Keywords tell Google what your page is about in order for it to return the most relevant results to a user’s search query. When multiple pages contain the same keywords, Google does not know which page out of all your pages containing the same keyword to return in its results. Known as keyword cannibalization, it hurts your ranking and can affect your conversion rate.

For example, if your site sells backpacks and all of your pages are targeted only for the ‘backpack’ keyword without differentiating for the different types of backpacks (outdoors, school, etc.), you are effectively telling Google every page is about backpacks. When a search for ‘backpack’ is employed, Google is forced to pick the page it thinks best matches for the term. However, it can at times get things wrong and consequently return a less than optimal page. In this way, rather than a single highly authoritative page, your pages now have to compete against each other to appear in Google’s search results.

Furthermore, if your site produces content and has posts that are picked up by other sites, having multiple pages on the same subject may lead to other sites linking to different pages. This spreads the attributed authority thin amongst internal pages and lowers your ability to rank well in general.

How do you know if your problem is keyword cannibalization?

Some common symptoms of keyword cannibalization include Google returning the wrong page for a search term, a page on your site no longer getting traffic for its key search term, or a page on your site disappearing and appearing again in Google. To verify if you have a keyword cannibalization issue, compile a list of all your site’s important URLs and the keywords on those pages to determine if there are any duplicate keywords. Keep in mind that meta information in your title tags can also contribute to keyword cannibalization, so make sure to look them through.

What you can do to resolve keyword cannibalization

1. Differentiate pages and link back to a main landing page

Rather than targeting ‘backpacks’ for every page, distinguish pages by their variations and link them back to a main landing page for the general keyword. For example, following from our earlier analogy, we would separate the site into individual pages that reflect the different types of backpacks there are and target those pages for the specific keyword variation – a page for ‘school backpacks’, another for ‘outdoor backpacks’ and one for ‘work backpacks’, then link them all back to a main ‘backpacks’ landing page. Thus, Google can now easily determine the most relevant page to return for a query.

2. Collate your content

In other instances, your content may not be robust enough to justify having multiple pages targeting different keywords. For such cases, consider collating your content into a single page so that it yields a more authoritative showing. To pass the ranking power of your previous individual pages to the collated main page, use a 301 permanent redirect. It will also send all traffic from the previous individual pages to your collated main page.

Conclusion

Organizing your content well allows you to dictate which page to put forth for a particular search term and search engines to easily understand your site’s information architecture in order to return the most relevant results to users. You get a landing page most optimal for conversions, Google doesn’t get confused, and users get their queries answered – a win for everybody!

The post SEO Keywords Cannibalization – Are You Making This Mistake Too? appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

As an SEM Singapore company, we understand how important it is to reach targeted audiences for your offerings. Hence, we bring you a step-by-step guide on how to create a Facebook ad. To start, enter your own Facebook ad manager here.

1. Choose your objective

The versatility of Facebook allows for it to be used to achieve a wide range of marketing goals, be it to drive traffic to your site or retail store, generate leads, reach audiences, promote app installs, increase brand awareness, or sell products. Select your desired campaign objective to start.

2. Select a target audience

While the ad itself is important, do also keep in mind the people who are actually going to be viewing it. Sometimes, simply switching up your audience is all it takes to bring you the results you’re looking for. Experiment with audience targeting to find the optimal audience for your offering. For example, try different interest categories and audience lookalikes to target audiences that have shown previous interest in a similar offering. If your campaign objective is to gain awareness, consider excluding people who have already liked your page to maximize your ROI on ad spend.

3. Choose where to run your ads

Decide where you want your ads to appear. Because Facebook also owns Instagram and Messenger, you have the choice of selecting whether you wish for your ads to appear on these platforms as well.

4. Set your budget and schedule

Facebook allows you to set a daily budget (your ad stops appearing for the day once the budget is reached) and lifetime budget (your ad stops indefinitely when the budget is exhausted) as well as when you want your ad to start and its duration. Further customization for a more targeted reach is also available under ‘Advanced Options’.

