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SEO – How to – Address Keyword Drops

SEO – How to – Address Keyword Drops

Purpose of this How To Guide: To address keyword drops by analysing the issue and making the necessary alterations to assist in recovering ranking positions

Applicable to: SEO Executives

Customers: All

Timescale: This should take approximately 1 hour – 2 hours depending on the number / severity of drops to resolve

 

Introduction

As an SEO Executive, you’ll know that keywords fluctuate almost constantly due to Google’s dynamic algorithm which is always changing to provide the best experience for its users. This guide will take you through the steps towards addressing a keyword drop.

NOTE: BEFORE STARTING, FETCH THE OPTIMISED PAGE USING GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE AND WAIT UNTIL THE PAGE IS RE-INDEXED AS THIS MAY FIX THE ISSUE.

 

On-Page Factors to Consider

  • Is there at least 300 words of content? Place the keyword into the Content Template on SEMrush to get an idea of how many words are required to address the competition.
  • Does the meta data (title tag, meta description etc.) look ok? Could it be improved?
  • Make sure the page is indexed by checking the meta robots in the source code and robots.txt file if necessary.
  • Do a CTRL + F search for the keyword on the page to determine the keyword density. Could this be increased / decreased?

 

Site Search

If you can’t find any issues with the above, conduct a site search using the following command in Google:

Site:https://www.example.com keyword

 This will reveal a list of all current indexed pages from the website’s domain that include or reference the keyword in question. You will usually find a list of blog posts which have included the keyword.

Go through as many pages as you can to determine if they include an internal link to the optimised page and if not, implement one. Don’t forget to fetch the pages which you have just inserted an internal link to, otherwise, this is unlikely to have an immediate effect.

 

Improve Onsite Technical Elements

Improve the onsite SEO of the optimised page by adding the following if necessary:

  • Image alt text
  • Optimised H2 headings
  • Coded lists
  • Optimised H1 heading
  • Coded paragraphs
  • Hyperlinking of telephone number, email address, contact form etc. for usability purposes.

 

It is also important to make sure that the page is user-friendly. This includes taking a look at the visual elements of the page from a user’s perspective:

  • Check if internal links have good hover colour contrast
  • Check to see if internal / external links work correctly
  • Check to see if content is spaced out evenly and well-segmented
  • Check tone of content for easy reading
  • Make sure the content contrasts well with the webpage’s background colour
  • Make sure image alt text is implemented for those who are visually impaired and use a screen reader.
  • Check to see if the page can be easily accessible from the main navigation menu
  • Check to see if the page is responsive for mobile
  • Check to see if Schema Markup has been implemented
  • Check page speed

 

Submit & Fetch

It’s important that you don’t do everything at once otherwise you won’t know what was effective and what wasn’t. Make some changes, fetch the page and monitor. If no changes occur, try something else.

Hopefully by now the position has resolved and you can complete the assigned task.

If issues with keyword drops persist, liaise with a Senior SEO Executive or your Lead to brainstorm and try to come up with a solution.

 

 

 

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