How to get Google rankings back if your position dropped?

Watching your website fall from page 1 to page 5 of Google is a nightmare. I've ranked well for "LinkedIn ghost writer" for a few years now. Imagine my horror when my page plumetted in the search results. I asked a few SEOs what the problem could be and they told me it was the March Google update. So I set about fixing it.

Here's what I did to get back on page 1 of Google!

Don't panic.

Reddit said my page would be hurt for months. That gets a big nope from me! Let's work out how to fix it.

I added a table of contents

I had a proper look at my page and the first thing I noticed to my horror was I didn't have a table of contents for my LinkedIn ghost writer page unlike my Twitter/X ghost writer page.

Adding a table of contents is great for SEO for a number of reasons. It creates anchor links for each heading, which can help show up in search engine results pages.

Plus, it gives the user a much better experience so their dwell time on the page is longer. If you can see at a glance how to get to the information you need, you'll stay on the page longer. This also helps cut my bounce rate.

After I added the table of contents, I did some vibe coding with Claude to make its design a lot prettier. Before the text was small and it didn't look very stylish. Now the text is a bit bigger and more readable, the table of contents highlights what section you are at on the page and there is a smooth scrolling event. All of this leads website visitors to stick around longer. Design matters.

I added fresh content

It had been a long time since I had updated the page and frankly, the copy needed some work. I removed some old sections that were irrelevant and made the page a lot punchier. Now there are bullet points at the top which immediately talk through how I help clients.

I also asked a previous client if I could make a mini-case study. He agreed so I added that to the page and analysed when one of the posts I wrote performed well:

I also addressed likely objections from clients by addressing the issue of AI:

I added my pricing details

I'll talk about this more in a different post but I think adding pricing details also helped me recover my page ranking. It makes sense that if someone is looking for a ghostwriter, one of their top questions needing answered is "how much does this cost?"

So I'm sure being transparent about pricing helps boost trust.

I improved the meta title and description

I gave more thought to my meta description in particular as I realised I needed to write something that would actually make people click on my link. And the more people click, the better Google treats the page.

Technical SEO

I had a look at my on-site SEO and there weren't any issues. I had perfect 100/100 scores for SEO.

Conclusion

If your website suddenly drops in the page rankings, don't panic! Add a table of contents, improve the quality of the content, satisfy what the user is looking for and fix your meta title and description. That's it really.

p.s. if you need help with this sort of stuff, check out my SEO services page