5. Start creating your ad

Create a brand new ad or use an existing post. For the latter, choose ‘Use Existing Post’ from your Ads Manager dashboard and select the post you wish to advertise. To create a brand new ad, first choose the ad format you want your ad to appear in:

• Photo: Your ad shows as a single photo; create up to 6 ad variations with each image
• Video: Your ad shows as a single video
• Slideshow: Your ad shows as a slideshow of up to 10 images
• Carousel ads: Your ad shows as a scrollable display of 2 or more images/videos with links that direct to specific locations on your site
• Canvas ads: Your ad shows full-screen with the choice of a combination of images and videos
• Lead ads: Your ad shows with the ability for audiences to sign up for more info
• Collection ads: Your ad shows with a display of related products

Note that some formats may be unavailable depending on the objective you chose for your campaign.

You can now start crafting content for your ad! Feel free to experiment with your ads. Create different ads with varying accompanying images and copy and run them to see which performs best. This also has the additional benefit of minimizing ad fatigue, which occurs when people
view the same ad multiple times. Once done, you’re all set to go!

The post How To Create A Facebook Ad appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

1. Map business goals

To create an effective social media strategy, it is critical to be clear what business goals it should be achieving. What exactly do you want to achieve through social media? More brand awareness and engagement? To generate new leads? Listen in on consumer sentiment about your brand? Drive traffic to your page?

Clear business goals inform your social media strategy and provide a metric for gauging the success of your social media campaigns. List down all the business goals on a piece of paper and determine the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) for each goal.

2. Choose your platform

Depending on your business goals, you can begin to filter the various social media platforms to determine which platforms your target audience use most frequently, how you wish to engage with them on each platform, and the kind of content you should be creating for each platform.

For example, a platform like Instagram would require regular updates of visual content with hashtags used liberally because that’s how Instagram users find new content. However, as web addresses in captions are not working links, Instagram is probably not a good platform to use if your goal is to drive traffic to your site. Conversely, 92% of all Twitter engagement can be attributed to link clinks, so Twitter may be a better choice if your goal is to drive traffic to your site.

3. Consider available resources & plan accordingly

Ideally, you should have engaging content that adds value to your users and updates regularly on each platform, yet there is a limit to your available resources, so the next best option is to try and maximize the possible results that can be obtained for each unit of input. Drawing from the Pareto principle, which states that 80% of results can be attributed to 20% of effort, take time to consider which platforms are likely to give you the best returns and require the least amount of effort to plan your social media content calendar.

4. Review and adapt

Use analytics to your advantage. All of the major social media platforms from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram have built-in analytics that can track and analyze how your content is performing. After posting for a few weeks, you should have some numbers to work with. Don’t be afraid to change strategies if the numbers don’t reflect your intended marketing plan. Feel free to adapt the plan accordingly depending on how users are actually engaging with your brand.

Conclusion

Having a social media strategy provides a structure for content creation and clear objectives to meet. It saves time and increases productivity by outlining exactly what needs to be delivered each week on each platform so that energies can be better left to what’s really important – actual content creation.

The post Do You Have A Social Media Strategy? appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

What is SEM?

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), is advertising on search engines to achieve the marketing goal of driving traffic to the desired page. Because audiences are already looking for something when they use search engines, they are more likely to convert when clicking on a link. For this reason, SEM traffic is commonly viewed as a key source for internet traffic. Some examples of SEM include the text ads that appear at the top of search engine result pages or shopping ads that feature a product and related information like its price.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), attempts to improve the visibility of a page by optimizing it such that it increases its ranking on the SERP (search engine result page) and appears more frequently in organic search results.

There are 2 main types of SEO – on-site and off-site SEO. On-site SEO is the optimization of your site to help it rank higher in search results and therefore drive more traffic to it. It includes the content of a page, title tags (the title of a page that is displayed on search engine result pages), and accurately formatted URLs, amongst other things. Search engine takes all these into account to determine if your site has good content that is relevant to a user’s query.

