A specific keyword has dropped from #1 in Google to nowhere at all...

[DannyNutcase]

Hi guys,

I hope you can help.

We have a large ecommerce website which has different domains for each language - GB, USA, DE, AU & CA.

I've been working my way through the errors that have been flagged in Moz and today I noticed something quite worrying.

One of our strong keywords has dropped from 1st place to nowhere at all. However, the Canadian version is ranking in the UK desktop search and our mobile site is appearing in the desktop search too.

The keyword is 'personalised macbook cover' and the page in question is https://www.mrnutcase.com/en-GB/personalised-macbook-cover/

I'm confused as this page was ranking brilliantly a couple of weeks ago and now it's nowhere to be seen. We've added alternate and canonical tags to distinguish which site is mobile and which site is desktop. We've also submitted a sitemap so that it takes into account all of the languages.

There are no harmful links and we've changed the content of the page across each language.

I've attached what appears in the SERP's in the UK. (there is the mobile version ranking at the top and the Canadian version further down the page)

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Danny

webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=personalised%20macbook%20covers

[DannyNutcase]

Hi guys,

Thank you so much for your responses. That makes perfect sense.

I've forwarded your answers on to our developer.

Thanks again,

Danny

[DirkC]

The way you implemented the link to the mobile site is wrong: you have just put a plain

rel="alternate" href="http://mrnutcase.mobi/en-GB/personalised-macbook-cover/"/

It should be like the example here https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls

On your desktop site put:

href="http://mrnutcase.mobi/en-GB/personalised-macbook-cover/">

On your mobile site put:

Additional issue is that for the page you put as alternate (the mobile version http://mrnutcase.mobi/en-GB/personalised-macbook-cover/) gives a 404 - so you should correct that. This is probably the main reason why the page is no longer ranked.

Dirk

[VERBInteractive]

Hi Danny,

Are you using a tool to measure your rank/search volume or are you relying on Google search result to determine where you are ranking? As I'm sure you are aware your results are skewed by various factors, geographical location, search history, etc. When I look up that page, I see you ranking on the first page for 3 terms:

• custom macbook pro case
• mac book covers
• personalised macbook case

Each with a search volume of 90. The term "personalised macbook cover" only has a search volume of 10. If I were you I would explore higher search volume terms that you current rank on the second page for, like:

• macbook case (SV=2,400)
• macbook cases (SV=1,300)
• macbook covers (SV=880)
• macbook cover (SV=590)
• macbook pro covers (SV=390)
• custom cases (SV=260)
• mac book cases (SV=210)

I only really dug around the UK search results. But a similar approach could be applied to the other languages.