Webmaster tools traffic on one keyword dropped through the floor - ideas?

[w1ll1am]

Hi there,

We design and sell our own product range in a narrow niche, and we are also stocked by Amazon and a lot of other big retailers in the UK.

During the first two weeks of Dec 2012 the position of one of our main keywords, which was in google SERPs on page 1 (8 or 9), dropped to page 4. The keyword describes the niche we're in.

The drop is shown in the webmaster tools traffic report for that keyword. But it's the only one of our keywords where this has happened, and furthermore it hasn't happened for variations of the keyword.

And in Adwords our quality score for the keyword is 10

For example say we were making and selling shopping trolleys -  our keyword "shopping trolleys" has dropped through the floor, but "shopping trolleys (on) wheels" is just fine.

Can anyone shed any light on what's going on here? Losing this one keyword has cost us some good organic traffic.

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[danatanseo]

I am not surprised to see a drop in traffic this steep as a result of moving from page 1 of Google SERPs to page 4. You just aren't going to get a lot of people searching and clicking past page 2. I would focus on trying to discover what prompted the drop in ranking. Have you been monitoring the ranking page's bounce rate and visitor engagement metrics. Was the page converting well? Did something else change, i.e. pricing, free shipping or any promotional offers? Did you change anything in the URL, or even in your site architecture?

Last of all, I'd take a look to see how profitable that keyword and the page it led to have been. If they haven't been that profitable, then maybe focusing on longer tail is the better thing to do. If it was a reasonably profitable term, I would start by trying to document everything that occured between the end of November and beginning of December. It actually looks like the trouble began about 11/29. Hope that helps a little!