Why you shouldn't panic if you are losing keywords

Lots of marketers have been encountering an issue lately that, if it were 2018, would make them lose their sh*t. However, if you understand how SEO works nowadays, you are probably experiencing it and staying quite calm. This issue is losing a huge number of keywords every time Google implements a Core Update.

However, even though gaining visibility and reaching that "position zero" in search engines is no longer directly related to keywords (at least not in the same way as it was before), you should still check that keyword loss and analyze why it's happening. Otherwise, you might miss other issues that could actually affect your overall marketing strategy…

In this article, we will show you how to identify what is happening and help you decide whether it's worth taking action to recover your keywords or not. But first, let's understand how keywords work nowadays.

Understanding the state of SEO in 2026

Understanding the context and especially how users are interacting with keywords is key before jumping to any conclusions about your keyword loss. Nowadays, we have to accept that digital marketing is rapidly evolving, and the rise of AI tools has significantly impacted not only how search engines work, but also how users look for information. This shift has directly affected how important keywords really are today and therefore, how we should approach our marketing strategy.

Keywords used to serve as a clear way to match user intent with content. Users use keywords (yes, present tense as they still use them) to look for things on search engines, and these tools would show results that target those specific terms and were optimized based on what search engines wanted. However, search engines have become much more sophisticated, and they now focus more on context, semantics, and intent rather than exact keyword matches; but at the same time, a lot of users now prefer to use AI-powered tools, voice search, and more conversational queries to search for and get answers to their questions.

These two things have moved keywords from the equation and have resulted in keyword-focused marketing approaches not being as useful as they were. Therefore, losing keywords doesn't necessarily mean losing visibility; it's just a shift in how search engines interpret and display your content due to these new trends in user searches that we have mentioned.

That being said, you should keep in mind these three things.

Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms

You know this already, but it must be said and repeated until we internalize it. All search engines change constantly to (allegedly) "give the best results to users," and we as marketers are, in fact, a bit spammy sometimes… Search engines right now focus a lot on providing direct answers and easy-to-read content that doesn't fall into what keywords made us do: fill up texts with a lot of keywords instead of answering directly what users actually want.

It's important to stay informed about the latest updates and algorithm changes of the search engines you want to rank on to keep up, because what works today might not work tomorrow.

People don't search like they used to

You have to acknowledge that right now users don't search like they used to, and even though keywords still work, they aren't used as they were. People are searching using more conversational queries that are becoming longer, more specific, and less predictable. Before, we used to write content with a general keyword in mind and then pepper in some questions in our headings, but that's not working right now. People want direct answers, shorter articles, and easy-to-find solutions. Keep this trend in mind when planning and developing your strategy and content.

AI tools are getting all the attention

And last but not least, AI is taking over searches. Don't get us wrong, SEO is not dying and we have talked a lot about it here in FreshJuice; but AI being the preferred medium to look for information is provoking a big shift in the way we used to rank our sites. This is probably one of the main reasons search engine algorithms are changing and why users now use more conversational queries, putting keywords in a less relevant position when it comes to rankings, as instead of ranking for fixed keywords, your content now appears for a much wider and constantly changing range of queries.

Because of this, search engines aren't the only marketing strategy you should care about. Now it's crucial to have a mixed strategy that covers (at least) search engines, AI, voice search, and local SEO to get the results you were getting before with just a keyword-focused strategy.

However, taking into account what we have said, even though keywords aren't as important as they were, this doesn't mean you shouldn't check what is happening with them, as they might be a signal that something is not working and is worth looking into.

Identify why this is happening

Is it because your content is outdated or just a technical issue? Were those keywords worth it? Will they really impact your site's performance? Identifying the cause and the true impact of this loss is key to deciding whether it is worth acting accordingly or not. To do so, follow these three simple steps:

1. Try to identify the cause

A huge keyword loss can be related to diverse factors that can be easily identified by using SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or even the free Google Suite tools. Among the most common issues that can cause a huge keyword loss nowadays are:

Outdated or irrelevant content

Search engines consider high-quality content to be content that is updated, relevant, backed up with resources, and well-structured. If your content hasn't been updated in ages, that can be a key factor in search engines considering it irrelevant and therefore losing ranking positions and keywords.

