Fell in rankings, now what?

[clickagent75]

So let's say that your site fell in rankings by no fault of your own (i.e. no major on page changes like content or coding changes).

Most likely could be attributed to changes that the competition has made to their sites...what do you do then?

Do just keep building your inbound links?

What would you recommend as the best way to regain your previous positions (or better)?

[briggidere]

did it fall in ranking by a lot, or just a couple of places?

If it was just minor changes, working on your inbounds alone may help, but i'd suggest writing more useful content as well. Your competition may have gained some worthy links since the last updates and been boosted because of them. Have you noticed anything change on their sites or are you not monitoring them closely?

If it was a large drop in rankings, it is harder to know without more information about your site. Bearing in mind that sometimes google makes changes and after a couple of weeks your site can be back where it was before, so you need to give it a little bit of time before making any drastic changes to your site in case it's this.

[clickagent75]

Found the source of the issue.

The web designer re-published their homepage without the recommended Title and Meta Description tags. As a result certain keyphrases have dropped in position.

We've republished with the proper tags/terms, now its just a matter of recovering from it. Odd that Google responded so quickly to the change, hopefully they'll be equally responsive to the changes to regain the previous positions.

But you've brought up a good point. Other than the initial analysis, the competitions movements aren't closely monitored. Something to be keen on as part of "maintenance", especially for more competitive terms.