Things were going so well. You got a brand new accountant website, and gradually you were starting to climb the search engines. Your target market was beginning to take notice, and you even got a few inquiries.
But then the unimaginable happened. Suddenly, the leads dried up, and you checked your SERP report (search engine ranking positions). On the graph, you see a massive dip. Your website has literally plummeted down the search engine results.
Do not panic. Your accountant marketing strategy may seem to be irreparably broken, but that is not necessarily so. Here, we’ll take you through a step-by-step guide to SEO recovery.
#1 Ensure Your Rankings Have Actually Dropped
There could be other explanations for the dip, other than you actually lost search engine rankings. For starters, you might have been caught up in one of Google’s experiments for personalisation and rankings.
It might also be that your rankings tracker has not localised correctly. There are, basically, a few possible explanations. As such, be sure about the following before jumping to conclusions about your accountant marketing:
- What do the affected pages actually look like? For instance, your ranking tracker might say you’ve experienced a huge dip in rankings. However, are your page sessions dramatically different from the previous week? (You can find this out in Google Analytics). One thing you may want to consider are seasonal factors. Did the dip happen over a holiday weekend, for instance?
- What does Google Search Console say? You can track queries here as well as within your tracker. Does it show a similar drop in SERPs?
- Does the ranking tracker show a sustained drop over time?
Accountant marketing is a little like sailing a large ship in some respects. The weather (Google) may knock you about, but this does not necessarily mean you are sinking. Keep an eye on things and don’t panic.
#2 Diagnose the Problem
Has Google just updated its algorithm? They do this almost every day. Stealthily. Luckily for you, there are accountant marketing specialists like ourselves keeping track of it.
Make sure you get online and check the latest SEO blogs. Are they announcing a big change that could affect your SERPs? Some good ones are Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch.
The annoying news is, if Google have updated their algorithm, then you’re going to have to update your SEO approach. Put a plan together to get yourself out of the muddle. Or, get someone to do it for you who knows what they’re doing.
#3 Did You Lose Links?
If you are using Majestic or AHREFs, then you can analyse whether this is the case using their Lost Links reports. Their indexes are continuously updated, so you should get the information easily. When you look at your data, ask yourself the following:
- Can you see a clear, site-wide drop in links?
- Is there a link-drop associated with the pages – or collection of pages – you’ve seen a SERP drop for?
If this is your problem, then you need to answer some important questions to get your accountant marketing back on track. Can you get the links back? If not, can you invest in new links to replace the old ones?
#4 Did You Change The Pages Concerned?
Did you alter the URL of the page(s) which experienced a ranking drop? Never do this, unless you know what you’re doing!
Have you removed or changed the target keyword in the H1, page title or other H tags?
Have you changed the keyword density within the content on the page?
Is Google able to access the pages? Use Google Search Console to seek out crawl and server reports.