As well as outdated or irrelevant content, duplicate or cannibalization issues can have a great impact on keyword loss.

Search engine algorithm update

Every time a search engine makes an algorithm update, you will see an immediate impact on your site. Your website health report will indicate that you are losing keywords, having lots of errors, you will see a decline in overall rankings and traffic, and some technical issues that need your attention. However, if you are an experienced marketer, you will know that this can be reverted in a couple of days or a week and won't panic as much; but this doesn't mean you shouldn't check what the algorithm update was and compare it with what you've been doing on your site.

This is pretty important, as sometimes we think we are doing things right, but the updated algorithm adds something that is now considered spammy that was working pretty well before.

Removal of content or bad redirections

Both the removal of content and bad redirections can negatively affect your website. Whenever you remove content, those keywords will disappear from your site accordingly, resulting in keyword loss. The wise thing to do, if those keywords were valuable, is to add them to other related content and redirect the page or blog post you want to remove to the new updated one. If you don't do that properly, you can end up without that content and, therefore, without those keywords, along with a poorly implemented redirection that will affect your site's performance.

Technical SEO issues

Like bad redirections, other technical issues can be the reason you are losing keywords so quickly and in bulk. Among the most common technical SEO issues that can cause this, you can find:

• Crawling and indexing issues (pages blocked by robots.txt, noindex tags, or crawl errors)
• Broken pages (404 errors) that aren't properly redirected
• Redirect chains or loops that confuse search engines and dilute authority
• Slow page speed and poor Core Web Vitals performance
• Mobile usability issues (poor responsiveness or layout problems on mobile devices)
• Poor URL structure
• Missing canonical tags
• Incorrect canonical tags that point search engines to the wrong version of a page
• Site structure issues that make it hard for search engines to understand hierarchy and relevance
• JavaScript rendering problems that prevent content from being properly indexed
• Sitemap errors or outdated XML sitemaps that don't reflect the current site structure

Backlinks loss

Especially when losing high-quality backlinks like the ones provided by reliable, relevant sites, your website's domain rating can be reduced, and search engines (but AI tools too) can consider that your website is not relevant to appear, and therefore you start losing keywords. It's key to maintain your backlinks, as well as have a continuous backlink strategy.

2. Check which keywords you've lost

Also by using SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs, you can identify what keywords you are losing and their real value regarding your content or goal. Check by comparing the keywords you had before and after you started losing keywords, check which are those keywords and analyze if they were actually useful from an SEO perspective.

Were they getting traffic? Was that traffic getting you the interaction you wanted (reading an article, filling a form, buying a product, etc.)? Or, on the contrary, were they keywords not related to your topic or product that had a high bounce rate and weren't providing the marketing goals you set? If that's the case, you can consider those keywords as low quality and you shouldn't care that much about their loss as they didn't actually impact positively your site.

When should you worry then? When you start losing main keywords that get you traffic and actual impact. For example, if you have a pool enclosure company and you are losing keywords like "pool cover" or "pool enclosure", you are f*cked.

3. Analyze the impact of losing those keywords

Related to the previous point, it is important to analyze the real impact of the keywords you've lost. This is crucial to really understand the impact of losing a large amount of keywords in the short and long term. Check Analytics and other tools like Google Search Console to see the real impact of those lost keywords. Take a look at the data and pay attention to parameters like:

• Organic traffic changes (overall increase or drop after the keyword loss)
• Impressions in Google Search Console (whether visibility has decreased)
• Average position changes (loss of rankings for key pages or queries)
• Click-through rate (CTR) (if visibility is stable but clicks are dropping)
• Pages most affected (identify which URLs lost the most keywords)
• Branded vs non-branded traffic impact (to see if core visibility is affected)
• Conversion rate changes (whether the traffic loss is actually impacting business goals)
• Keyword clusters performance (if entire topic groups are losing visibility)
• Engagement rate / bounce rate changes (to detect if users are interacting less with your content)

These last two steps are crucial to know whether you should worry about this loss or not, and to decide what you should do next.

