Could our drop in organic rankings have been caused by improper mobile site set-up?

[seagreen]

Site:  12 year old financial service 'information' site with lead gen business model. Historically has held top 10 positions for top keywords and phrases.

Background:  The organic traffic from Google has fallen to 50% of what it was over the past 4 months compared to the same months last year.  While several potential factors could be responsible/contributing (not limited to my pro-active removal of a dozen old emat links that may be perceived as unnatural despite no warning), this drop coincides with the same period the 'mobile site' was launched.  Because I admittedly know the least about this potential cause, I am turning to the forum for assistance.

Because the site is ~200 pages and contains many 'custom' pages with financial tables, forms, data pulled from 3rd parties, custom/different layouts we opted for creating a mobile site of only the top 12 most popular pages/topics just to have a mobile presence (instead of re-coding the entire site to make it responsive utilizing a mobile css).

-These mobile pages were set up in an "m." subdomain.

-We used bi-directional tagging placing a rel=canonical tag on the mobile page, and a rel=alternate tag on the desktop page.  This created a loop between the pages, as advised by Google.

-Some mobile pages used content from a sub page, not the primary desktop page for a particular topic.  This may have broken the bi-directional 'loop', meaning the rel=canonical on the mobile page would point to a subpage, where the rel=alternate would point to the primary desktop page, even though the content did not come from that page, necessarily.  The primary desktop page is the one that ranks for related keywords.  In these cases, the "loop" would be broken.  Is this a cause for concern?  Could the authority held by the desktop page not be transferred to the mobile version, or the mobile page 'pull away' or disperse the strength of the desktop page if that 'loop' was not connected?  Could not setting up the bi-directional tags correctly cause a drop in the organic rankings?

-Our developer verified the site is set up according to Google's guidelines for identifying device screen size and serving appropriate version of page.  -Are there any tools or utilities that I can use to identify issues, and/or verify everything is configured correctly?

-Are we missing anything important in the set-up/configuration?

-Could the use of a brand new subdomain 'm.' in and of itself be causing issues?

-Have I identified any negative seo practices or pitfalls?  Am I missing or overlooking something?

While i would have preferred maintaining a single, responsive, site with mobile css, it was not realistic given the various layouts, and owner's desire to only offer the top pages in mobile format.

The mobile site may have nothing to do with the organic drop, but I'd like to rule it out if so, and I have so many questions.

If anyone could address my concerns, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Greg

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Greg, what did you find out? Please update the question and let us know if it has been answered, thanks! (Christy)

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Greg, what did you find out?

[seagreen]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will get back into the analytics and reply with more detail.

[garfield_disliker]

Greg, this is a fairly difficult question to answer, and it's probably best answered by asking more questions first.

I would look at some other data first. Just looking at "organic traffic from Google has fallen to 50%" is not enough.  (which is not to say that you haven't, just that you offered that as the jumping off point.) People get spooked by rel=alternate configurations because it sounds very technical and they automatically think that's the issue, but google takes canonicals/alternates merely as suggestions, and if they sense you've done something screwy with them, they're actually pretty decent about doing what is best for the site. With meta robots tags, that's another story... but my first hunch is that canonicals would be an unlikely culprit for this issue.

Some things I would consider:

Go back to the data range and look at mobile visits from all sources and from each source individually. See where they were entering your site in the past. See what pages they were visiting from mobile in the past.

Look specifically at organic search from mobile and organic search from desktop visitors. Are they in step with each other or has either one increased or decreased?

Compare metrics other than visits for mobile devices covering those date ranges. Has user engagement improved or suffered since introducing the mobile site?

Has direct traffic increased since then?

Have you been tracking rankings at all?

And that's really just scratching the surface of what you should be looking for. It's unlikely that creating a mobile site would hurt your desktop site in organic search for desktop users. It is possible that it would hurt your mobile site in organic search for mobile users, which is why it's important to segment your analytics data further.