The digital platform has become vital for all businesses to reach a wider audience and get success. The reason for the popularity of this platform for the promotion of businesses is millions of users who are actively engaged here. Any query you search on the internet will drive hundreds of results and you can click on the links accordingly. A link with the best answer to your query will always be on the top and below that, you’ll find many others.
To gain a higher position on the rankings of a search engine, the content present on your web page must be qualitative and informative and it must be unique as well. Besides this, there are many other technical and non-technical factors that need to be fulfilled to create good content, failing to which results in lower search engine ranking.
What is meant by search engine ranking?
A search engine ranking can be defined as the position at which your website or web page is shown when a user searches for a related query. For example, if you have a website related to digital marketing and while searching for this, the link of your web page is shown at the fifth position, then your search engine ranking for that particular keyword will be 5.
It is of very high importance as the higher will be the ranking higher more will be the traffic on your site. If your website is not present on the first page of search engine ranking then you will experience lower traffic than of those who appear on the first page.
Benefits of high search engine rankings
For any business, being listed on the top of search engine results is always of great help and it reaps great benefits as well. Here are five key benefits that you’ll experience if your website’s search engine ranking is high:
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High organic traffic
Organic traffic is a term derived for natural visitors who come on your site without any paid promotions. High organic traffic is directly proportional to the genuineness of your site and the quality of the content available there. If your site appears somewhere on the top of search engine results, you will surely see a great hike in organic traffic and that will improve the awareness of your brand as well.
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Better online reputation of your business
When people always see your brand on the top of search engine results whenever they make any related query, the trust for your company will automatically increase. It will create a good image of your brand and will also add a synergistic effect to your marketing campaign.
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Better conversion
Top search engine ranking says a lot about your company and it creates a good reputation for your business in the minds of the audience. Thus, if someone is looking for a product or service that you provide and he/she is finding you at the top of the list after searching, then chances are higher that he/she will make a purchase. Plus, you are already getting high traffic and people have started to trust your brand, then the traffic conversion rate will automatically improve.
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High Return on Investment (ROI)
If you are doing everything right from the start till the end to promote your business and have managed to get good search engine ranking, then you will definitely reap great ROI. More traffic and more conversion mean increased sales and that points towards better returns on your investment.
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Potential customers
Sitting at the top of search results is always best to get the high number of visitors on your website and that increases the flow of targeted & potential clients as well. To achieve higher rankings, you must ensure good search engine optimization of your site and that will assist in hitting the target audience who is interested in your product/service.
Reasons for low search engine rankings
Low search engine rankings negatively affect your website & businesses and you must take appropriate measures to get it right. Before deciding what action you should take, it is important to find out the reason for low search engine rankings. Here are some of the reasons that could affect your search engine rankings:
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You are targeting the wrong keyword
If you experience low SERP (search engine result pages) rankings of any of your web pages, you must first check the keywords you want to rank that page. There might be a chance that the keywords you are targeting are outdated. Thus, you will experience low SERP rankings. So, you must again strategize the keywords you should target.
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Lost backlinks
Another reason for a sudden drop in your SERP rankings could be lost backlinks. Link building is one of the most important tactics in improving your position on search engine results. If it is not effective enough, you might not be able to achieve the position you want on the search engine page. To keep track of your backlinks, you can use dedicated tools.
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Changed content on your web page
Yes, if you change the content present on your web page the chances are high that your search engine rankings will drop down. To get back on track, it is advised to wait for at least a couple of weeks. While updating the content, it is important to ensure that it will create a positive impact on your web page.
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Better content than yours is available
It is one of the most basic reasons for dropping down your site’s SERP rankings. If someone has published content that is much better than the content posted by you, the ranking of your web page will automatically decrease. The content posted by your competitor will have updated information, easy language, uniqueness, and optimized content.
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Shifted keyword intent
One of the reasons for low search engine rankings could be the changed intent of that particular keyword you were ranking on before. The reason for the changed intent could be a trending topic or any current event which is being popularly searched by the people. In this situation, it is advised to wait for some time as with time your ranking will automatically recover.
