If you’re an online business or your business has an online presence then there are few worse feelings than going to check on your page 1 ranking which is bringing in most of your sites traffic, and finding that it’s now on page 5. That’s enough to make any online marketer and online business owner lose sleep. Rankings positions are hugely important if you want your business to succeed, the difference between being ranked number 1 and number 20 in Google is immense as if you’re ranked 20th you pretty much might as well not be ranked at all. When was the last time you searched for something on Google and clicked on a result on page 2 or 3? If your rankings have taken a dive all of a sudden then now is not the time to panic, it’s time to find out why and get your rankings back to where they were so let’s take a look at what you need to do.

Find Out Where You Are

If you have a search term that you have been ranking on page 1 for and all of a sudden it’s gone then the first thing you need to do is to find out where it’s gone to. Are you still in the top 20, 50, 100? If you have slipped into page 2 or 3 then it’s not so bad and it won’t be too hard getting back to where you once where but if you have fallen out of the top 100 altogether then you might have problems. There are tools you can use to tell you where you are ranking but they aren’t always reliable so I prefer to search for them manually. Just make sure to clear your browser search history and sign out of your Google account and they can distort the results.

Learn Lessons

You should use the experience of losing your good ranking positions as an opportunity to learn lessons and improve your website and your online marketing strategies. If the latest algorithm shake up by Google has hit your site in an undesirable way then you need to take their not so subtle hint that there’s something wrong with what you’re doing. This doesn’t mean that you need to pander to everything that Google wants but it provides an opportunity for you to take a look at yourself and find areas that you can improve so that your customers get the best possible experience and service when they visit your site.

What Are You Missing?

You may find that your website needs a blog so that you can regularly update it with fresh content, not just for the sake of it but to provide visitors with exciting, entertaining and educational content. That could make your site more popular as people will use it to find out about the latest news and developments in whatever industry it is that you are working in. That’s how brand reputations are built and improved.

You may find that you need to earn links from more relevant and reputable websites. Gone are the days when you could submit your website to a few online directories and see your rankings sore. Today you will need to earn links in a natural way from high quality websites within the same or at least a similar industry to yours and the only way to do that is to make the best possible website and put genuine effort into your marketing strategies.

Don’t look at a drop in rankings as the end of your SEO and online marketing efforts, instead look at it as an opportunity to create the website and online brand image that you’ve always wanted. If you put your customers first then it’s inevitable that you’ll get the links you want, the visitors, Facebook likes, Twitter followers and your rankings will improve once again.

Don’t Worry About Old Links

Lots of people waste time contacting websites that are linking to them asking them to remove there link to the site which they believe is harming their rankings. This is a waste of time as Google have acknowledged that they ignore low quality links and instead focus on the high quality ones so leave the old links and focus your efforts on earning high quality ones, not by asking for them, buying them or exchanging but by making your site a true source of knowledge, information, excitement and quality within your industry.

By Stuart Cooke an online marketer who owns Pinnacle SEO and he gets lots of clients asking him to improve their rankings after they’ve taken a dive.