← Grumpy SEO Guy
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This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 89, why your SEO position is dropping. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy, and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies, and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more About SEO than 99 of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because nobody will talk about why a website might be decreasing in the search results. Everybody tries to talk about, oh, you got to do this. Oh, you got to do that. This is how you rank. This is how you rank. By the way, most of those people have no idea what they're talking about, but fortunately, you guys do listen to Grumpy SEO Guy, so you comprehend how it works. But look, there are also reasons that your website might be losing rank, okay? And I see this question fairly often in the forums and on Reddit. They say, hey, why is my website losing rank? Why is my position going down? Well, listen to this episode. We're gonna talk about it. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical and based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. First, we spend much of Grumpy SEO Guy, the podcast, talking about how to rank, what you need to do to rank. If you're unfamiliar with what you need to do to rank, you should go back and listen to episode 51. It's called the 4 Things yous need to Rank.
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Okay?
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Because there are only four. Right. Can't rank with three of them. You can't rank with two of them. You can't rank with one of them. You need all four. But there's also only four goal. Listen to that episode. I'll tell you what they are right now, but then you have to go listen to that Episode if you want to learn more. Number one, avoid penalties. Number two, you have to have content. It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be correct. In fact, it can be wrong and bad and still rank, because the quality of content is not a ranking factor.
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Number three, you have to have authority. And number four, you have to have relevancy. And you might want to change them around. You might want to put relevancy third and authority fourth. I explained it a certain way in that episode, but ultimately the order of those two doesn't matter. You need them both. Okay, so with that said, now we're going to talk about why your website is decreasing in rank. Okay, There are three reasons your website can lose rank. Okay, let's just start talking about them. Reason number one, algorithm updates. This is not really anything that has to do with your website, but sometimes there are algorithm updates and they change the rankings all around, and everybody kind of goes crazy about it because they're like, oh, no, I'm not ranking anymore. Or they're like, hey, I just started ranking. Like, algorithm updates is not a problem with your website. It can be connected to the kind of SEO that you've been doing. Sometimes if you've been doing something and then an algorithm update happens and they have, for example, removed the value of an SEO tactic, you might lose your rank or something, right? But, like, ultimately, that's nothing that you can really affect. Or another thing that you commonly see when there's an algorithm update is certain websites may lose some of their authority. And if those websites are linking to you, it means you lose some of your authority. Why? Because if a website is linking to you and it loses some of its authority, that means it has less authority to share with you. So if an algorithm update, for example, changes the authority of a certain website because of distinct factors specific to that algorithm update, and that website loses some authority, and that website links to you, then you will lose some authority too, which means your rank might decrease. And by the way, you should understand what I'm talking about when I say if a website that links to you loses some of its authority, it means you will lose some of your authority, which means you will not rank as high. Because you've listened to episode 87, which is called SEO is a competition, not a checklist. And because you've listened to episode 34, which is called how to Think About SEO. If you want to be in the 1% where you learned that SEO is not about what you do to your website, but it is about how your website relates to all the other websites on the Internet. So if this concept is confusing to you, go listen to that episode. But if it's not confusing to you, you're doing a good job, okay? So I'm just gonna leave it at that. Let me give you one example, though, really quickly. Kind of like what I'm just talking about where, like, maybe a thing that you were doing stopped working. So a long time ago, a ranking trick. I guess I hate to use the word trick because there are no tricks, but, like, whatever, a ranking strategy that people would use would be to do what was mostly considered over optimization. So over optimization. And you know this because you've listened to episode two, which talks about different kinds of penalt. Over optimization is when too many of your backlinks use the same anchor text.
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So if you're selling blue widgets and you get, like, too many backlinks that link to you using the anchor text. And anchor text is the words in the backlink using the anchor text. Blue widgets. All right, that used to work really well. If you had, like, 100 backlinks and like, 90 of them use the words blue widgets, you'd probably rank for blue widgets. But then the search engines were like, no, wait a minute, guys. They can affect the rankings like this. And so they changed the algorithm. So that not only does that not help you anymore, but it hurts you. So if you had been doing that, you were probably ranking very well. And then when the algorithm changed, not only did it stop, not only did you stop ranking, but you probably got a penalty too. So that, like, kind of a different example, because that. Well, whatever, it doesn't matter anyway. So that's what I'm talking about. If the algorithm changes, then the things that you were doing either count for more, the same, or less. And that can affect your ranking. Okay, what's the next thing that can happen? Number two, your competitors can be doing better SEO. Okay? People don't understand this. People think that, like, they are the only ones doing SEO. Dude, everybody on the Internet is probably doing SEO, and everybody that is ranking is doing SEO.
