Google: Optimizing Titles And Meta Tags Is Not Enough If The Rankings Have Fallen Sharply

February 11, 2023

According to Google, if a website has to accept a severe loss of visibility in the search, it is not enough to just adjust the title and meta tags. In addition, there is no connection between sitemap files and rankings.

Strong visibility losses and declining rankings are a sign that there is room for improvement on a website – at least from Google’s point of view. In such cases, a simple solution is usually sought. Unfortunately, in most cases there is not one problem that is responsible for the lower rankings. A response from John Müller in the Google Search Central SEO Office Hours on May 14 is therefore not surprising. Müller explained that it is not enough to optimize the title and meta tags of a website when the rankings have fallen sharply. Although these can help Google to better understand what a website is about and they can also be helpful as a website operator to think about thematic focus, but a sharp drop in visibility can be compensated for by better titles and meta tags not fix.

In such cases, one should step back and look at the overall quality of the site. Lower rankings are not necessarily a sign of problems – Google then only rates the relevance of a website differently than before. Mueller also said there was no connection between sitemap files and poorer rankings. Although there can be fluctuations in the display of the sitemap files in the Search Console, this is not related to the rankings in the search.