Off-site SEO complements on-site SEO to help search engine ascertain the quality of a site by the number of other sites that link to it, and how reputable those sites are. The idea is that if multiple reputable sites link to yours on a given topic, it is a good indicator that your site is a trusted authority on the matter.

The Difference Between SEO & SEM

So, what is the difference between SEO and SEM? The confusion is understandable as marketers sometimes use them interchangeably. This is so as SEM was once used to include all efforts directed at increasing traffic through the use of search engines. Following from this definition, SEO was considered a subset of SEM as it sought to increase traffic via search engines.

However, in more recent times, search industry professionals have come to distinguish the two, with SEM to refer specifically to paid marketing activities and SEO referring to efforts to drive traffic through search engines organically.

This distinction reflects the nature of both strategies: SEO is a long-term strategy and takes time for results to show, while SEM can be used to achieve results in a much shorter span of time – you simply pay to appear at the top of the search results.

Accordingly, the moment you stop paying, your site stops appearing in search results. Thus, the optimal solution is to invest in both SEO and SEM to ensure your site turns up in both paid and organic results.

Conclusion

To answer the question, the fundamental difference between SEM and SEO lies in that one is paid, and allows for results to be achieved almost immediately, while the other is a long-term strategy that strives for organic traffic.

The post Difference between SEO and SEM appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

1. Easily consumable & simple to digest

For a strategy so named ‘bite-sized’, it should come as no surprise that information should be presented with due consideration of its ease for consumption. Less is more, so keep it short and simple. The key is to make an impression without having to explain too much.

Example: Consider Sony’s strategic use of imagery to effectively communicate the distinguishing feature of its Sony Xperia Z waterproof smartphone. Even with no caption, the key message is hard to misunderstand and easy to comprehend. A picture speaks a thousand words, indeed.

Images and short-form media (e.g. memes, gifs, and video clips) are mediums that allow marketers to convey more with less. Use compelling images and interesting video thumbnails to your advantage.

2. Brief, but beneficial

Audiences today are bombarded by competing stimuli begging for their attention. Ensure your post gets the attention it deserves by understanding your audience’s needs and addressing them to add value. This is ultimately the only consistent strategy for long-haul engagement.

Example: Short-form versions of an event or speech are a great way to engage with your audience by summarizing and recapping key highlights that provide value to them.

Part of understanding your audience’s needs includes the depth of content they expect to receive. Following from our earlier analogy of the Sony Xperia Z, a customer simply needs to know that it is waterproof, not the superior technology or exact process behind it. If necessary, a link may be provided with more information for audiences interested in a waterproof smartphone. In this way, think of bite-sized content as a starting point for getting your audience interested in your longer content.

3. Feel free to use good content more than once

Good content is good content. Sharing an old article may be useful to audiences who are new to you, so don’t be afraid to use content more than once. To keep it fresh, consider using it with reference to something current so that its relevance is clear.

Example: Re-sharing an article on home hacks as New Year’s Day looms will be useful to homeowners looking to declutter for a new start to the year.

Re-tweeting, reposting or regramming content generated by your audience is also an easily accessible source of novel content and saves time as well – a win-win!

Conclusion

In short (pun intended), bite-sized content should be succinct, engaging, and tailored to your audience. With social media gaining an increasing presence in our daily lives, using it right can be a powerful means to reach a large, global audience.

The post Bite-sized Content For Social Media Marketing appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

Past vs. Now

In the past, if customers have complaints, they can only go through the customer service hotline or email and that company most probably won’t take it seriously. Now, with the power of social media, everything is in reverse. Dissatisfied consumers have the power to make companies feel the pinch by posting their negative experience on their status update or tweet. If you are on social media, you should know the power of such posts. It gets viral and greatly impacts the company’s reputation.

