This is a guest post by Onibalusi Bamidele who is a young blogger and blogs at DataEntryForAll.net.
Have you noticed a change in the amount of traffic to your website recently? Have you noticed a decline in your search engine rankings? Then maybe you have lost your Google Rankings.
I lost my Google Rankings late last year and I can tell you I was not comfortable(or maybe a little bit comfortable because i have other traffic sources), it became worse to the extent of me not ranking for my website name(this is worse you say!).
It is very discouraging to loose your Google Rankings and this applies both to the new blogger and the established ones.
Here are some tips to help you if you have lost your Google rankings or should you loose your Google rankings. But before I go I will like to tell you prevention is better than cure and also not to depend on search engine traffic only.
The following tips should help you regain your Google Rankings:
1. TAKE HEART
I know how you feel when you loose your Google rankings but take heart, don’t panic and try as much as possible to avoid every negative sayings and every forms of discouragement. This is because everything you has to do with your heart and if you begin to register failure in your mind then it might be somewhat difficult to carry on.
It is also important to take heart and be patient is that it might just be Google making some tweaks in their algorithm. It might also be a competitor trying to outrank you.
2. THE PAST
“Yes the past”, try to mirror the past, have you done anything wrong? Did you try blackhat? Try to remember if you made any changes to your blog; try to find out if your content got copied(using copyscape.com) or have you copied it from somewhere.
What of those you link to. That is why I will like you to read this post on detecting banned links.
Also try to read the Google guidelines, digest all that is in it, make a re-review of your website and consider submitting it for a reconsideration by Google.
3. DON’T FORGET
Don’t forget why your blog was created(for people and not search engines), try as much as possible to be updating your website on a regular basis as much as possible, give your readers valuable content, build your trust in them. Just try as much as possible not to forget the main purpose of your blog and believe your rankings will be restored.
Admin Note: Here, I would like you to give a read to my article “Human vs. Search Engines – Striking A Balance“.
4. WHAT IF?
What if search engines never existed? What if they only allow listing from huge companies? What if you could get other sources of traffic?
Try to build other sources of traffic, as at the time of writing I am getting over 200 daily visitors to my blog and only 10 percent is from Search Engines. Comment on blogs(try as much as possible to be the first to comment), don’t forget your link building, try to deeplink to other pages(Google only bans the homepage at times), comment on dofollow blogs. Do what you will do if Google was still sending traffic. In a nutshell don’t think that is the end of your online success but keep on building your website.
5. OTHER SOURCES
Once you are considering the other factors listed above, try to get other means of traffic; comment on blogs(try to be the first commenter and add value), start new topics on forums(let the topic be related to your niche and try not to spam the forums), Try to submit your articles to article sites because many of this article sites have high search engine rankings and will help your article rank higher thereby bringing more visitors to your website, try guest blogging; guest blogging has been the largest source of traffic to my blog, it has increased my blog traffic by 200%.
The most important thing is that you should try to write quality articles on your blog, as guest posts for other blogs and also to major article directories because this helps you build more trust in your readers thereby making them bring more readers to you.
Also try to gain as many relevant backlinks as possible and within a short period of time your rankings will be restored.
I hope you now know what you have to do if suppose in future your website gets banged off from Google search engine. Following the mentioned tips properly could probably restore back your search rankings.
Yeah, loosing rankings is bad. Few days ago i lost all my rankings because my network was not reachable. 5 days have pass and i m still not on rankings.
Loosing rankings is pretty bad and you cant do much about it, other than pray. Or as article say, look in past if you did something wrong.
@Hesham, thanks for the nice comment,the tweeting and the stumble.
@Lana Galileo, i pray you will gain your rankings back soon, and who knows, maybe an improvement.
I’ve lost my rankings a few times in the past, this basically has to do with shady stuff. If you think you’re beginning to slip into blackhat SEO. stop. I’ve learned that google isn’t dumb, it may be one giant script but that script was made and updated by humans and you can’t fool a human(well.. so to speak -.-). Great tips by the way, the most important is definitely the first.
.-= Josiah @Tumblr Themes´s last blog ..PhotoShow =-.
First things first, and no offense to you personally for losing you rankings, but…..if one were to lose their rankings, barring some evil mastermind sitting behind their Google desk twisting their mustache, there’s a darn good chance they did something they shouldn’t be doing and got caught.
That said, I think your #4-5 are extremely important. It’s ironic, and a little scary, that the largest portion of those that tout “never place all eggs in one basket” are usually those that say they get 75% or more of their traffic from search engines…
Huh? lol
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..WANTED – Keyword Research Expert(s) =-.
Yeah, you can never be sure if your Google ranking is permanent. Just last week I lost ranking on a keyword (1st place) that I had for 2 years but some other blog (that was not even self-hosted) whisked it away from me. Goes to show, you always have to remain vigilant about building links to your site.
.-= Chris@blogging with wordpress´s last blog ..Submitting your blog to directories =-.
My google ranking has been steady and i generate 50% of my traffic from search engines, but the problem is with the high bounce rate from search engine, DO you have any solution for that, I tried to infact reduce the page load time, but now still no use.
.-= Ramkumar´s last blog ..Improve your typing speed with games =-.
If you are concerned about your bounce rate then you may found some really interesting article posted over BlogEngage. Here’s a Link of the search Results: http://www.blogengage.com/search.php?search=bounce+rate
I too face the same issue, hope this will get rid of mine problem.
.-= Pavan Somu´s last blog ..List of Some Popular Universities Using WordPress =-.
good post and thanks for sharing i also have problem with my bounce rate it’s to high and i know this is bad for my blog so is there any solution for it?
.-= MostlyBlog´s last blog ..Intex announces Triple SIM mobile gadget, IN5030 =-.
I must say I’m having problems with not depending on the search engines for traffic cos close to 70% of my traffic are from the search engines and all of blog commenting and article posting have only gotten me a trickle of traffic. My page rank dropped last year and I think it’s cos I was linking to those autoblogging farms that leave useless trackbacks. I’ve gotten rid of them all and hopefully things will look up during the next PR update 😉
.-= Udegbunam Chukwudi@Blogging Tips´s last blog ..Make Money Blogging By Daniel Scocco Short Review =-.
Well said. Blog is primarly for the people and not for the search engines
.-= Kepler´s last blog ..Five Portable Programs to keep in your USB Drive =-.
We do write for human readers but they find our pages through the search engines. I would LOVE not to be so dependent on Google for traffic but I don’t know another way to get nearly the same amount of free, monetizeable traffic.