Why has my home page replaced my sub-category page for set of keywords? Happened 2x in last 2 weeks for day or so only to fix itself. What is going on?
-
Today I noticed a really weird problem. Our LED Step Lights page (https://www.pegasuslighting.com/led-step-lights.html) has been replaced in the search results with our home page. See screenshot below.
As I started to research what was going on, I noticed that this same thing must have happened on January 26 and 27 because in my Analytics I can see that our LED Step Lights sub-cat page had a sudden drop in traffic on those two days only to bounce back again on the 28th. See screenshot below.
Our LED Step Lights page has had no changes in content, meta information, or anything in months. We have done no recent link building to this page in years.
I don't understand what is going on. This is a popular page for us generating decent traffic. I really don't understand what is going on or even how to try and resolve this problem.
I checked our Search Console. No messages. No manual web spam actions. Nothing to suggest that anything is going on except for the weird drops in traffic.
Has anyone ever seen this happen before? Does anyone have any ideas as to what may be going on?
serp-led-step-lights.png organic-traffic-drops.png search-console-led-step-lights.png
-
This happens more than you'd think, and it can be frustrating. It can, on occasion, be a sign that Google is on the fence about your category page. In other words, it could signal quality issues, although that's not always the case.
Could you tell me what search you were running when this originally happened? There are ways to see how Google is viewing the pages on your site that match that search.
-
I checked this morning and our sub-cat page is back in the SERPs for appropriate keywords and our home page is gone. The SEO world is "normal" again.
I have attached 2 screenshots...1 shows the SERPs this morning and 1 shows that the organic traffic we are getting has already returned. We already have more visitors as of 745am ET then the past 2 days.
I understand a little volatility around a particular page while Google does "something" (for lack of a better word this early morning). Maybe pushing the page down while it "rechecks" things? But, to show the home page on Page 1 for these sets of keywords is strange. While I love our home page (smile) it really does not belong Page 1 for these keywords. Plus, to see this happen 2x in the last 2 weeks each time lasting 1-2 days. Never seen anything like this before.
Anyone else experience this?
-
Good morning,
Although you haven't changed anything, it's very likely google has changed how they interpret your info. How else could they keep the ever-changing landscape of SEO interesting and sometimes frustrating,
There looks to have been a google algorithm update in January and Yoast is saying they are seeing "a high correlation between the keyword(s) being the first word(s) of the slug (the URL) and the ranking" see: https://yoast.com/google-core-algorithm-update/. Google might be playing with results based on the more descriptive slug to see if leads to a higher CTR. When I look at the first 2 positions in the SERPS I see that pegasuslighting.com/led-step-lights.html ranks for 6 terms as of Jan 16th and pegasuslighting.com ranking for 497 terms, so although you might see some fluctuation over the next little bit I think your home will continue to dominate results.
Is anyone else noticing drops in organic traffic or weirdness in Analytics and have some theories?
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
-
How to Canonicalise all filter pages (URL parameters) to the main category
Hi guys, I am working on an e-commerce site that's running in Shopify. I noticed that the filter pages do not have canonical tags pointing to their respective main categories. I doubt that the action needed is to canonicalise each filter pages to the main category as it would take time (there are a lot of filter URLs involved). Do you know any technical coding to do in Shopify to have all filter pages canonicalise to its main category? Keen to hear from you. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brandonegroup0 -
Google only indexing the top 2/3 of my page?
HI, I have a page that is about 5000 lines of code total. I was having difficulty figuring out why the addition of a lot of targeted, quality content to the bottom of the pages was not helping with rankings. Then, when fetching as Google, I noticed that only about 3300 lines were getting indexed for some reason. So naturally, that content wasn't going to have any effect if Google in not seeing it. Has anyone seen this before? Thoughts on what may be happening? I'm not seeing any errors begin thrown by the page....and I'm not aware of a limit of lines of code Google will crawl. Pages load under 5 seconds so loading speed shouldn't be the issue. Thanks, Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yandl1 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content (with and without www)
How can we resolve pages with duplicate page content? With and without www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
Thanks in advance.0 -
How should I go about repairing 400,000 404 error pages?
My thinking is to make a list of most linked to and most trafficked error pages, and just redirect those, but I don't know how to get all that data because i can't even download all the error pages from Webmaster Tools, and even then, how would i get backlink data except by checking each link manually? Are there any detailed step-by-step instructions on this that I missed in my Googling? Thanks for reading!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
What happen if a canonical tag points to a noindex page?
Hello,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
I have question. We have hundreds of affiliates that have implemented our datafeed on their websites, and to avoid duplicate content issues we are requiring them to put a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to our own original product page. So, for example, if an affiliate has a page about our Product 101, they will have to add a canonical tag pointing to the corresponding product page on our own website: www.ourwebsite.com/products/product101 Now, since many of our product pages have defined a "noindex" tag (due to Panda issues), may that be a problem? In other words: what kind of problems could cause having our affiliates defining a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to the original product page on our website which have a "noindex" met tag defined? Maybe it is a stupid question we shouldn't worry about, but any thoughts about this scenario are very welcome! Thank you in advance.0 -
Using Images Instead of Text to Control Keywords on Page
We have recently updated a key page on our website. It is a template page that is used many times to display search results. The words "price", "revenue", and "cash flow", "not disclosed" are used for each listing on the page -- to minimize their impact on keyword density on the page we used images for these words. Here you can see some examples: http://www.businessbroker.net/State/Florida-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx http://www.businessbroker.net/City/Los Angeles-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx http://www.businessbroker.net/Industry/Auto_Car_Wash-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx You will note these words on this page are images and not regular text. We are certainly not doing this to "dupe" the visitors or Google -- we just want to ensure that each page has keywords pertinent to what the page is about. Bottom line question -- is this an OK practice? Are we running any risk with Google by doing this? I'm particularly nervous these days with all of the Google changes. Your thoughts and guidance on this issue would be much appreciated. Thanks. MWM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MWM37720 -
Pricing Page vs. No Pricing Page
There are many SEO sites out there that have an SEO Pricing page, IMO this is BS. A SEO company cannot give every person the same quote for diffirent keywords. However, this is something we are currently debating. I don't want a pricing page, because it's a page full of lies. My coworker thinks it is a good idea, and that users look for a pricing page. Suggestions? If I had to build one (which I am debating against) is it better to just explain why pricing can be tricky? or to BS them like most sites do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Does title text of homepage effect ranking of sub pages?
Question is pretty much summed up in the title. I realize that title text on a specific page can effect the ranking of that page. But what I'm getting a feeling of lately is that google uses the title text of your homepage to effect the ranking of the site on a whole. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg1
