The searchenginejournal.com website published an article in which John Mueller – Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google gave 4 reasons why websites can lose their positions on the first page of Google organic results.
Because in SEO it is important to follow everything that is new and to understand the explanations offered by Google representatives, I thought to develop this article based on the aspects explained by John Mueller.
Before starting, I want to mention that this article is not a complete list of the reasons why websites can lose positions on targeted keywords.
John Mueller was asked by someone, what are the reasons why a site that has been successful in SEO for 7 years, lost positions on targeted keywords.
John explained that not enough information was provided about the situation at first for him to provide a specific response.
However, I found it most interesting that he then chose to continue his response by offering some generally valid and fairly basic (in my view) reasons.
Here are the reasons offered by John Muller:
1. Top positions in Google are temporary.
Both in the Romanian market and internationally, there is a significantly large number of people who believe that once a site reaches the top 3 organic results on the first page of Google, it will continue to stay there permanently.
However, SEO specialists with experience and seniority in the industry know that this is not entirely true.
This was also pointed out by John Mueller, who stated that “organic results are essentially temporary“.
Mueller said:
“In general, just because a site has performed well for several years in a row doesn’t mean it will continue to perform as well in the future. These kinds of changes are to be expected on the web, it’s a dynamic environment.”
2. The Internet is constantly changing.
Almost everything on the web is constantly changing. A site can lose backlinks over time. Competitors may decide to invest more in SEO and attract a greater number of quality backlinks.
All of these things and many others constantly affect the relevance of web pages to Google searches.
In short, Muller said that a site’s SEO results can be directly influenced by competitors and other new sites that may appear on the market!
3. Google algorithm changes.
One of the main reasons why drastic SEO changes can occur is because of Google’s updates to the algorithms used by the search engine.
It’s not necessarily that Google is changing the ranking factors it takes into account, it’s that updates to these algorithms can change the way Google understands and analyzes web pages.
A common mistake many make is to analyze the site to find out what is doing or what is wrong on the site. Another mistake is to assume that Google “targets” a certain type of site.
Most of the algorithms for which Google has patents are not about “targeting” a particular type of site or Google trying to find sites that are doing the wrong things.
The algorithms used by Google serve one purpose: satisfying search engine users by understanding them and the web pages in Google’s index.
4. People are changing.
The algorithms used by Google don’t care about you, your business or the website you do SEO for, their target is the search engine users.
Which means that Google’s algorithms also take into account how people completely change or adapt their searches.
It is a normal thing that when a product or service becomes less popular, that the traffic sent from Google to the sites is significantly lower compared to the periods of interest of the users.
Therefore, as an SEO specialist, the SEO strategy you focus on should also take into account keyword seasonality and how targeted keywords are affected depending on the month they are searched.
That’s why it’s important to always know what the trends are and how potential customers are searching for your products or services in Google.
If you have a business for which you handle SEO yourself, here you will more than likely need the support of a SEO agent, especially if SEO is not the thing you are really passionate about and you are only doing it because you are aware that you need it to increase your business visibility in Google organic results!
However, we recommend that you consider that most successful websites are constantly updated. In order to have a successful website we recommend that you:
- constantly improve the technical errors highlighted in Google Search Console,
- constantly improve potential customers’ experience on the site,
- you find ways and online marketing services that can help you build a close relationship with site visitors.
Contact us and let’s talk about how we can help your site attract more potential customers from Google!
