What Should I Do If My Site's Rankings Drop 10 Pages in the Search Engines?

First off: take a deep breath.

Having done this nearly ten years, this kind of stuff happens (especially with Google) on what seems like a quarterly basis, which is when Google updates their servers. Part of the results depends on how long you had your previous rankings, how competitive the rankings were (were there 10,000 results for your key words or 10,000,000). It also may be that you’ve done something either on purpose (or accidentally) in an attempt to deceive the search engines. If you did something like that, then you might be screwed. (This is one reason to avoid the fly-by-night companies that promise you the #1 ranking overnight without much effort.)

If the site was not changed, in most cases, if you had your results for more than a year and there hasn't been a surge in your competition, we suggest you wait a few weeks and in most cased they will come back on their own like a lost puppy.

The problem is, if you start making a bunch of changes to the site, you might further delay that return. However, after several months you may want to consider making some changes.