Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why have my positions dropped after implementing recommended changes?
-
Hello! I have taken a Moz free trial and am really enjoying using this service. But, after implementing the recommended changes by Moz my rankings have really dropped. Is this normal? I was averaging around 17 but now averaging 40. Here is my website if anyone has any ideas of what I might be doing wrong, I would greatly appreciate any help.
Thank you
Nicole -
I recently implemented some recommended changes to improve the performance of my website, but I’ve noticed a drop in my positions instead of the expected improvement. I’m unsure if these changes have caused any unintended side effects or if there are other factors affecting the ranking. I’d love to hear from others who may have experienced something similar and any advice on what could be going wrong. Has anyone faced a similar situation after making adjustments, and what steps did you take to get back on track?
-
Yes same here, my online casino site position got a drop in ranking but I hope someday will rank again with my keyword that previously ranked on google.
-
Could be because of a Google algorithm update?
There have been massive Google algorithm updates lately -
@NicoleChambers said in Why have my positions dropped after implementing recommended changes?:
Hello! I have taken a Moz free trial and am really enjoying using this service. But, after implementing the recommended changes by Moz my rankings have really dropped. Is this normal? I was averaging around 17 but now averaging 40. Here is my website if anyone has any ideas of what I might be doing wrong, I would greatly appreciate any help.
Thank you
NicoleHi Nicole!
I completely understand your frustration; I’ve been in a similar situation before, and it can feel quite discouraging when your rankings drop after making changes based on recommendations.
When I started using Moz for my website’s SEO, I also made changes suggested by their tools, expecting to see improvements. However, much like you, I saw a drop in rankings initially. After doing some research and consulting with experts, I learned that this can sometimes be part of the process. Search engines may take some time to re-evaluate and adjust to the changes, especially if you're optimizing for factors like content structure, keywords, or internal linking.
In my experience, I found that the key is to give it some time. SEO improvements, especially with structural changes, can take weeks or even months to show up in rankings. Additionally, I made sure to carefully monitor my traffic through analytics and ensured my content was still user-focused and high-quality. Eventually, my rankings started improving, and I saw the benefits of the changes Moz recommended.
One thing to keep in mind is that SEO can be very competitive, and external factors can affect your rankings too. Other sites may have made similar changes or improved their own SEO during the same period, so it's important to stay patient and stay on top of your adjustments.
If you’d like to take a closer look at your site and what might be causing these fluctuations, I’d suggest checking your site’s speed, mobile optimization, and ensuring that your content is unique and adds value. And if you want to dive deeper, feel free to explore my website to see what changes worked for me in the long run!
Best of luck, and I hope things improve for you soon!
-
If your positions dropped after implementing changes, it could be due to:
Algorithm Fluctuations: Search engines may take time to re-index your site.
Change Impact: Adjustments might have affected content relevance, structure, or user experience.
Redirect Issues: Improper handling of URL changes can disrupt backlinks.
Increased Competition: Competitors might have optimized.
Algorithm Updates: Rankings can shift due to external updates.
Incomplete Implementation: Changes might not align with SEO best practices -
Hi Nicole, I can totally understand how frustrating it must feel to see a drop after putting in all that effort. Based on my experience, rankings can sometimes fluctuate right after implementing changes—it’s almost like the search engines are recalibrating. Have you checked if your changes impacted user experience, site speed, or navigation? These can play a big role too.
When I was helping a friend analyze their website, we noticed similar fluctuations after making SEO tweaks. But over time, things stabilized and rankings actually improved as the changes started aligning better with search intent. It’s important to keep an eye on your analytics and maybe give it a bit more time before tweaking further. I hope this helps—hang in there!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Who is correct - please help!
I have a website with a lot of product pages - often thousands of pages. As each of these pages is for a specific lease car they are often only fractionally different from other pages. The urls are too long, the H1 is often too long and the Title is often too long for "SEO best practice". And they do create duplication issues according to MOZ. Some people tell me to change them to noindex/nofollow whilst others tell me to leave them as they are as best not to hide from google crawler. Any advice will be gratefully received. Thanks for listening.
Technical SEO | | jlhitch0 -
Massive unexplained organic traffic drop; disappeared from Google
Hi there,
Search Behavior | | katelynroberts
Our site has experienced a huge organic traffic drop, specifically from Google. The drop occurred on Feb 19 and I've got no clue why it happened. We have not made any significant changes to the website and it doesn't look like there was an algorithm update last week. We don't have any Google penalties or indexing issues noted, and the drop isn't specific to any particular segment/region/keyword. What am I missing? Any advice or insight is super duper appreciated. Our site is a Wordpress/WooCommerice e-commerce site with a blog and long-standing #1 ranks for keywords related to our main product offering. Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.12.25 PM.png
Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.07.52 PM.png0 -
Why are my positions going down?