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So like, if you're in position, let's say one, all right, let's say you're in position one, and then, like, in a week or two, you're in position two. All right? And then, like, in another week or two, you're in Position 3. And then, like, few days later, you're in position four. And then a few days later, you're in Position 5. And then a few days later, you're back in position four. And then a few days later you're in position five. And then like maybe a week later you're in position six and so on, right? That's because your competition is enhancing their own SEO efforts, okay? That's the same thing that happens to them when you do SEO. All right? When you get like, when you have somebody who's in position like eight, right? And then they do better SEO and they get to position one. Those other websites had to lose their rank in order for you to rank. Do you remember when I described that SEO is a competition, not a checklist? By the way, it's episode 87. You should go listen to it. It's probably the best episode. SEO is a competition. Every time you do better, somebody else has to do worse. And every time somebody else does better, you will do worse. It's not a project in school where everybody gets an A by doing everything the correct way.
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Somebody is the best, somebody is the second best, somebody is the third best. And those places can change regularly. All right? So go listen to episode 87, which is called SEO is a competition, not a checklist. And then you'll understand. Hopefully. Anyways, I don't know. Anyway, alright, so if your website is slowly losing its rank, it's because your competition is slowly increasing their utilization of SEO.
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Does that make sense? I don't know another way to say it. It's like if, I don't know, if you're in a race, okay? And you're like, the race is not over, okay? You're in first place. And then like. But then somebody passes you and you're in second place. They're in first place. Now you're in second place. But then another guy passes, you know, or woman, whatever, Another person passes you, now they're in second place, you're in third place, and that first person is in first place. That's how SEO works, okay? If your rank is slowly decreasing, it's because your competition is increasing their SEO. That's the most common thing, by the way. Like the most common reason somebody else is doing SEO better than you, you're losing your rank as a result. It's possible all your competition is doing SEO better than you because that's how SEO works. People are usually doing SEO if it's a difficult industry where you have to be doing SEO all the time. So there's one more reason right now that's very similar to this reason. And I can't decide if it should be its Own reason or not. So I'm just gonna include it here. So we're talking about your competition improving their own SEO. And so I'm afraid people are gonna think of that as a checklist, even though I just said SEO is not a checklist, okay? But I think people are gonna think of that as a checklist. So let me give you one more, but let me define it differently. First, I want you to think of not your competition doing better SEO, but your competition doing better SEO than you. But here's the other example. Somebody might remove an authoritative backlink that links to you, okay? That could result in a large drop in your position, okay? Because think about it. If you have a load of authority and then a large amount of it gets removed, what's going to happen? You're going to have much less authority. And then what's going to happen? You are going to rank much lower, okay? So we just said that a big drop could be related to an algorithm update, but it could also be related to the loss of authority. But what is actually happening right now, and this is so huge, I feel like I'm not going to explain it, right? Do not think of this as I lost authority, therefore my rank decreased. Think of it as I lost authority compared to my competition, therefore my rank decreased.
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Those are almost the same thing, but the specific meaning is very different. And it is very important because remember, SEO is not a checklist. It is about how your website compares to every other website on the Internet. So there are no fixed amounts of authority. It doesn't matter how much authority you have. What matters is that you have more than your competition. And just a reminder here that we're not going to get into Dr. Is an estimate. DA is an estimate, okay? A lot of people say, well, this website has less Dr. Than this one, but it's ranking higher, therefore you're wrong. Grumpy SEO guy. No, because first of all, Dr. Is domain level. It's not page level. So you're wrong on one count. Number two, you're wrong because it's an estimate. Pages with more authority rank higher. But that's not the point. That's a different topic. The point is you need more authority than your competition. You do not need more authority than some arbitrary number that nobody knows, okay? So? So if a good backlink gets removed that was linking to you, okay? You will have less authority. You might find a large drop in your ranking. Why? Because your competition is now doing better SEO than you or more of the other websites that are trying to rank for your keyword are now doing better SEO than you.
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It's very important to understand that. It's very important to understand what that means. Anyway, I hope this is useful. How I kind of grouped this one in with the other one because they're very close, even though they're different. Anyway, let's talk about the next one now. Anyway, that's the second reason. What's the third reason that your rank might drop? The third reason is you got a penalty. It's pretty clear. Go listen to episode two if you want to learn about the penalties that you will usually see. What causes them, how to fix them, and how to avoid them.
