We often have clients come to us where their rankings have dropped.

These can be caused by a number of factors, such as Google updates, issues with site structure or coding, or more aggressive competitors doing well at SEO.

The number one cause we see is previous low quality backlinks coming back to bite. The general rule is the more difficult a link is to obtain, the less valuable it is, and often poor quality links do more harm than good. The way it works is the search engines see you’re getting more links, and as links are a ranking factor, these poor quality links will rank your site higher for a period of time. However, Google then starts to spot a trend – other sites are also ranking higher from those same sites that link to yours. In the past this would flag a manual review by a human, but now the algorithm just steps in and devalues all the sites that link out from that site.

As a ‘punishment,’ or to limit such activity by sites, the algorithm does more than just bring you back to where you were before – it aims to rank you lower. Search engines don’t like such kinds of deliberate manipulation. Google looks at your overall link profile when deciding how far to drop the site. If you have some high quality links in the mix, the de-ranking effect is less pronounced.

The easiest way to avoid this is to focus on quality over quantity. Perhaps you have a supplier that is happy to link to you from their site or a well regarded industry body that will link to you. Alternatively you can do something groundbreaking and have news sites want to write about you. All of this takes time and has its limits.

Quality Backlinks

We focus on one type of high quality link, and it works very well. These are high quality guest post backlinks. These are articles relevant to your site (works better than a straight puff piece) that link to yours. We don’t pay for these, but instead we form relationships with the publisher and help them with their primary need – providing useful content to their readers. In turn they agree to post an article we write that links to your site. These offer enormous SEO value.

These links have the benefit of boosting rankings as well as establishing your site as an ‘authority’ on a topic. When your site is viewed favorably, the ranking drop associated from past low quality links is mitigated.

Make sure you focus on high quality ‘do follow’ links in long lasting article placements.

Obtaining high quality links is the best way to fend off or recover fully from a ranking drop.