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
-
Google doesn't show my Twitter account
Hello, my full name is Timo Rossa and my Twitter (X) account is @TimoRossa. If I search for my name with "Timo Rossa" on Google, it doesn't find any results referencing my Twitter account. It is very important for me that Google does not only show Twitter results for my name but also that those results would be ranked at the top. The only reason I could come up with is that my account name has not separated words. Does this make sense? What would be a simple strategy to achieve my goal? Thank you!
SEO Tactics | | TimoRossa0 -
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 -
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 -
Should we change the publish date in WordPress when updating a post?
Hi everyone, We're going through some of our old posts in our WordPress blog and updating them, adding new information, new links, and photos. My question: If we update the posts significantly, should we also update the "published" date to today? If we only correct some typos or a dead link, we don't touch the date. However, if we've done some real work on the post, we'd like to update the published date in order to bring it to the top of our blog feed and draw new attention to the post. However, I'm a little nervous that this could be seen by Google as spammy, as it's not technically a new post and the URL already exists in Google's index of our site. Here's an example of a post that was published several years ago and then updated a few week's ago with new information (and a new date stamp): http://www.eurocheapo.com/blog/barcelona-tip-five-cheap-eats-under-e6.html Any thoughts on this? Thanks, Tom
Technical SEO | | TomNYC0 -
Changing images on site without losing ranking
A number of images on my site rank very well under google image search but need to be replaced with updated versions. If I keep the file name and pixel dimensions identical will switching the image effect my rankings? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Justin450 -
Is it possible to change a sitelink title by off page SEO?
Hi all, I checked a website of my company: sitelinks in SERP are with the correct url, but one of the sitelinks’ title is completely irrelevant. Is it possible that it was changed from "outside"? Or maybe it's a bug? Thank you, Imre
Technical SEO | | DDL0 -
How do you implement pages requiring login?
I'm running a site with a member area and some public accessible pages. The member area obviously requires users to authenticate, while the public pages are indexable by search engines. Our global navigation includes links to the restricted pages. At the moment, when a user isn't logged in and accesses a restricted page, we're 302-redirecting them to a login page. We have a lot of external links pointing to restricted pages (eg. profile pages), and since we're 302-redirecting the juice from these links are lost. I've been thinking about changing the redirect from 302 to 301. How would this look from a search engines view? The pages aren't per se permanently moved - the current user just isn't authenticated to view the content of the page at the moment. Would it be a problem that navigation contains multiple internal links that all 301 redirect to the same login page? Any suggestions? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jonesjitter0