A specific keyword has dropped from #1 in Google to nowhere at all...
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site dropped after recovery
Hi everybody! I've been working for http://www.newyoubootcamp.com for some time now. They came to me as they had dropped heavily for their main term, "boot camp". This turned out to be due to a manual penalty, which was in part due to their forum being hacked, as well as some bad link building. Here's an example of the dodgy forum links - http://about1.typepad.com/blog/2014/04/tweetdeck-to-launch-as-html5-web-app-now-accepting-beta-testers.html. The anchor is "microsoft". They've all been 410'd now. Also, we cleaned up the other bad links as best we could, and got through the manual penalty. The site then returned to #5 for "boot camps", below its pre-crash peak of #2, but OK. Over the past few weeks, it has started to slide though. I'm certain it is not down to a lack of quality links - this site has great PR and links from national newspapers and magazines. There's been a few on-site issues too, but nothing outrageous. I'm getting a bit stumped though, and any fresh eyes would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Google Places Landing Page: Homepage or City-Specific?
What should you put in the “Website” field of your Google Places page: the URL of your homepage, or of one of your location pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
Bolding Keywords
A client has just switched from us to another provider and I have been checking up on the work done and the only change they have made is to bold lots of keywords on each page - I thought this was a practice that did not work - is there any evidence of this working or not working? Any articles/proof that we are not using out dated practices as we stopped doing this ages ago and yet the new provider is doing this. Who is right or wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Page position dropped on Google
Hey Guys, My web designer has recommended this forum to use, the reason being: my google position has been dropped from page 1 to page 10 in the last week. The site is weloveschoolsigns.co.uk, but our main business site is textstyles.co.uk the school signs are a product of text styles. I have been told off my SEO company, that because I have changed the school logo to the text styles logo, Google have penalised me for it, and dropped us from page 1 for numerous keywords, to page 10 or more. They have also said that duplicate content within the school site http://www.weloveschoolsigns.co.uk/school-signs-made-easy/ has also a contributed to the drop in positions. (this content is not on the textstyles site) Lastly they said, that having the same telephone number is a definate no no. They said that I have been penalised, because google see the above as trying to monopolise on the market. I don’t know if all this is true, as the SEO is way above my head, but they have quoted me £1250 to repair all the errors, when the site only cost £750. They have also mentioned that because of the above changes, the main text styles site will also be punished. Any thoughts on this matter would be much appreciated as I don't know whether to pay them to crack on, or accept the new positions. Either way I'm very confused. Thanks Thomas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TextStylesUK0 -
2 page titles, 1 url in Google SERPS: WTF!?!?
Hey guys, Hope everybody is having a good day. Today i came across something i have never seen in the serps before that i would like to share and getting feedback on. When i search for 'woonverzekering' on google.nl #1 is: **Url: ** www.independer.nl/woonverzekering/intro.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PrizeWize
**page titel: **Woonverzekering - Independer.nl When i search for 'woonhuisverzekering' on google.nl #1 is: **Url: ** www.independer.nl/woonverzekering/intro.aspx
page titel: Woonhuisverzekering? Vergelijk alle soorten woonverzekeringen - Independer.nl So basically 2 different queries show the same url with 2 different page titles in the serps. The only 'weird' thing i could find was a nobreakspace in the page title code: Woonhuisverzekering? Vergelijk alle soorten woonverzekeringen - Independer.nl I'm i missing something completely obvious here? Is this a commonly used technique. Is the page title getting chopped up because of ? What are they doing to get 2 page title results on 1 url?0 -
Sudden rankings drop for our most profitable keyword?
Hi, I was hoping you could help me with a troubling issue that has come up this week. We have consistently ranked in the top 3 for the keyword "grey goose glasses" for the last 12 months. We received 74 visits from this keyword from Dec 3 to Jan 3. For some reason on Jan 4th we dropped from the top 3 to somewhere around 40-70 and receive almost no traffic from this keyword an longer. The page that was ranking was http://thebottlemill.com/tbm/grey-goose-drinking-glass.html I have since changes a the Page title and URL with a 301 redirect and the H1 tag to be a better match but this was just done yesterday. We havent seemed to be effected like this on other keywords. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bottlemill0 -
Google Reviews
I have a couple of reviews from clients on Google that seem to have just disappeared. What gives?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bronxpad0