After so many “horror” online stories that happened on big companies, most SMEs in Singapore are afraid that this might happen to them if they allow reviews on their social media channels. If you are like those SMEs that are afraid of your customers, you might want to take a closer look at how you’re doing business. Did you treat your customers well?

Second Chance

Think about it, would you prefer your unhappy customers post their negative reviews somewhere else where you have absolutely no way to reply to them? Or somewhere you can’t even find? If they post on your Facebook page, at least they give you a chance to make things right. Make use of this opportunity to turn a negative review into a positive one. If you plead your case quickly and sincerely, you will be able to gain back the customers’ trust.

Here are some tips that you can minimize the negative impact on your company.

1. Never Be Defensive

Sometimes, the reviewer might be a nasty person and is completely wrong, but do acknowledge that everyone has their own bad day, and this may have been theirs. So do not let your emotion get the best of you. Take a moment to cool yourself down and re-read the review again. Try to find ways that you can do to make up for that reviewer’s bad experience with your company. It will not end well if you engage in an argument with the reviewer.

2. Do Not Copy And Paste

Please do not use a one-size-fits-all reply for every review. It shows that your company is not keen on having a decent conversation with your reviewers. You have to put some thought into every reply for your reviews, especially the negative ones. You need to show the public that you value customer’s feedback.

3. Reviews Stay Forever

Remember that these reviews will be read by future customers and your response to every review might be part of their buying decision. In some cases, your response to the negative reviews is more important than the design of your website. So put in more thought in handling negative reviews.

4. What Happens Online Stays Online

Don’t always respond by asking them to take the matter offline. You need to give some form of closure online for future customers to see. However, if the matter involves privacy for the customer, then it is fine to handle it privately. Once it is resolved, you still need to post a closure to the negative review.

The Takeaway

By knowing how to deal with negative reviews is the key to customer relationships and continued success. Once you start to embrace reviews as a tool to encourage your customers to speak up, and for you to speak to them, a whole world of branding and marketing opportunities will unfold.

The post How To Manage Negative Reviews appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

If you are not our client yet, let us give you an introduction to Google My Business.

Google My Business

If you search for any local company name on Google, you will most probably see a card that shows information about the company that you are searching for. It will contain the company information like the office address, phone number, opening hours, website URL, etc. It even has a review section for users to post their reviews about that company.

In Singapore, most people usually turn to Google to do a background check on your company. As such, you should make sure that all the information on that card is accurate. If your profile has negative reviews, be sure to reply to those reviews so that potential customers know they are dealing with a trustworthy company who actively work to improve customer relations.

To do so, you just have to claim the listing from Google for free and you can update all the necessary information and reply to the reviews. After that, you will most probably leave it as it is till you have a new update to your company information or receive a new review.

But this recent update by Google makes your Google My Business listing even more powerful.

Google Posts

Now when someone searches for your company on Google, they will also be able to see the latest updates posted by your company too. You can take advantage of these posts to show your latest promotions or sign up for your upcoming events. If you have no promotion or event, you can also use this area to showcase your best-selling products or new arrivals.

Do take note that your posts will only be visible for 7 days, except for an event. Event post will only expire after the event date is over.

So How Do I Post On Google My Business?

For your convenience, we have listed down the steps to access this feature on your account.

Step 1: Log in to your Google My Business account

First, please make sure you are logged in to your Google account. Next, go to https://business.google.com/manage/ and you should see a similar page as our screenshot below:

Step 2: Manage Location

At the bottom of your account page, you should see the “Locations” section. Click on “Manage Location” of the business profile that you want to post on.

Step 3: Click on “Posts” on the Left Menu

After loading Google My Business page, you should see a menu on the left side of the screen. Click on the “Posts”  link (as of this article’s date, it will show a prominent blue bubble with the text “NEW” on it).

