Even with a well-optimised website and a rock-solid SEO strategy, you can find yourself dealing with urgent problems. If you’ve found your traffic and conversions are dropping rapidly or worse, your page has been de-indexed, you know it’s time for action.
An SEO emergency is different to a high-priority task. SEO problems like drops in ranking are alarming and require action, but you don’t need to put your personal life on hold after hours to address them. Likewise, Google algorithm updates can cause fluctuations in ranking and traffic, but most of these are just part of the rollout process.
Anchor Digital has years of experience addressing common SEO issues and helping brands like yours to recover from setbacks. This is our guide to SEO emergencies: what counts as an “emergency” and what you should do when SEO problems get out of hand.
What Is Classified as an SEO Emergency?
In the world of search engine optimisation (SEO), very few scenarios count as genuine emergencies. While many SEO situations need addressing ASAP, an “emergency” is an event that will cause a significant decrease in traffic and revenue unless you fix it within 12 hours. Any situation that becomes more difficult to recover from the longer you leave can also become an emergency.
Some SEO problems that may have you working through the night or logging in over the weekend include:
Development site leaked
It only takes a simple slip-up like a team member mixing up the staging site’s robot.txt and the production site’s robot.txt for a site under wraps on a staging domain to suddenly go live. If the development site has external links pointing to it, web users can find it very quickly, and it takes time to remove them from the index. The sooner you catch and correct this error, the lower the likelihood that you’ll have to spend the next few months monitoring Google Search Console.
Noindex tag is incorrectly applied
Another simple slip-up is adding a noindex tag to a page that’s valuable for SEO. The faster you can catch an incorrect noindex tag, the better, and it also pays to set up alerts through your favourite SEO tools.
Website is down
It’s a major problem for any brand or business: visitors and bots simply can’t access your website. Even a brief outage can cause your rankings and conversions to drop and customers to become frustrated with you, leading to losses of sales and reputation.
If you have developers working for you, they’re likely to be the first to catch this. But if you’re going it alone or with a small team, you might be the only one with access. In a scenario like this, it’s crucial to fix the problem as fast as possible.
Manual action by Google
A Google manual action is when a Google employee gives your site a penalty, and it will cause your page to either be demoted in the search engine results or vanish from them entirely. A manual action can be applied to one or all of your site’s pages, and by clicking the Manual Actions Report, you can take steps to fix the problem. Once you’ve fixed all the issues on your website, you can request a review.
Under-optimised meta tags
These little snippets of code provide both users and crawlers with essential information about your website. Yet missing tags, duplicate tags or tags that are too short can cost you ranking opportunities.
Why Are SEO Problems Important To Fix Promptly?
Leaving SEO problems unchecked can hurt your site and your brand in a variety of ways, including:
Declining search engine rankings
SEO problems can cause your site to decrease in search results or even disappear entirely, leading to a loss of traffic and, in turn, sales.
UX issues
SEO problems can also cause a decline in user experience (UX), as users find themselves frustrated with broken links, slow page loading speed or other problems.
Competitors can take advantage
Competitors with well-maintained, well-optimised websites can quickly take your place in search results and reap the benefits.
Compounding issues
The longer SEO issues drag on, the more conversions you lose, and the worse the problems can grow. Taking control of these issues early prevents them from compounding and causing you bigger problems in the future.
Recovery takes time
Often, recovering from SEO problems is a process. The longer the problems are allowed to drag out, the longer it takes to regain control. Starting early minimises the period of little to no visibility you may have to get through.
Our Solutions to Common SEO Problems
The team at Anchor Digital has worked with a lot of clients, so we’ve had a lot of time to implement solutions to common SEO issues and figure out how to prevent them in the first place.
SEO problems we can help you solve include:
Poor keyword targeting
Poor keyword targeting is one of the most common SEO issues you’re likely to come across. If you’re disappointed by how a new page is ranking, there are two important steps to fix it: improve the quality of the content and target a mix of keywords. Make sure your content demonstrates experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) and targets both high and low-volume keywords.
Slow page speed
A majority of customers will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load. Site speed is just as important to Google. While there are many reasons for a slow site, Google’s Core Web Vitals report in Search Console will help you find the problem. Anchor will help you with the solution, whether that’s optimising your code or compressing large files.
Lack of mobile optimisation
These days, most users do their searching on mobile, and a website that’s poorly optimised for mobile will cost you business. You can make your site more mobile-friendly in a number of ways, e.g. making your design responsive, simplifying your navigation menu and keeping your content short and effective.
Low local rankings
It’s disheartening to see your competitors outrank you, especially in your own area. The solution for this is simply more local SEO, including optimised listings and keywords that accurately convey your services and location.
Solve Your SEO Problems with Anchor
Whatever your SEO problems are, Anchor Digital has the solutions. A hybrid creative marketing agency, Anchor uses a full spectrum of services to bring your ideas to life.
Anchor’s search engine optimisation services keep on top of new developments in the industry while sticking to timeless principles that have always worked. With SEO that’s optimised for humans rather than just machines, we test for the best outcome and provide you with plain English reports on how your campaign is performing.
As a full-service creative marketing agency, we offer a range of creative services delivered with a unique and interwoven approach: brand strategy, creative services, brand identity and communication, graphic design, web design and development, and more. Combining creative flair and technical savvy, we have solutions in store for all kinds of brands.
To become even better at what you do, contact the Anchor team.