What should you do?

After following all the steps listed before, you can now decide what to do with the issue: do nothing or try to fix it.

Leave it

As hinted before, if you are losing keywords but it isn't actually affecting your overall strategy because you are getting a great deal of traffic and are working with other approaches like social media, local SEO, or AEO, then leave it as it is.

However, if you decide to leave it, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't take a look at it at all. We recommend keeping an eye on it and seeing how things evolve, as losing keywords can be a bad symptom of other issues related to your site.

Fix it

If this is actually affecting your site negatively, there are lots of things you can do in the short and long term to recover the keywords and, thus, your site traffic. It's important to identify what the problem was to know what actions to prioritize, but we are going to show you the basic short and long-term fixes you can do to try to revert the keyword loss.

Short-term fixes

Meta tags update

By updating meta tags like meta title and meta description, you can make a quick content update that helps refresh your pages without needing to rewrite the full content. This can improve relevance for current search intent, better align your page with the keywords you want to rank for, and increase click-through rate from search results.

Check for technical issues

Technical issues like crawling errors, slow load times, sitemap issues or noindex pages can be the reason why you are losing keywords. These errors are usually quick to fix when identified and only require:

• Fixing crawl errors identified in Google Search Console can be fixed by restoring the page, redirecting it, or removing internal links pointing to it.
• Improve page speed and Core Web Vitals performance by optimizing images and reducing unnecessary scripts.
• Check your XML sitemap to make sure it only includes valid, indexable URLs, then resubmit it in Google Search Console so search engines can re-crawl the correct pages.
• Check for accidental noindex tags or robots.txt blocks and remove them from important pages. Then request indexing in Google Search Console.
• Update broken internal links and set proper 301 redirects for deleted or moved pages to preserve authority and avoid dead ends.
• Use SEO tools to find duplicates and either canonicalize or merge them. For orphan pages, add internal links so search engines can discover them.

Once these issues are resolved, search engines will usually re-crawl your site and recover visibility over time.

After applying the previous fixes, you should think about a more long-term strategy that will involve more complex fixes, but necessary to get your keywords back.

Long-term fixes

In-depth content update

Only updating meta titles and meta descriptions won't be enough in the long term, as you might see some improvement from the update but not enough. To reinforce that update, create a content update strategy in which you update all the content that has suffered keyword loss. Check that it is well-structured, up to date, and add references to reliable pages to make it as well-backed as possible. You might have to update some content entirely, and some will only need a few tweaks, but the effort will be worth it for recovering the keywords.

Backlinks strategy

Backlinks are still important; in fact, we doubt they will ever be unimportant regarding search engines. Backlinks not only send traffic to your content but also help build reliability as well as importance through search engines' eyes. Having a strong backlink strategy that targets relevant sites with high DR that cover topics related to your site will definitely help you recover those lost keywords and even help improve other pages that are already ranking, as well as the overall health of your site.

Internal linking strategy

Last but not least, having a good internal linking strategy is key to giving your whole site a proper distribution of authority and relevance, especially to pages that are not getting enough attention to rank keywords. A well-planned internal linking structure helps search engines understand your site hierarchy better, improves crawlability, and strengthens weaker pages by passing authority from stronger ones.

Summary

Things are changing very rapidly in the digital marketing world, and as we adapt to this new shift in the way we used to work, we have to adjust our strategy to follow what search engines want and, therefore, what really works. Even though keywords are not as important as they used to be, they are still relevant, and their loss can imply a great deal, even if we think otherwise. If you identify that you are losing a lot of keywords, don't panic. It might not be as bad as it seems, but we recommend checking and analyzing its real impact to avoid future surprises.