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
-
Targeting several keywords at once.
Curious how some of you are able to target several keywords on one same page, for instance for the page www.tutoroo.co/arabic-tutor-dubai we aim to rank first on Google for keywords such as "Arabic tutor" and "Arabic teacher" but also for "learn Arabic" or "learning Arabic". How do you rank up number 1 for several phrase keywords without jeopardizing current rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicolasvhe1 -
What to do when on your keyword there are no questions ?
Let me give me you an example. For example for the keyword title tag (let's imagine) I would want to rank on that. I go to the keyword explorer or related searches at the bottom of google there are many questions people have.. I find expressions (with the same user intent) such as "title tag length", "title tags generator", " "why are title tag importants" (I found this one using the are questions drop down menu of the keyword explorer). With this in hand I can create a page where I answer all those questions. I would have all those expressions being an H2 and answer the questions using related phrases and context word that I will find with the keyword explorer in my paragraph below. Let now take one of my keyword "Sicily bike tours". If I type this expression int he keyword explorer...the only related phrases (with the same user intent) that I find are "Sicily bike tour", "Sicily cycling tours", "Sicily bike trips"... (first thing I noticed is that it is just variation of my main expression not really question...). If I look at questions I find "what is the highest elevation in Sicily" or "How safe is Sicily for tourists". I don't imagine on a page that sells bikes tours in Sicily having h2 tags that answers those questions... and this is not what people that rank do, they describe their tour and this is what is confusing to me. Let's now take a secondary related keyword to main keyword. Let' s take "Sicily cycling tours" (it is a secondary related keyword to "Sicily bike tours". Based on the keyword explorer, the secondary related phrases to "Sicily cycling tours" are "tour of Sicily". "trips to Sicily".... ( isn't that going to be boring and look unnatural to use all those expressions ? ). There are all synonyms of my expression but not really different which is my worry ? Or can I use an expression such as "Sicilian villages" or "Sicily maps" even though they don't have the same user intent) as my secondary related keyword "Sicily cycling tours". Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Why is my Bing traffic dropping?
In the middle of September we launched a redesigned version of our site. The urls all stayed the same. Since site launch traffic in Google has steadily increased but Bing traffic has dropped by about 50%. Any ideas on what I should look at?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Keywords Ranking Varies When Search changes Location/City (Not Google Places)
We have a client that are ranking well on most Australian cities for competitive keywords except Google Sydney. If you toggled the cities on the search field when you search for a keyword, their places are almost exactly the same except for Sydney on which they can't be found at all in the Top 100 results. The keywords are not city specific, they are general commonly searched keywords about health. This is not a Google Places issue. The search result shows the right landing pages of the site for their respective keywords. Any ideas or experience on this kind of situation. Much appreciated Louie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | louieramos0 -
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 -
Keyword tool for news?
Working on developing a news product and wondering if there are tools available to gauge search interest in a particular topic. For those that work in news, what are your favorite SEO tools?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Google Phone Numbers
What process is performed to get a company's phone number to show as "A" on google maps. Google displays the phone number for the company on the map as "A" first. It would be beneficial to get that position. Is there a sub-category of seo that does this? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
Why our site dropped in rank for a main keyword
Hello, Our site nlpca(dot)com dropped in rank for a few terms, including the main term "NLP". Could you look at our site and tell us what might be the cause? Thank you so much, Bob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0