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Change in Google’s algorithm
Google updates its algorithms many times in a year and this might affect your SERP rankings. As there are numerous updates by Google every year, it is often difficult to confirm that change in algorithm is the reason for low rankings. To experience a low effect, it is always advised to follow the webmaster guidelines issued by Google and adopt strong social media marketing practices.
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Low page speed
The quality of your website and the quality of your content defines how much people will admire it. But for people to see how informative the content is on your web page; it requires to load at a good speed. If your web page is taking so much time to load than usual, then it will increase the bounce rate of your site and eventually you will see a sudden decline in SERP rankings. It is important to check the page load speed of your site using an appropriate tool and take necessary actions if it is very low.
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Redesigning of website
If you are redesigning your website or changing its URL, then you will see a sudden change in your search engine rankings downwards. To ensure the minimal effect of a website redesign on your rankings, it is important to correctly map all your 301 redirects.
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Site hacked
Though this is one of the rarest reasons for low search engine rankings yet it should be considered seriously. If your site is hacked, the chances are high that the position at which it appears will drop. So, if you see unexpectedly low SERP rankings, do check whether your site is hacked.
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Meta information
An incorrect or inappropriate meta description is also a reason for the decline in SERP rankings. It is always important to use relevant information in your meta description to help search engine bots to easily identify what information you have posted on your web page. Another important point with meta information is to avoid using the same title for multiple pages as it will create competition between web pages of your website.
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Server overload
This situation generally occurs when you have a shared server and in case of a sudden increase in the traffic, it might crash. This negatively affects your SERP rankings and your hosting provider might bring your site down due exceeding the bandwidth limit.
These above-mentioned are some of the reasons that might drop down your search engine rankings and hurt your website badly. Ensuring effective SEO practice will help you tackle these problems and maintain the position of your website on your search engine result pages.
How to improve SERP rankings?
High SERP rankings are very important in improving awareness of your brand and achieve long term goals. Let us see some of the key strategies by which you can improve search rankings of your website:
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Link building
Link building is one of the most important factors if you want your site to rank higher on the SERP. Getting backlinks from trusted and high-quality websites will improve the reputation of your website and it will move up in the search rankings. Creating backlinks is also important for building your site’s domain and page authority.
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High content quality
Content is the key and it must have unique & engaging information. If the content present on your website is irrelevant, it will never gain high search engine rankings. So, you must ensure that the information you are putting on your website is relevant to the audience. In other words, your content should be SEO-friendly.
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Enhance user experience
You must make sure that visitors coming to your website must have a good experience. For that, you must ensure that the loading speed of your web page is good enough so that people don’t get irritated. The slow page loading speed will increase the bounce rate of your website while good speed will ensure the retention of visitors. It is also important to see how well your site is loading on smartphones as a large number of users prefer mobiles than systems.
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Fix broken links
Broken links of your website negatively affect your SERP thus, you must fix all broken links. Either you redirect that link to a relevant web page or remove that link. Fixing broken links at the right time is necessary to maintain high rankings on the SERP.
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Use H1 and H2 header tags
Using header tags will help search engine bots to identify the structure of the content present on your site and it will also be helpful for the audience to understand & read what is there on your site. Thus, the easy readability will increase the traffic on your site and eventually assist in improving SERP rankings.
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The target for ‘position zero’
The topmost result you get after searching for any query is known as ‘position zero.’ If you managed to achieve that position, there is no looking back. The most relevant answer to the query searched by you is shown on the top and that link gets very high traffic. Thus, you need to strategize the content and web pages by aiming ‘position zero’.
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Always try to focus on ‘White Hat SEO’
White hat SEO refers to the practices of gaining traffic on your website without any paid services. If you managed to get good organic traffic on your website, the chances of getting penalized by google will be minimized and the reputation of your brand will improve.
By keeping these points in mind, you will be able to improve search engine rankings of your website and drive organic traffic.
Conclusion
While searching for anything on Google, most people will click on the first few links that appear on the SERP. This means higher your ranking more traffic you will drive to your website. Thus, to maintain a good position, it is very important to adopt several measures and ensure better search engine optimization of web pages. Any decline in rankings will directly affect your business, brand value, and customer trust.
So, it is always better to either hire a professional and /or use dedicated software/tools to keep track of your performance on the web and fix any issues you encounter without wasting any time. We advise you to take the help of a good SEO company and stay worry-free.