Aleyda Solis walks through three tools to diagnose ranking drops: Google Search Console for year-over-year comparisons and CTR data, Sistrix for SERP changes, and My Rank Tracker for market-share analysis. She explains how to assess competitor pages, SERP feature impacts, and prioritize which queries matter most to fix.
Chapters
What to do when your website has suffered from a Google core update or when it has just gone through a major ranking shift. In today's first edition of Crawling Monday's SEO Cheat Sheet, I am going to go through 3 tools, functionalities, and resources that can be highly, highly useful for you to accelerate the analysis. First one, your Google Search Console. Very likely you're already using it. I really, really like to compare year over year to identify if the drop is an actual position drop, not just because of the seasonality. And I also like to filter as much as possible per country, per device, per page type too, to identify the patterns as much as possible. And then like this, I can go and compare not only the clicks, but also the average position, the click-through rates, and instead of impressions, we can use the volume overlay with Keywords Everywhere. So we can do something like this. Okay, for the queries that have dropping clicks, have this actually dropped in positions at all or not? Or have just dropped in click-through rate despite not dropping at all in position? Because maybe there is a new feature that could be taking the clicks from you, for example. So these are very meaningful comparisons, not only with queries, but also with pages types. Another very useful functionality is the one of Sistrix. I really like the ranking changes analysis because it allows me to compare 2 different dates, the before and after, and I will select to be shown only those rankings that have decreased or lost during this time. And I will sort it to see those keywords that have had a higher negative impact, as you can see here. So this one, for example, that went from position 5 to 0 and the URL and the search volume to also assess the opportunity and the impact of it. And then I will click on it and it will take me to the keyword analysis where I can select the SERPs comparison to identify the before and after of the SERPs. What happened there? If I drop, which was the player that took my position and which are the players now ranking in top position for these terms? So I go and take a look at my page here and see how not only that it dropped because yes, it dropped, but which are those new players that are ranking my page? Are they different type of pages showing different format, more comprehensive, showing more expertise, showing more insights, providing a better experience overall? If so, how? So at this point, I can actually go and assess and identify for all of this type of queries or for all of this type of pages, I have dropped versus this other type of content because they are showing all of this extra or different type of characteristics that I am not yet, and they are better fulfilling the user intent like this. Last but not least, I like to use My Rank Tracker advanced web ranking functionality to identify which are those major competitors that have grown when I have decreased for those top target queries that I am tracking with them. So they have this market share functionality in which I can see for my target keywords across the different SERPs that I track here. So let's take a look at what happened on mobile and which are those players that have improved for the terms that I am tracking and what are the pages that they are using to outrank me for this group of terms. If I have doubts which are these terms, I can click here and I will be taken to the keywords gap so I can assess which are these particular queries, if they are really meaningful or not, and how they are outranking. Remember a couple of things. You will tend to see many times that you have dropping rankings for queries that are actually not that meaningful for your site to target. So even if they were bringing some traffic in the past, you should ask yourself if they are actually worthy for you to target because there's only so many resources that you will tend to have at a time to go for those topics that are actually important from a business standpoint. This is why it is fundamental to set the right expectations with your clients or your boss. Whenever you see that you're bringing traffic with queries or terms that are not really that meaningful, and at some point it might be very likely that Google will stop ranking you for them. Then secondly, it's about understanding that you should be best in class. It's not about, oh, I am already good enough for this query. My page is already meaningful. It's already relevant. It's already descriptive. Oh no, go and take a look. Which are those pages that are overtaking those positions? Which are these particular players that are ranking you now? What type of format they are showing? What are their major characteristics? What are you lacking that they do have? And it might not necessarily be only relevant content, but it can be the overall experience, the authoritativeness, the polarity. It's about aligning all of these characteristics to ensure that you beat your competitors, ensuring that you're the best in class out there at that stage of the journey, providing the best possible answer to their needs. I hope that all these tips are helpful to assess what you need to do to regain those rankings and visibility. Expect many more videos like this in this new Crawling Monday series. Remember to subscribe to the channel to avoid missing any edition. Until the next one.
