It is clear that SEO campaign is an ongoing process and once you start abandoning it, you will see the decline in overall performance. If you notice that your rank and incoming traffic are declining, here are the possible the reasons:
- No new inbound links: When you write quality content and post something online, people will link to your work, because there’s nothing similar like it in the web. Google has an all-seeing eye and it’s searching for reputable sources that win confidence and votes of trust from the audience. Google uses linking structure to determine ranking of websites in its search results. However, the linking structure is changing and expanding. A year ago, your website may be at the top position in the linking structure, because you have plenty of quality inbound links. However, competitors may continue to attract new inbound links with their better content quality and direct online marketing efforts. If they go up in search ranking results, others need to go down, so there’s a chance that you are one of those who go down. There are about 200 different metrics that determine ranking positions, but linking structure is likely still on the very top in terms of importance. Check your competitor’s websites and get better understanding about those who link to their content.
- Your images are poorly optimized: Today, Internet users are getting more visual and optimizing your images is equally as important as optimizing your text-based content. If your competitors have hundreds or thousands of well optimized images, they will get more traffic from Google Image search and other similar services in the Internet. If your image is simply named as “image(1).jpg”, Google won’t what it’s all about. However, if it’s properly named as “juicycheeseburger.jpg”, your image will be shown for these three keywords. Other than relevant file name, you should also use proper caption and alt text. It may take a lot of effort to rename and assigning other relevant keywords to your existing images, but you need to do it gradually to win your lost opportunity.
- You don’t update meta description: It’s wrong to assume that the more keywords you have in the meta description, the higher your rank position would be. Meta description is useful only for confirming to search engines regarding of what your website and content are all about. If there are changing trends in your industry, there’s a possibility that new popular keywords are emerging, while other keywords are declining in importance. While your primary keywords may remain essential, you may add new secondary keywords to address latest changes and trends in the industry. It’s also a good idea to remove secondary keywords that are losing importance in your industry to prevent your meta description from becoming bloated. There’s a possibility that a very big meta description is considered as spam attempt by Google, which will hurt your overall ranking. It’s a good idea to check the meta description of competing websites, but try to make your copy unique.