Good afternoon! I would like to know, what could be the reasons for a random decrease in positions of our online casino? A lot of pages appeared in Google Search at the end of June and after a few weeks most of them dropped to >100, some are still ranging but in TOP 70-85. As far as I'm concerned, there were no algorithm updates last two months, our website works fine, both internal and external optimazation is being performed.. The strangest thing is that the rating of the website is growing, but the positions are not 😞
Reporting & Analytics | | Violete
Here is a link to the project: https://flammcasino.club/
Can anyone suggest what I can do in this case?1 -
Recommended log file analysis software for OS X?
Due to some questions over direct traffic and Googlebot behavior, I want to do some log file analysis. The catch is this is a Mac shop, so all our systems are on OS X. I have Windows 8 running in an emulator, but for the sake of simplicity I'd rather run all my software in OS X. This post by Tim Resnik recommended Web Log Explorer, but it's for Windows only. I did discover Sawmill, which claims to run on any platform. Any other suggestions? Bear in mind our site is load balanced over three servers, so please take that into consideration.
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0 -
Is there a way of changing the Permalink without getting the 404 Error?
Hi, I am new to this all.. Is there a way of changing the permalink for example from: domain/content/ to domain/profile/ without receiving the 404 error message. It's just that since my website has been developed, some pages and their content have changed but the permalink still shows the name of the old page which may be confusing. Ps. Please use most simple language for explanations as I am really new to it. Thank you! Ve
Technical SEO | | MissVe0 -
Drop Down Menu - Link Juice Depletion
Hi, We have a site with 7 top level sections all of which contain a large number of subsections which may then contain further sub sections. To try and ensure the best user experience we have a top navigation with the 7 top level sections and when hovered a selection of the key sub sections. Although I like this format for the user as it makes it easier for them to find the most important sections / sub sections it does lead to a lot of links within every page on the site. In general each top section has a drop down with approx 10 - 15 subsections. This has therefore lead to SeoMoz's tools issuing its too many internal links warning. Then alongside this I am left wondering if I shouldn’t have to many links to my subsections and whether I would be better off being more selective of when I link to them. For instance I could choose the top 5 sub sections and place a link to them from our homepage and by doing so I would be passing a greater amount of link juice down the line. So I guess my dilemma is between ensuring the user has as easy a time traversing the site as possible whilst I try to keep a close watch on where, and how, our link juice is distributed. One solution I am considering is whether no-follow links could be utilised within the drop down menus? This way I could then have the desired user navigation and I would be in greater control of what pages link to which sub sections. Would that even work? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Regards, Guy
Technical SEO | | guycampbell1 -
Bing rank drop off for multiple sites
Hi Mozzers, Seeing some wacky stuff going on on some sites I manage. In more than a few, the ranking on bing has dropped basically overnight from page one spots to not being found on the first 100 positions. Anyone else seeing similar results? Some of the sites are fairly new, some have been around for ages, some are wordpress, some are not. I've been searching for some news of a big change on bing, but keep reading about bing dropping the thin sites during black friday. In one example, I had the site set up in BWT for a while, and had a look at the data. The reports show that the pages are crawled, the index summary shows pages indexed, and there seems to be no crawl errors, but rankings are absolutely gone. Also, I can't see the sites in bing if I search "site:example.com" in bing. Here's 2 examples, the first would make sense since it's pretty thin as I havent added much content yet: http://homewindowtint.org but this one doesn't make sense to me. Sure there's a few errors, but to be dropped like a rock seems weird http://www.ahmedandsukaram.com
Technical SEO | | rosstaylor0 -
Loss of search engine positions after 301 redirect - what went wrong?!?
Hi Guys After adhering to the On Page optimisation suggestions given by SEOmoz, we redirected some of old urls to new ones. We set 301 redirects from the old pages to new on a page by page basis but our search engine ranking subsequently fell off the radar and lost PR. We confirmed redirection with fiddler and it shows 301 permanent redirect on every page as expected. To manage redirection using a common code logic we executed following: In Http module, using “rewrite path” we route “all old page requests” to a page called “redirect.aspx? oldpagename =[oldpagename]”. This happens at server side. In redirect.aspx we are redirecting from old page to new page using 301 permanent redirect. In the browser, when old page is requested, it will 301 redirect to new page. In hope we and others can learn from our mistakes - what did we do wrong ?!? Thanks in advance. Dave - www.paysubsonline.com
Technical SEO | | Evo0
