Why Your Website Rankings Dropped After a Google Algorithm Update?

Introduction

We help businesses at Bloom Agency increase and maintain visibility online by offering SEO services, technical optimisation, content creation and monitoring. However, even an optimised website can sometimes fall in rankings due to an update in Google algorithms. This can cause issues with keywords, clicks, visibility and ultimately lead to fewer enquiries.

Google will often update their search systems to help provide better more relevant results. Whilst this can be great for users getting more helpful information, it can cause issues for businesses. This can cause a drop in rankings causing your website to fall in rankings or lose visibility for important keywords. By understanding what has caused this issue, you can work with an expert SEO company in Mumbai to identify the issues with rankings, improve your website and create a strong foundation for long-term organic growth.

1. Content Not Meeting Google’s Standards

Content is an important factor in ranking on Google. Search engines will try to show users helpful information. After an algorithm update, websites with poor content can see a drop in rankings. This includes:

• Little original information.
• Too much keyword stuffing.
• Outdated stats and incorrect information.
• Not answering the search intent.
• Too many similar pages.
• Automated content with little value.

If your business website has several blogs around SEO services with very similar information, you may struggle to stand out.

Improvements: Look at your low performing pages. Update any out of date information. Remove any duplication. Provide useful insights to answer user’s questions.

2. Technical SEO Issues

Sometimes the issue with rankings are not content related. Your website may have technical issues that are preventing Google from finding, crawling and understanding your website.

Common technical SEO issues include:

• Broken internal links and incorrect redirects.
• Accidentally blocking important pages in robots.txt.
• Incorrect canonical tags.
• Duplicate URLs and indexing issues.
• Slow loading pages.
• Poor mobile usability.
• No XML sitemap or incorrect setup.

If your website has recently been redesigned, this may have accidentally caused important URLs to change. If this has not been handled properly, you may lose visibility on certain pages.

Improvements: Carry out a technical SEO audit using Google Search Console and tools like Screaming Frog. Check indexing issues, crawl errors, redirects, canonical tags, mobile usability and Core Web Vitals.

3. Competitors Have Better Content

Sometimes your website hasn’t dropped in rankings because it has got worse. Competitors may have improved their content to become more relevant. Google will look at the pages available to find the most relevant results.

Your competitors may have:

• More detailed articles.
• Out of date information has been updated.
• Improved their website structure.
• Provided helpful examples and original insights.
• Improved internal linking.
• Improved their user experience.

For example, if your website has a short article on healthcare SEO and your competitors have detailed information on local search, medical keyword research and gaining patients, they may become more relevant.

Improvements: Look at the pages that are ranking above you. Find any gaps in content, questions that aren’t being answered and ways you can provide more helpful information. Make sure your content is providing information based on real search intent.

4. Lost Authority From Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. Having relevant and trustworthy backlinks can help search engines understand how authoritative your website is. However, if you lose some valuable backlinks or are using manipulative methods to gain backlinks you can have issues.

This could include:

• Important websites removing your backlinks.
• Low quality links from irrelevant websites.
• Too much exact match anchor text.
• Paid links.
• Unnatural backlinking.

If you have lost a lot of valuable backlinks from referring domains, this can cause certain pages to lose competitiveness.

Improvements: Use a backlink tool like Ahrefs, Semrush or Google Search Console. Look for any lost backlinks. Look for any suspicious issues. Try to gain more relevant backlinks by providing helpful content, getting involved within the industry and building real relationships. Don’t automatically disavow all low quality backlinks. Most of these can be ignored by Google. Look into whether there is a real issue with your backlinks.

5. Not Meeting Search Intent

Search intent is the reason someone has searched for something. Even if your page has relevant keywords, if your page isn’t providing the right information for the search intent, you can struggle to rank.

For example, someone searching for an SEO company in Mumbai may want to compare agencies, understand what services you offer or request a consultation. If your blog is purely for educational purposes, this may not meet the search intent.

Common search intent issues include:

• Informational content for transactional keywords.
• Service pages for general educational searches.
• Product pages with not enough product information.
• Blogs that don’t answer the search intent.

Improvements: Search for your target keywords on Google. Look at the type of pages that are ranking on page 1. Understand if users are looking for service pages, product pages, guides, comparisons or local businesses. Make sure your content is structured correctly.

6. Poor Website Experience

Google want to provide a helpful search experience. If your website isn’t easy to use, slow to load or not mobile friendly you may struggle to convert.