Step 4: Add Your New Update

Click on the placeholder text “Write your post” or the blue round button at the bottom right of the screen to start posting your new update. You will then presented with the option to add an image, write text, add event details and add a call-to-action button link.

Step 5: Preview and Publish

If you are wondering where is the publish button, don’t fret out. You will need to preview your post first before you can publish it. The “Preview” link is located in the top right area of the posting box, likewise for the “Publish” link.

That’s all!

If you like to post updates from your mobile phone instead, you can do so by downloading “Google My Business” app from the App Store or Play Store. The instructions on how to use the app will be shown on the app itself and are very straightforward.

We hope our instructions are useful to you and feel free to share this guide with your friends!

If you have any questions, feel free to let us know in the comments section below and we will do our best to assist you.

The post How To Post Promotions & Events Directly On Google appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

It is true that you need to use digital marketing because otherwise your competitors will get ahead of you. Yet how we speak and behave when we’re going through the motions of caring is vastly different from how we speak and behave when we care from the bottom of our hearts. So if you simply follow what your competitors do but your intent is not to allocate sufficient resources as compared to your other offline marketing campaigns, you will never reap the full benefits. It is like a competitive swimmer who hangs around the edge of the pool for a month, carefully dipping your toes and analyzing the water, and who then complains that his swim times aren’t improving.

It is like a competitive swimmer who hangs around the edge of the pool for a month, carefully dipping your toes and analyzing the water, and who then complains that his swim times aren’t improving.

Overall, there are 4 common excuses we have heard companies use again and again to justify their refusal to fully commit to and invest in digital marketing and we want to dissect them all. We hope this article will provide fresh talking points and facts you can use when presenting this issue to the heads of your company or department.

1. “We are not ready for digital marketing yet.”

If you are not ready for digital marketing, you are not ready for the future. The wait-and-see approach, the one most companies have used while considering when to invest in traditional platforms, won’t work for digital platforms. The digital marketing space is already starting to get a lot of noise. The longer you hesitate to build an online presence, the more you will struggle to make it work for you. The cost of an exceptional good UX and web design is getting more and more expensive. Likewise for Google Adwords. If you get into the game earlier, you will be spending less for more outreach.

You can catch up with your best competitors in your industry only if you get ahead of them early.

2. “Digital marketing is just another trend that will pass.”

One reason why companies may be slow to accept digital marketing is that for all the talk about how fast the business world is always changing and how speed is of the essence, platforms have been changing from time to time. In the past, newspapers and magazines have been getting our attention through their headlines and alluring pictures. Then radio was introduced and gave companies a new platform to experiment with. Around 2 decades later, TV was invented and then companies start doing commercials (video advertisements). Eventually, as you would have guessed, internet comes along and marks the beginning of digital marketing.

Given how advertising platforms are always changing, it is no surprise that most companies are skeptical about the viability of digital marketing as their main marketing platform. With every new introduction of platform, the old ones get obsolete fast. However, if you do not keep up with the growth and technological shifts we are experiencing today, you will be kicked out of the competition.

New advertising platforms will eventually replace the digital space but it wouldn’t matter. If your audience one day abandon Google in favor of something better, they won’t be jumping off the train, they’ll simply be moving to a new car. Move with them.

3. “We’re doing fine without it.”

This is definitely a losing argument. If you are of a certain age, you will know that you once did fine without printers, computers and cell phones, too. You’ll adjust.

How do you know you are “fine” anyway, if you are not in the trenches. If you are still getting businesses from referral and word-of-mouth, that doesn’t mean you do not need to keep up with what your other competitors are doing. While you are still having a healthy stream of income from referral and word-of-mouth, you should make use of that opportunity to grow bigger by investing on digital marketing to reach out to more potential customers before it’s too late. Those companies who waited till they have very few customers and realised that they have a shortage of capital to invest on digital marketing will eventually die off.

Any company that gets so complacent it thinks everything is “fine” deserves to go out of business — it literally means the boss has stopped caring. A competitive company is always on the offense. Always. Always. Always.

