Avoid Drops in SEO Rankings
How to Keep Your Google Rankings
“My motorcycle website just dropped off the face of Google’s SEO rankings results.” When this happens, your business’s owner and SEO marketer are stressed out. And this is understandable.
The implications can be huge whether your online sales are 20% or 100% of your business’s revenue. Often, this means you lay off employees, or your company goes under. Note that you do not want to cut website marketing spending, or you will cut off what generates your sales.
But the good news is that your site can avoid huge drops in SEO rankings. Below are some ways to help prevent decreases in your Google search rankings. First, as you probably know, Google regularly changes its search algorithm. When this happens, it changes the order of listings on search engine ranking pages (SERPs).
Avoiding Big Google Changes
This article is essential for two people – if Google search algorithm changes have impacted your biker site’s ranking and if you’re concerned that your site might fall out of search results.
One solution is to hire a motorcycle SEO expert to help avoid rankings drops. I am not saying this because this is what Revolution Marketing does.
Instead, it is because true search engine professionals follow Google’s recommendations. Even more important is that expert SEO marketers are not trying to trick Google. Many of Google’s updates penalize websites trying black hat SEO tricks.
Motorcycle SEO Is Ongoing
For several reasons quality search engine optimization must be regular and ongoing. First, long periods between optimization cause a “yo-yo effect.” By this, I mean your rankings increase after your motorcycle site has SEO work done.
Then, during the time without SEO, your site moves down in rankings. Often, the total number of hours of SEO work to have the same rankings, whether intermittent or regular, is the same or similar.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you need 10 hours of SEO per week, totaling 520 hours per year, to stay around position number three for a particular keyphrase. Or you can have SEO done only every three months, which is 130 hours and still totals 520 hours a year. But with the former, you will maintain higher rankings and have more consistent revenue.
One reason for regular SEO is that Google frequently changes its search algorithm. As Google’s search algorithm changes, so must your motorcycle site to keep its current rankings and avoid drops and, more importantly, penalties.
Another reason to have regular SEO is that many of your competitors, especially the top-ranking ones, do. And if you’re not doing the same, you are falling behind.
Google Search Algorithm Changes
Granted, there are only a limited game-changer Google Core algorithm changes. But there are lots of regular minor changes. Since 2000, thousands of small changes to the Google algorithm have been made.
Avoid Drops in Your Biker Site’s Rankings
Another way your SEO specialist can avoid SERP changes is by following Google’s search guidelines. One thing not to do is use Black Hat SEO techniques. These techniques go against Google’s recommendations and can quickly penalize your site.
One reason for regular SEO is to improve your site’s current rankings. Another is to prepare for search algorithm changes. In some ways, proactive SEO is like business insurance.
For instance, at times, particular areas of SEO become more important to your search rankings. So, constantly improving and building all aspects of SEO can help your site from significant drops in rankings. Sometimes, if you’re following this advice, your SERPs will jump. At other times, the drops in search rankings won’t be nearly as significant.
Let’s say your biker site’s average rankings drop from number 3 to number 6. That is going to hurt your revenue significantly. It will cut your traffic by 50%.
But your company might go under if your rankings drop from 3 to 13. Just look at our marketing statistics, which show how important it is to rank as high as possible.
If your motorcycle company’s revenue drops by 50%, you’re in crisis mode or out of business. Also, a 50% drop in revenue means you’re firing quality employees. And these employees keep different aspects of your business running. So now your company is hobbling along.
Next, with some of Google’s Core algorithm changes, the rankings of small and gigantic websites have fallen off the face of the earth. And they’ve closed because they did not have the money to recover.
Areas of Regular SEO Work
Here are some search engine optimization areas you must constantly work on. Below is just a short list of regular SEO changes:
- Remove anything borderline black hat SEO or spammy from your biker site.
- Updating main pages: Google wants new, fresh content on your website. Subsequently, if you don’t make changes to your main motorcycle site’s pages a priority, Google won’t view them as a priority either.
- Once your website’s content optimization is finished, the pages must be regularly improved. An SEO marketing expert must monitor results via web tools so they have new strategies for improvement.
- New products – bikers want to see new products on your motorcycle site. These product pages must be optimized to give the new products more visibility. Notably, if there isn’t anything new to see, riders will not be as likely to visit the website. Google follows the same reasoning.
- One ranking factor is your visitors’ engagement with your website. Notably, one engagement SEO factor is the time on page. If visitors don’t like the content your SEO writes, they quickly leave, and your motorcycle website’s rankings will take a hit. When you have an SEO who knows nothing about the history of bikers it shows in your content.
- Also, SEO must be adjusted for global website items, such as navigation, alt tags, etc.
- Off-page optimization is an important ranking factor and an ongoing process. So, keeping your site coming up in search results is critical. Of course, to improve rankings, your motorcycle marketing agency must do even more work.
- Technical SEO – Handling technical issues, improving website performance, making other technical upgrades, installing new plugins, etc., are necessary. Without them, your website’s rankings will drop even without major Google algorithm changes.
- A/B test your content to see which works best.
- After reviewing your site’s data and search results, you might find pages you can work to become featured snippets. These are the sites that appear above the traditional organic results.
- Constantly improve your customer service experience. You do this to get new customers and repeat customers.
Finally, the bottom line is never to try to trick Google. Make sure your website & search services consultant is an expert. And remember, if you are not constantly improving your SEO, remember that the top-ranking sites are.