Look at:

• Mobile friendly.
• Page speed.
• Easy to navigate.
• Intrusive pop-ups and ads.
• Easy to read fonts and well structured.

Core Web Vitals include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Improvements: Use Google PageSpeed Insights to identify any issues. Optimise your images, reduce any unnecessary scripts, improve your server speed and make sure your important website elements are working properly on all devices.

7. How to Identify Whether a Google Algorithm Update Caused the Drop

Before changing your entire SEO strategy, verify whether your ranking decline coincides with a confirmed Google update.

Use the following tools to investigate:

SEO Tool	What to Check
Google Search Console	Clicks, impressions, queries, and page positions
Google Analytics	Organic traffic and landing page performance
Google Search Status Dashboard	Confirmed Google ranking updates
Semrush	Keyword position changes and competitor visibility
Ahrefs	Backlink changes and keyword performance
Screaming Frog	Technical crawling and indexing issues

Compare your website’s performance before, during, and after the suspected update period. Check whether the decline affects the entire website or only particular categories, landing pages, and keywords. This distinction helps narrow down the possible cause.

8. Practical Steps to Recover Lost Google Rankings

Once you identify the underlying problems, develop a structured recovery plan instead of making multiple unrelated changes simultaneously.

Recovery Activity	Recommended Action
Content Audit	Update outdated and unhelpful content
Technical SEO	Resolve crawling and indexing issues
Keyword Research	Reassess search intent and target keywords
Backlink Audit	Investigate lost and unnatural links
Competitor Analysis	Identify content and optimisation gaps
Internal Linking	Improve connections between relevant pages
Performance Monitoring	Track traffic, impressions, and conversions

Remember that ranking recovery takes time. Google may need to recrawl and reassess your updated pages, and improvements are not guaranteed immediately after optimisation.

How Bloom Agency Helps Businesses Respond to Google Algorithm Updates

Google algorithm updates can sometimes cause confusion with businesses that rely on organic traffic. Having a plan in place for SEO can help you understand what is causing issues and will improve your website. Bloom Agency provide a full range of SEO services to help improve your business’s search presence.

Our services include:

1. Technical SEO Audit – Identify issues with crawling, indexing, speed and website structure.
2. On-page SEO – Improve your content, headings, metadata and internal linking.
3. Content Optimisation – Improve your existing content and create content strategies.
4. Off-page SEO – Build relevant backlinks to improve your website authority.
5. Competitor Analysis – Identify areas to improve your rankings and content.
6. Keyword Research – Find the most relevant keywords for your business.
7. SEO Monitoring – Track your organic traffic, keywords and visibility.

Whatever the issue with your website, whether it’s a sudden loss in rankings or a gradual loss in organic traffic, we will help you identify the reasons behind the issue and help you create practical strategies to optimise your website.

FAQs

1. Why does Google algorithm affect my website rankings?

Google regularly update their search systems to help provide more relevant and high-quality results. This can affect how your website is seen.

2. How do I know if it was a Google update that caused the issue?

Look at your Google Search Console and see if there have been any changes to your clicks, impressions and average positions. Check when these occurred and compare with the confirmed dates on Google’s Search Status Dashboard.

3. How long will it take to recover from a Google algorithm update?

This depends on how many issues there are to fix. Some may show quicker results but if you need to improve your content and quality it can take several months.

4. Should I remove poor performing content?

Not necessarily. Firstly try to improve, combine or update your content. Only remove pages if there is a clear reason and strategy in place for the URLs.

5. Will building backlinks help me recover lost rankings?

Having relevant and trustworthy backlinks can help improve your website authority. However, they won’t fix any issues with your content quality, technical SEO or search intent.

6. Can an SEO agency help?

Yes! An experienced SEO agency can help analyse why your rankings have dropped, audit your website, identify any content gaps and create a strategy to optimise your website based on the issues you are facing.

Conclusion

Losing rankings on your website after a Google algorithm update can cause issues with your organic traffic, visibility and opportunities. However, if you don’t understand why you’re losing rankings it can cause further issues with your SEO. By analysing your website, improving your content quality, fixing technical issues, checking your backlinks and understanding changing search intent you can ensure you are consistently monitoring and optimising your website. This will help you maintain visibility in the long run. By using Bloom Agency’s SEO expertise, you can create a more structured approach to improving your rankings, increasing your organic traffic and creating a strong base for your online growth.