Any company that gets so complacent it thinks everything is “fine” deserves to go out of business — it literally means the boss has stopped caring.

4. “We tried it; it doesn’t work.”

Most companies just jump onto digital marketing without learning how it works. They spent on Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, etc. for six months, or worse, six weeks, and they didn’t see any significant results. Faced with disappointment, they patted themselves on the back for trying something new and then slammed the door shut. If they’re progressive, they chalked up the failure to getting in too early on an immature platform, but most are convinced the platform is hype, and not worth the effort. They’re like people who have never seen a bicycle and try to pedal with their hands, then toss the thing aside, declaring it a waste of time and impractical for transportation.

There are a lot of things to finetune for digital marketing and most companies who tried to do it themselves have failed to reach the full potential. On the surface, it seems straightforward and easy for anyone to start advertising online, but the truth is that it requires deep knowledge and experience to set up a good campaign. Companies should send their marketing team for a proper digital marketing course or engage a professional digital marketing firm for their digital marketing strategy.

The Takeaway

We think we are entering a business golden age. Small companies finally have a chance to compete with big players with digital marketing. With an optimized digital marketing campaign, you can reach customers at a fraction of what other big brands are paying. Also, with the well-established metrics, it has never been easier to track the results of your marketing efforts. We hope the points above have given you sufficient reasons to start considering on your digital marketing strategy if you have not.

The post Why People Dismiss Digital Marketing, and Why They Shouldn’t appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

In this post, we will like to go through 5 myths and misconceptions about marketing that might be causing your company to suffer.

1. “Our Website Looks Great, So Our Work Is Done.”

Yes, you might have already engaged a web design company to create a beautiful website for your company. You also have spent a lot of time crafting your web copy. But that’s not the end, it’s only the beginning.

Without any marketing plans, no one will ever know about your website. The most common marketing strategy is by using Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

For a good SEO strategy, you will need to consistently produce original and useful content that are beneficial to your readers. If you have attempted to blog frequently yourself, you will realize it is not easy to build meaningful and lasting traffic. Moreover, it is very time consuming. Hence, most companies go ahead with SEM which they can control their monthly marketing budget to make sure they get the best ROI.

So, don’t assume your website will be a traffic-magnet or conversion sucking machine just because you have a fancy one.

2. “We Need As Many Visitors As Possible To Our Website.”

If you have unlimited marketing budget for SEM and SEO, then sure, the more the merrier. However, this is often not the case. Companies usually have a finite amount of money to invest in getting visitors to their website. So you have to use it wisely. If you do not have enough resources (time and money) to target the general and broad keywords, you should focus on very niche keywords instead that will drive more sales.

Studies have shown that people who are searching with very broad keywords are usually still in the research stage and the people who are searching for very niche keywords are usually the ones who will purchase your products or services as they have already made up their mind.

3. “Our Products Are Cheaper Than Our Competitors. People Will Buy.”

Cheap products don’t always relate to massive market share. Offering a low price than your competitors doesn’t do any good if no one knows about you.

Cheapen your products also cheapen your company brand. You will still need to convey a sense of trust and value that goes beyond the product by offering services like after-sales support. Also, is your company able to offer such a low price after all the time and expenses working on the website and digital marketing? You might be setting up your business for even more problems if your unique selling point is price. It leads to getting the type of customers that you do not want: price-shoppers. They are the one that will easily switch to another company if they are selling at an even lower price and will never have any brand loyalty.

So if you compete for customers on price, a big competitor can always lower their prices to bleed you out of business. You have to understand that there are better factors to differentiate from your competitors. You want customers to choose your products because you are the best choice and not because you are the cheapest option.

4. “Our Products Are Really Good, The Customers Will Definitely Come To Us.”

Founders are usually very passionate about their products. They have this mindset that their products will become viral once it is released based on all the good reviews by their friends and family.

