How To Find Out Why My Page is Decreasing in Rank?
4 steps to determine why your page is decreasing in rank on the SERPs
Understanding why your page is decreasing in rank is an important step to correcting the problem and maintaining your SEO results. When a page begins to drop in the rankings, here is how to find out why your page is decreasing in rank.
- Check for algo updates at Google
- Examine your content for SEO best practices
- Check whether your content is recent or outdated
- Look at the content that outranks you
1. Check for algo updates. See if the Google algorithm has recently undergone any changes that might impact rankings. Sometimes Google makes adjustments without officially announcing anything, so you want to look at popular SEO news sources instead of just the official Google channels. If 
you see that others have had similar drops in ranking, then that is a good indicator that an update has been made to the algorithm.
Knowing that your page has dropped rankings because of an algorithm update may give you your first steps to correct the problem. Look for any insights regarding what Google wanted to correct with this update, and use this information to help you improve the content you created.
2. Examine your content for SEO best practices. If there were no algorithm updates, then you want to closely examine your content for SEO best practices to see where you might fall short. Make sure that your target keyword has been used in your title, URL, metadata, and naturally throughout the content.
Look at your traffic and engagement rates for this particular piece of content and examine trends on BrightEdge and Google Analytics. This can help you see if people have lost interest in the content. See if you have had any changes in how your brand promotes this particular piece of content, such as a drop in how often it appears in social media posts or your email campaigns. Google looks at people’s engagement with content when determining the interest of customers in the material. If you have changed your promotions at all, try shifting back to your old strategy.
3. Check whether your content is recent or outdated. Look at how recently your content has been created or updated. Particularly with content that is not evergreen, Google will also likely prioritize content that is fresher and contains the latest information for readers. If your content has become outdated, then you will want to take the time to correct that problem. Freshen up the material and update your publication date so that both readers and Google know that your content has been updated.
4. Look at the content that outranks you. Look at the content that has taken your spot. If none of the other steps have given you a good indication of why your content has lost rankings and what to do about it, you want to take the time to look at the content that has taken your spot. See if you can determine why the search engine might have regarded this content more highly than yours.
Look at the length of the content and its depth on the topic. You might also want to look at the rest of the domain. For example, if this site has a big topic cluster, they thus demonstrate greater authority on the subject. Meanwhile, if you only have a blog post, it will become clear why their content outranks yours.
Particularly for content and keywords that play a large role in your organization, you will want to use this insight to improve your own content. Build up your topic further, consider building a content cluster, and look for ways to demonstrate your authority in the industry to Google and to readers.
When you see your content drop in the rankings, it can cause considerable frustration and confusion. Knowing what to do when you see this arise, however, can help you protect other content from dropping and hopefully regain the old positions for your material.
