Why do my rankings keep changing?

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In the world of Search Engine Optimization, seeing some changes in your ranking is enough to leave your nerves in pieces. They can be high one day then low to the next. But it is important to remember that changes in rankings are natural in the world of SEO. So don’t beat yourself up by obsessively checking and worrying about it too much. However, if you have seen some extreme changes, then you might want to hire an expert to take a look. This is to ensure that your site won’t plummet into obscurity. Determining the cause or causes could prevent and protect your search ranking. With this in mind, we have written down the factors that cause your rankings to change.

Algorithm Updates

Search engines, especially Google, constantly roll out a lot of updates to their algorithm. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why you can see a sudden change in your rankings. What is more, updates will sometimes not be announced. Popular announced updates are Google’s Panda and Penguin updates. This could give you a time to prepare. On the other hand, unannounced updates, such as the smaller ones, tend to take you by surprise—as reflected in your sudden ranking change.

Keyword Changes

Changes in keywords happen when content is updated. While it is good to change your contents now and then, its effect on keywords could significantly affect your ranking. It could make keywords more relevant and targeted which helps increase the ranking or the opposite. Also, changes in title tags could affect your keywords and ranking. So be careful in choosing the title tags and learn to stick to them.

Site issues

Technical issues have an impact on how search engines crawl on your page; affecting your sites’ speed and rankings. Avoid implementing robots.txt and incorporating complicated code. These things slow down your site’s loading speed, which is one factor Google considers when it comes to ranking a site in search results, and stop Google from crawling your website.

Backlinks

Looking at the activity of your backlinks and inbound link strategies could determine the cause of the rise and fall of your rankings. The more links that point to your site, the higher your ranking will be. However, be wary of spammy links since this could make search engines consider your page unreliable. Make sure to develop a backlink strategy that only involves quality and valuable sites. Also, losing links could make your rankings drop drastically.

Decreased Ranking of Other Sites

Sometimes, the sudden increase in your ranking has nothing to do with you. It is just that other websites suddenly had their rankings decreased; putting you higher. This is due to traffic fluctuations of other sites that are competing in the same search. Or it could be that these sites got penalized. Either way, their decrease in ranking has placed you higher. Nonetheless, you shouldn’t be too comfortable with this. Continue to develop your site or others will overtake you.