The expectation of your business going viral is not a marketing plan at all. Even when Apple released the new iPhone, a game-changing and widely publicized product, they also spent billions of money on marketing that product.

So unless you insist your product is better than the revolutionary iPhone, you should come out with a marketing plan for your product launch. Marketing does not stop when the visitors visit your physical store or your website. You need to continuously keep in touch with them by providing useful tips and reinforce your unique value propositions. Only by nurturing them, you can get them through the sales funnel and turn them to actual customers.

5. “We Need To Get On Social Media Marketing Because Everyone Is Using It.”

Some companies feel the need to get onto every social media platform they know. It can’t hurt to have more right?

However, the problems come when you have to spend more time managing so many social media platforms and keeping them all active. It will not be good for your company’s reputation if a customer or prospect sees your Facebook page with the last post dated back in 2008.

Hence, you should figure out which target platforms your targeted audience actually uses and stick to those platforms only. By focusing on these few platforms, you will be able to spend more time participating and creating relevant content for them. As the saying goes, if you can’t do them right, you are better off not doing at all.

The Takeaway

Online or digital marketing is a never-ending task. If you want your company to survive in this fast-paced and competitive environment, you have to stay focused on those marketing plans that will truly impact your ROI. It is important to identify which tactics and strategies to pursue is the key.

We hope this article can save some of your valuable time and efforts by avoiding these myths. If you have any other myths to share, be sure to comment below.

The post 5 Marketing Myths Every Business Must Avoid appeared first on Puzzle Hive.

What exactly happened?

Google ranking may drop suddenly for various reasons, but most of the time, it is due to your part of not putting in enough effort in your SEO strategy. Below are the common reasons why you experience a drop in rankings and what you can do in each case.

1. Duplicate Content On Your Website

Google doesn’t like duplicate content, period. So if you have been copying and pasting other website’s content without re-phasing or value-adding, your website will be penalized by Google. You can use Copyscape to check your website for duplicate content at a very affordable rate and see what are the affected pages. Then rewrite all the content for those pages and your ranking will jump back up soon later.

2. Low Quality Backlinks

If you have engaged a SEO company to work on your website, be sure to check if they have build low quality or “black-hat” backlinks for you. If so, it might be the reason why your website’s ranking is dropping. Get that company to remove those backlinks for you if possible. If not, your last resort is to inform Google that you is beyond your ability to remove those links on those “black-hat” sites through the Google Webmaster by disavowing those links.

3. Bad Hosting For Your Website

Fast page load is an important factor for Google to rank your website. If you have been using a low quality hosting service and is causing your website to load slowly, more visitors will tend to leave your site too. This is a signal to Google that they should rank other sites before yours. The solution is to get a hosting server in close proximity to your potential customers. If your website is catered for Singapore audience, be sure to use a hosting server that is based in Singapore.

4. New Website

If you have recently redesigned your website, you will see a drop in your rankings. This is because the search engines have to re-index your website’s content again. This is a common occurrence. The only way is to minimize the drop in rankings by having a proper 301 redirect plan in place.  As long as your new website is well optimized for SEO and continue on your other SEO strategy, your ranking will recover within one to two months.

5. Competitors Up Their SEO Strategy

SEO rankings are a zero sum game. For one website’s ranking to improve, other websites’ rankings have to drop. You have to outdo your competitors in order to stay on the first page. That’s why SEO company charges you monthly maintenance fee to maintain your ranking and not just a one-off deal. The only way to stay on top of your competitors is continual effort on your SEO strategy.

6. Google Just Updated Their Algorithm

There are thousands of search algorithm updates every year on Google. While most are minor updates which do not impact much, there are a few big updates like Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird which affect websites negatively that are not in compliance with their guidelines. To avoid being penalized by Google, be sure to follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines and only engage in “white-hat” SEO techniques.

These are some of the common reasons that caused your ranking to drop. Have you experienced a drop in rankings due to other reasons? Tell us in the comments section below.

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