Every single day, many websites are created and many are left abandoned or left to die.
With the many that go up and go down, fluctuations happen. And pair that with the trends that happen at any given moment, web pages can have different rankings, every single day.
When someone asked Google’s John Mueller why their site, successful for seven years, has lost keyword rankings. Mueller responded with four reasons why websites can lose their rankings.
While Mueller didn't provide the explanations in details, given the situation was an impromptu question and answer. Mueller rather summarizes the possible criteria, and gave a more general overview for why site rankings change. He also suggest how websites can start the process of formulating a recovery plan, if ever they get affected.
It should be noted that a change in site ranking may not be caused anything done with the site.
It's more of a way how things are changing corresponding to the trends and demands.
1. Top Rankings Are Temporary
"These kinds of changes are essentially to be expected on the web, it’s a very common dynamic environment."
Web owners and webmasters should always believe that their high rank is not permanent. Things can change. They can either go up, or go down. Things are not stagnant on the web, and everything is essentially temporary.
2. The Internet Changes All the Time
Almost everything on the web is constantly changing.
Links to a site appear and disappear; competitors gain and lose links; contents are either added, removed or changed; and websites can appear from nowhere, or disappear without any reason.
These things and many more affect how relevant web pages are to search queries.
3. Google’s Algorithm Changes
Among the many reasons why website can experience changes in their rankings, is because of Google.
As the search giant of the web that has been the gateway for the information of the web for many people, each time it introduces an algorithm change, the affect can significantly impact most if not all websites on the web.
And it’s not only like the ranking factors that change because Google algorithm means that Google is either changing how it wants to understand web pages, or to meet certain trends that it thinks it's necessary to adapt.
4. People Change
"So just because something performed well in the past doesn’t mean it will continue to perform well in search in the future."
This last reason why websites lose traffic or rankings, is because people too can change.
What happens in the real world, can be reflected to the web. From things that are political, business-related, hobbies, entertainments, and more, they are changing all the time. With one topic may be more appealing than the other to certain people, these things can affect how a website is ranked.
Conclusion
The web is never static, as it changes all the time.
This is the main reason why websites should constantly be on the move. Successful websites have some things in common, like for example, they are always improving their whatever it is behind the scene in terms of technical prowess they have. They may also improve the experience of users, create user research, establish and maintain close relationship with visitors, create compelling contents, and more.
All those things are a part of a dynamic website.
What's more, websites need to always have their ears to the ground to know what others are saying about them, and keep an eye on the audience to see how the current trend can re;ate to what they are doing.
Doing all of those can reveal new opportunities to keep a steady flow of visitors, and avoid a plummeting website rank.