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!
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 -
Page Title Displaying Wrong Company Name in Google Search Results
Currently, in some of our keyword search results, the wrong company name is showing up in the page title. We are a family of companies that all provide different modes of transportation. When we search up "Herc Air Charters" in Google Search Engine, the wrong operating company shows up in the page title (see screenshot, second result: "Lynden Transport" is our trucking company, and does not offer any air charter, this should say "Lynden Air Cargo"). Google decides what is best to put in these titles, so what would be the best way to ensure the correct company name is being displayed? Google Search Issue.PNG
Community | | RyanD.0 -
Huge drop in rankins, traffic and impressions after changing to CloudFlare
Hi there, In October, one of our customer's programmer made a change on their website to optimize its loading speed. Since then, the all the SEO's metrics has dropped. Apparently, the change was to move to CloudFlare and to add Gzip compression. I was talking with the programmer and he told me he had no idea why that happened. Now comes 5 months later and the SEO metrics havn't come back yet. What seems so wierd is that two keywords in particular had the most massive drop. Those two keywords were the top keywords (more than 1k of impressions a month) and now its like there is no impressions or clics at all. Did anyone had the same event occur to them? Do you have any idea what could help this case?
Technical SEO | | H.M.N.0 -
Sitemap indexed pages dropping
About a month ago I noticed my pages indexed from my sitemap are dropping.There are 134 pages in my sitemap and only 11 are indexed. It used to be 117 pages and just died off quickly. I still seem to be getting consistant search traffic but I'm just not sure whats causing this. There are no warnings or manual actions required in GWT that I can find.
Technical SEO | | zenstorageunits0 -
My .htaccess has changed, what do i do to avoid it again...?
Hello Today i notice that our site did not auto changed from without www to with, when i checked the .htaccess file i notice # in-front of each line and i know we did not insert it in there, after i removed it it worked fine. The only changes that we did recently was to a mobile version to the site but the call to autodirect is in a JS and not in the .htaccess, could it be the server..? is there any way that anything else might cause this...? The site is HTML and WP could it be because of that...? Thank's Simo
Technical SEO | | Yonnir0 -
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 -
Changing CMS, are there SEO effects?
We want to change our cms from typo3 to CMS made Simple. We have done this already for another site and it effected the rankings. Have you got experience with this? What factors are important for SEO to consider? Is it normal when you change from cms the rankings will drop?
Technical SEO | | PlusPort0