Decreasing SEO Performance Over 1.5 Years... Any Suggestions?

Technical SEO Forum
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Hi everyone, I’m an SEO for a company in the Netherlands. Since early 2023, we’ve noticed a steady drop in our positions, and we’ve even lost an entire category segment. We’ve been following Google’s guidelines, but our rankings keep slipping. Despite our efforts with agencies, we can’t figure out why this is happening. Any ideas on how to reverse this decline?

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Have you looked into what your competitors are doing? Sometimes they might be gaining authority, improving internal linking, or capitalizing on trends you might have missed. It’s also worth checking how your brand is perceived—things like user reviews or third-party platforms can influence SEO indirectly.

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@Alistair
Good point. Competitor analysis is crucial. If their domain authority has increased or they’ve been doing something like a strong PR campaign, that might explain the shift in rankings.

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Amanda said:
@Alistair
Good point. Competitor analysis is crucial. If their domain authority has increased or they’ve been doing something like a strong PR campaign, that might explain the shift in rankings.

We’ve definitely been watching competitors, but it’s hard to pinpoint what’s changed. Some of their content isn’t even as helpful, but they’re still winning in rankings. It feels like Google is favoring them over us.

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@Barry
It could be that their backlink profile is stronger, or they’ve tapped into some technical SEO improvements. Have you done a deep dive into their backlinks or checked their content velocity—like how often they publish new material?

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I’d suggest auditing your on-page SEO elements. Sometimes small things like optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, or header tags for your target keywords can make a big difference. It might sound basic, but it can help improve visibility in search results.

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@Joel
Agreed. On-page SEO is one of those things that can easily be overlooked but can have a huge impact when done right. You mentioned refreshing content, but are the on-page elements like meta tags updated accordingly?

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@Paxton
We’ve updated most of our content, but I’ll double-check the on-page elements. It’s possible we’ve missed optimizing some older pages’ title tags and meta descriptions.