tree by missing a piece of data for a specific time period, device, or page type. The good news is that these disappearances are rather simple to track down and prevent in the future.

Furthermore, there is nothing unusual about traffic oscillations. To relax, you can compare the statistics by calculating an average SEO traffic variation. For example, you may plot your weekly SEO traffic for the previous 12 months and figure the average deviation. If the drop is still significant, you've arrived at the right place!

Google algorithm revision

An algorithm update can have two effects on your site's rankings. For starters, it may be a new algorithm (or a significant change to an older algorithm) issued by Google. Second, it could be one of the known algos' constant refreshes.

Because Google's Penguin and Panda algorithms are now part of the search engine's core algorithm (and thus likely refresh more frequently than before), they are the primary updates to keep an eye out for, regardless of your niche or business type. And the year 2019 was highlighted by a series of key Google algorithm upgrades as well as the introduction of BERT. Another reason to prioritize searcher intent, select important keywords, create high-quality links and content, and provide only the best user experience.

Your competitors outrank you in Google searches.

It's likely that nothing is wrong with your website; instead, your competitors have improved. While competition activity is rarely the reason for a big loss in rankings, it is worth considering if you have slipped a few ranks across the board.

Use Rank Tracker's SERP History to see how your and your competitors' rankings have evolved over time. If the changes are chaotic (new websites, frequent shifts, a lot of movement), you are most certainly seeing a Google dance – a brief period of significant SERP volatility caused by minor algorithm modifications. However, if you notice that many of your positions are being taken over by the same few websites, it's time to do a thorough investigation.

Broken backlinks

Losing high-quality backlinks can have the same influence on your SERP performance as getting new, low-quality connections. To see if lost backlinks are the cause of your ranking loss, launch SEO SpyGlass and navigate to Summary > New/Lost Backlinks History. The graph helps you to quickly examine your backlink condition and identify any crucial losses.

Site modifications

Making critical changes to your site, such as redesigning it, changing your CMS, or switching to HTTPS, is almost certain to disrupt your results. A minor omission can have severe ramifications for your SEO performance, resulting in a measurable reduction.

If you've recently made modifications to your website, visit Google Search Console and navigate to Index > Coverage. A significant spike in either errors or warnings around the dates of site modifications should support your suspicions. Switch between the tabs and look through the error report to see if there have been any issues since you made the adjustments to your site.

Changes in user behavior

Google personnel frequently claim that behavioral measurements are too noisy to affect rankings, although a number of search patents and real-world tests show otherwise. So, while we recognise that this may be contentious, some of your ranking losses may be explained by a decrease in click-through rates.

Cannibalization of SEM traffic

SEM traffic comes from paid advertisements, but SEO traffic comes from organic search, and one can occasionally obstruct the other. Your advertising is prioritized in SERPs and easily takes a large share of traffic from your own organic results.

Compare the terms in your PPC ads to the ones that bring you organic traffic. If you find any duplicate keywords, don't be afraid to suspend the PPC campaigns that contain them. Why pay for traffic when you can get it for free?