If you’ve noticed a sudden drop in Google rankings for your website, you’re not alone—and you’re not out of options. Whether it’s a small dip or a major plummet, identifying the cause and responding strategically is the key to recovery. At NEXTFLY, our Indianapolis Marketing Team specializes in helping businesses fix their drop in Google rankings and stay competitive in search. Here’s how you can bounce back.
Investigate Why Your Google Rankings Dropped
The first step is identifying what caused the drop. Without knowing the “why,” you can’t begin to fix it.
Algorithm Updates
Google’s search algorithms are constantly evolving. Sometimes these updates can cause your rankings to shift overnight. Stay informed by checking resources like Google Search Central, Algaroo, or SEO news sites to see if a recent update aligns with your traffic drop.
Recent Changes to Your Website
Have you recently redesigned your website, moved pages, or updated content? Changes to structure, URLs, or metadata can unintentionally disrupt your rankings. Even something as small as removing a keyword from a title tag can have an impact.
Through WordPress, you can roll back your website changes to see if your rankings improve if you don’t know what changes were made before the drop in Google rankings. If you do know what changes were made, review them and see if you can undo them.
Check Your Competitors
Sometimes your drop isn’t about you—it’s about them.
If your competitors have refreshed their content, improved their backlink profiles, or enhanced their user experience, their increase in rankings can be the cause for your drop in Google rankings. See what keywords they’re optimizing for; they may have changed strategies. Following their new strategy isn’t stealing; it’s necessary to keep you competitive.
Are your competitors losing Google search rankings too? If multiple sites in your niche are down, it could be a broader algorithmic issue, not a targeted penalty. Sometimes, algorithm updates can significantly impact specific industries. If you notice that all of your competitors have dropped, you might all be scrambling to reclaim your search rankings.
Check Your Links
Links are foundational to SEO, and broken or incorrect links can hurt your performance.
- Internal Links: Are they working correctly and pointing to the right pages? Your internal linking map is the neural network of your website. If you have a page that’s down or has been redirected internally, finding a new or more direct internal link can be the solution.
- External Links: Are you linking to authoritative, live sources—or are some of your outbound links leading to dead pages? These can penalize your website greatly. Certain tools can alert you to downlinks so you can fix them quickly without penalty.
- Websites Linking To You: Backlinks are websites that link to your website. The more websites that link to you, the more authoritative Google thinks you are. However, not all backlinks are created equal. If low-quality or spammy websites with poor domain authority link to your site, it can actually harm your SEO by signaling to Google that your content may not be trustworthy. These kinds of links can drag down your rankings or even trigger a manual penalty. You can disavow bad backlinks to your website through Google Search Console.
On the flip side, earning backlinks from reputable, high-authority websites can significantly boost your search visibility. Quality backlinks act as “votes of confidence” in the eyes of search engines, helping your content rank higher and attract more organic traffic. Look at your competitor’s websites with a tool like SEM rush, and you can see who links to them. Contact that website and ask them to link to you instead.
How to Recover From Your Drop in Google Rankings
Once you’ve pinpointed a cause (or causes), it’s time to take action.
Wait
If a recent algorithm update is the likely culprit for the drop in Google rankings, sometimes the best approach is patience. Google often refines updates over time. Monitor your traffic over a couple of weeks before making drastic changes.
Fix Broken Links
Clean up your internal and external links to ensure a smooth user experience and strong site structure. Use tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to crawl your site for link issues.
Fix Manual Errors in Google Search Console
Log in to your Google Search Console account and look for manual action reports. If you’ve been hit with a penalty, Google will often tell you exactly what’s wrong—and how to fix it.
Investigate Which Pages Lost the Most Traffic and Optimize Them
Many websites that are hit by significant algorithm updates need to make significant changes. SEO is an ever-changing list of criteria that Indianapolis marketing teams strive to keep up with. What makes your site rank well one day may be hurting it the next. This is why it’s important to keep updating your website with fresh content and optimizing for more keywords.
Many times, a website has fine traffic, but there is one blog that really stands out because it’s written for a very niche search topic. Suddenly, the search rankings for that blog crashed, and the rankings for the rest of the site went down with it. You don’t need to delete this blog, instead, optimize it for a better search term or add more content to the blog that better aligns with your business.
This is how to locate which pages or blogs have suffered from a drop in Google rankings:
- Use GA4 or Search Console to identify which pages lost the most traffic.
- Refresh the content
- Improve keyword targeting
- Add internal links
- Check page load speed and mobile usability
Tools to Monitor Your Google Search Rankings
Staying on top of SEO means monitoring regularly. Here are some tools that make that easier:
Google Search Console
This free tool helps you monitor search performance, detect indexing issues, and receive alerts about manual actions or security problems.
GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
Use GA4 to track changes in page traffic, bounce rate, user behavior, and more—so you can spot problems before they become major ranking issues.
Ahrefs or SEMrush
Premium SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush are essential for being proactive with SEO maintenance. They offer deep insights into:
- Broken links
- Keyword rankings
- Competitor performance
- Backlink audits
- Site health reports
Why You Need an Indianapolis Marketing Company to Maintain Your Google Rankings
Recovering from a drop in Google rankings is possible—but maintaining your visibility long-term requires ongoing effort. From keeping up with algorithm changes to regularly optimizing content and monitoring performance, SEO is never one-and-done.
That’s where NEXTFLY comes in. Our Indianapolis Marketing Team offers expert guidance, technical SEO support, and content strategies that keep your rankings strong and stable.
Ready to Bounce Back?
If your site has taken a hit in search rankings, don’t wait for it to get worse. Contact NEXTFLY today to get your website back on track—and ahead of the competition.