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And we also talk about negative SEO on that episode, by the way. So that's episode two. You should go listen to it if you want to learn more about penalties. This episode is called SEO penalties. What they are, how to recover from them, and how to avoid them. That's all I'm going to say about that. Because there's not really much more to say about penalties. Okay, here's like the next most important thing that you need to pay attention to. You can tell which one of these things is happening by how your website position is changing, okay? Do you remember when I mentioned that the most important thing in SEO is your SERPs, okay? SERPs? S, E R P Search engine result page. It means what position are you in? It is the most important thing. In fact, it is so important. I have an episode called if you're not tracking your SERPs, you're not doing SEO. So that's episode 35, which is. By the way, that's correct. Because like, that's. SERPS is the metric by how you determine if your SEO is effective or not, okay? Everything else that people care about, like number of visitors and impressions and all that other stuff that is not SEO is a function of SERPs and monthly search volume, okay? All of those things are functions of other things. Therefore, they are not main SEO factors. Therefore, guys, I'm not really sure what else to say. Like, think of it. You can think of it like horsepower in a car. Horsepower is a function of RPM and torque. Horsepower is a secondary metric, okay? All of those things that everybody talks about, people that don't understand SEO, by the way, those are secondary or more metrics, okay? The only SEO metric that matters at all is serps is your position is what position are you in?
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And all of the other metrics that people care about are functions of SERP and something else in a formula that produces a number, okay? Just like torque and rpm, go through a formula to determine horsepower. For example, your visitors is a function of your SERP position and the number of monthly searches. So, for example, really, really quick, if you're in the first position, okay, you will get about 30% of the visitors for your keyword. So, for example, if your keyword gets 10,000 monthly searches and you're in the first position, you will get approximately 3,000 visitors. Okay, so visitors is a. Is a very useful metric, but it is not a primary SEO metric. Why? Because it is a function of monthly searches and SERPs. Okay, so let me say this one more time. If you are in the first position, you will get approximately 30% of the visitors for a keyword. So if your keyword has 10,000 monthly searches and you are in the first position, you will get approximately 30% of those or 3,000 visitors.
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Your SERPs in this case, number one, is an SEO metric. The only thing you can control is your SERPs. But that's all I'm going to say on this topic for now because I have another episode that explains it with much detail. So if you want to learn more about SIR positions and how they influence your number of visitors, go listen to that episode. I'm not going to get into it now because I have a whole other episode that explains how to do this and what it's all about. And I don't know, we're not going to talk about it now. That's episode 35. It's very important. Listen to it if you haven't heard it yet. So Anyway, watch your SERPs. You should be tracking your SERPs. You should be watching your position for your keywords. Not necessarily every day, but you do need data from every day. There are some SERP tracking tools that will give you weekly data. These are worthless. They will not help you.
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Okay.
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There are some that do bigger than weekly, which is also. Stay away from them. It's not helpful. You need daily data. I use a serp tracker called serp fox serpfox.com, s e r, p f o x serp fox. I'm pretty sure the first 10 keywords are free. I don't get paid if you use it. I don't care if you use it or not. Use a different one if you want to. I've used them for over a decade. They are wonderful. They have daily data and a bunch of other cool stuff that you might need. So anyway, use them if you want or use a different one. It doesn't matter to me. But they're great. They have daily data, which again, I have to state, you need daily data. And it also needs to be in a chart. It does not need to be on a table. It is mind blowing to me how many bad SERP tracking tools there are. Okay, like again, if it works for you, use it. If it doesn't work for you, don't use it. I'm sure there's other tools that do the same thing, but back in the day when I started using them, there were only like three and I trialed all of them and serpfox was great and the other two were. One of them was terrible and one of them was like, okay. So I stuck with Serpvox and here I am over, over 10 years later, still using them because it's awesome for me. But anyway, it is amazing to me how many SERP tracking tools present the data as a table instead of a chart. That confuses me. Why would you use a table? Do you know how much longer it would take to get the information that you need from a table where you have to think about the numbers instead of just looking at a chart? You do you guys, but I'm telling you, use a chart. So anyway, so you're going to get a chart. My rant on bad SERP tracking tools is over. Now you're going to get a chart and you're going to look at daily data. Daily.
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So you're going to look at it and you're going to know where you're ranking for each of your keywords and where you are on every day before that day. Right? Because you have daily data.
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And then what you're going to do is you're going to look at what's happening with the line if it's a. If it. Okay, so the type of ranking drop that we are discussing here can be determined by what is happening with your SERP chart data.
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Okay.
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And this is going to be the topic of next week's episode. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or. Or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder, and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks, and I think those words will classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com grumpy SEO guy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday when we talk about why your website's SEO position is dropping Part two and how to tell what's going on from using a SERP chart.