What's the first thing you do when rankings drop off the search engine radar? Do you wait a few days and calmly hope things will return to normal? Or do you reach for the keyword tools and claw in reams of new keyword-rich text in quiet desperation?

Of course, there could be any number of reasons why your rankings might drop — and the reality is, you may never find out exactly why. But here are a few top tips if your rankings plummet. Waiting a while might be the best thing you can do. While the major engines are getting better than ever at ranking sites, fluctuations and algorithm shifts do occur. It could simply be that the search results are temporarily being delivered by another data server.

If your exposure is still low for terms you previously ranked well for, double- check your site's structure, usability, navigation and Look at your competition to see what they're doing differently, market trends, and evaluate who's linking to you. A mix of questionable links might be harming your credibility.

Ensure your site is free of anything resembling spammy text — consult Google's webmaster guidelines and sign up to its Webmaster Tools console. Upload an XML sitemap and look for any indexing errors that Googte flags up.

Most importantly, monitor the changes you make and the impact they have, and use it to your advantage when there's an upturn in your site's search engine success. Once you've found a search engine 'friendly fix, stick with a template that works and iterate incrementally.