Nothing can ever last forever. You may be able to have the most authoritative website online one moment, and next thing you know, you’re just one of the many number two’s out there in SERPS. Most times you can actually fight off getting defeated by your competitors. There’s always a way. But then there’s that one time where there really is no other way.
Like a survivor left behind by the love of your life, the passion you’ve built your life around, you are left grief stricken by the sudden dive of your rankings. This is followed closely by the inevitable crash of your business. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Or is there?
Like a good friend, Kübler-Ross meticulously arranged this process of loss in 5 stages. But since we’re the better group of friends, we can offer additional chunks of tips to make things easier. And don’t worry, we won’t just tell you to follow the light at the end of the tunnel.
Denial
Everything was going so well. And now, it’s like non of it was real in the first place. Denial happens a lot to many of us. And it’s a natural reaction. The problem is that most of us wallow in it longer than normal.
Temporary Solution: Wake up. If you see drastic performance changes, act fast. There are countless ways of diagnosing the site for either penalties or negative SEO. The longer you wait, the worse it gets. Face the problem immediately.
Anger
You made all the necessary optimizations, you built this business and the site even, from scratch and now everything is falling apart. This tragic occurrence is as infuriating as the ending of Infinity War. (i assume everyone has watched at this point? If not, that’s actually your fault.)
Temporary Solution: Hold back the dark side of the force for just a moment. Stay calm. Like the first thing you do when in denial, start to separate yourself from the situation for a moment and review everything. You won’t be able to focus on the problem. Which is what you should be doing. Like in anything, emotional instability will definitely make you lose more. So keep calm, and do a quick audit. Check everything from back links going to and from your site, what your site’s set up is at, are the robots blocking the whole site? Are the pages on your sitemap XML all still correct? Check your analytics to see dips in traffic. Is your content good? Check all of this.
Bargaining
This is like denial part two, only you’re trying to win this the easy way. And trust us, nothing worth it is won the easy way. Besides, most of the time, there really isn’t any way you can bargain out of a problem.
Temporary Solution: If you really want to bargain, especially with Google, you can do that with Google Search Console. Remember the Fetch and Render part in it? But again, before you go acting like Dr. Strange, make sure that all the previous things i mentioned, backlinks going to and from the site, onsite files etc. are in proper order. You don’t want Google to recrawl your site while it’s looking like a mess. Speaking of looking like a mess..
Depression
Getting depressed is perfectly fine. And people should treat this as a joke. It’s true that no one other than yourself will be able to really understand what you are going through. Or what you’re about to go through if things are still fresh. A website isn’t an easy thing to manage or even create. You’re not just a blog. This is a business. And businesses are made of dreams. Dreams you’ve carried all your life. Perhaps you got it from your parents, that drive you used to get all the way up to where you are now.
Temporary Solution: It’s okay to allow yourself to suffer a little bit. Accept what you feel. Because once you acknowledge these bad things happening to you as facts. That’s when you’re be able to realize what you need to do. That’s when you’ll know where and what to focus. But like what I’ve said a while ago, try not to wait out too long. Never let yourself be anchored down by failure.
Acceptance
You’ve allowed yourself to be eaten by the flames. You’ve gone through all of the stages. There’s nothing left to do but reach the bottom of this pit. Accept it and end this phase.
Temporary Solution: There is non. This is the end of the line. And that’s a good thing. Because like and angry business Phoenix, you’ll now have the chance to get up and explode out of the ashes. Or just rise slowly of you’re not into Michael Bay like explosions. If you were calm and you got to focus on what the underlying problem was that was the culprit for your site’s declining performance, you will undoubtedly be able to get out of this one.
