Branded Product Dropping from 1st position. Why?
-
Hi All,
I have a branded product that's always ranked 1st. It's a popular product which attracts the majority of our website's traffic. Now it's suddenly dropped from 1st to 20th. Can anyone advise me why this has happened? I've made no radical changes in the last month.
keyword: Wattbike Atom Url:https://wattbike.com/gb/product/atom
-
It's because Google believes that your page doesn't sell the product (which makes the page dramatically less useful) which is due to them crawling your site and caching pages from the wrong data centre (apparently somewhere in Australia!?)
Check it out. Here's your beautiful page:
Look how beautiful and useful it is, with the ability to buy the product and with all that nice content:
Now let's look at Google's cache of the page:
You can clearly see in that above link, we're querying Google's cache of the "gb" version of the page (%2Fgb%2Fproduct).
But how weird is this? It's cached the AU page 'as' the GB page ,which states to Google that the product isn't available to buy:
Uh - what Google!? Are you high? Why have you cached the AU page as the EN/GB page. I bet you any money, that has a huge amount to do with this.
I reckon' you've got regional redirects installed which snatch up users and force them into their own region's version of the site / page - unless a user manually uses the flag to change their location. Seems like good UX right? And it is, but don't apply the same logic to Google
Exempt Googlebot from your regional redirects if you have any (do it via user-agent based .htaccess / web.config exclusion, your dev will know what that means!)
You may find that by doing this, Search Console starts giving you more error reports in other areas. That's because you will have lifted a veil that has been cloaking certain issues underneath of redirects (leap that hurdle when you come to it)
Either you have a Google caching bug on your hands, or they deployed the wrong data centre to cache your URL, and that's when the redirects bork'd everything. IMO, that's what it is
Even if this isn't 100% accurate it will be enough to get a good dev-tective sniffing
Hope that helps...
-
Happy to help! Good luck!
-
Thanks, John, I'll follow your steps and keep you updated. Fingers crossed its nothing sitewide. All our other keywords are performing normally.
-
Hey Thomas,
I'm stumped on this one. Your inner link count looks good (358) as well as external link profile to that page. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Add exact keyword to
2. Add exact keyword to
3. Review Google Pagespeed insights data: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwattbike.com%2Fgb%2Fproduct%2Fatom
4. Review the schema structure on product pages: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwattbike.com%2Fgb%2Fproduct%2Fatom
5. Review 404 errors in Search Console
You normally don't see this type of drop unless there's a bigger issue going on related to the entire site. I hope that helps!
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
-
Drop in Traffic
We recently went through a server upgrade, including SSL, Encryption, Browser Caching and Image Compression. Most articles I've read, state there will be a slight decrease in traffic shortly after launching before an increase from the normal volume. However, we launched over 3 weeks ago and our traffic has dropped consistently since. Question1: What would be an average length of time after implementing this type of update to rebound from the drop? Question 2: I follow Moz to the letter and have scores of 97 and 99 ,from the optimize a page section, for most of our product pages targeted keywords. What recommendations do you, my friends in the Moz Community, suggest we do next? TY in advance, you input is very valuable to me. KJr 7NSVm
On-Page Optimization | | KevnJr1 -
Ecommerce product page duplicate content
Hi, I know this topic has been covered in the past but I haven't been able to find the answers to this specific thing. So let's say on a website, all the product pages contain partial duplicate content - i.e. this could be delivery options or returning policy etc. Would this be classed as duplicate content? Or is this something that you would not get concerned about if it's let's say 5-10% of the content on the page? Or if you think this is something you'd take into consideration, how would you fix it? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | MH-UK0 -
Product URL
Hey Mozzers, Nice quick and simple one for you. Which of these 2 options is better for SEO and userbility and why domain.co.uk/productname.html
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
domain.co.uk/shop/category/product.html The top one stops stops any funky problems with magento making 2 paths to the same product but the second option feels more natural and helpful to the user. I feel both a valid but I would like some opinions please0 -
Good sources of information for product page SEO from a manufacturers perspective
I'm working with a manufacturer whose product copy is used by many many many retailers online. This copy is typically exactly the same or very similar to their own brand website. We're ok with that as most of the time our brand website is seen as the source of the information. Retailers, however, aren't so ok. Understandably they want unique product description content but we can't supply that for every retailer. So I want to acknowledge that whilst unique product copy is important there are other factors that they should consider such as site usability, the frequency and recency or ratings/reviews, etc. I've skimmed through google and reviewed the message boards and can see a number of posts touching on this topic but I wonder if anyone can recommend good sources or care to share their insights? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | willheadlondon1 -
No product descriptions
Hi all, Wondering if I could get the opinions from other Moz user's on this issue please... A client is building a new online store, it is in the flooring niche, using the drop shipping model. The plan is to launch the site with about 1,000 products and then add more as we go. All good so far (the site is magento based) However, the issue we are facing is down to product descriptions. The client needs to get the site up and running asap to start generating sales but the wholesaler has not provided any product description information for the products - save the size, shape and colour. Can anyone foresee a major issue in launching the website with no product descriptions, from a seo point of view, and then adding the descriptions as we go. Have been trying to establish what Google defines as being a thin site and all the information on the topic is suggesting it is more due to duplicate content where, for example, retailers are all still using the default manufacturer description or have spun the content. I cannot find much which would suggest that product pages missing a description would classify as thing. I am happy to be corrected though. I accept that it would be easier to rank with a good product description but the client is a two person business and it is pretty hard to find things to say about 1,000 different kinds of rugs! Any thoughts would be most welcome please. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | daedriccarl0 -
Different page for each product colour?
Hi Guys, I've just read an ecommerce article that suggests it's a good idea to have a different page for each colour that the product comes in. However surely this will mean duplicate content? What are your thoughts? Have you put this tactic into motion and how did it go? Thanks, Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Sparkstone0 -
Did anyone Rankings drop massively last weekend ...Is this new google update ?
Hi all, My Site rankings took a battering in the past week , From what I have read, I know that google have updated their algorithm and supposedly it only affects less than 1% of queries but I was very surprised to have fallen in that list... Just wondered, am i the only site to have been hammered this past week ? or is it more of a case that maybe the new algorithm means I need to be more savvy with our SEO. Just posting a quick general consensus question ... thanks Sarah
On-Page Optimization | | SarahCollins0 -
Alt tag matching product titles - e-commerce
Hey all, Just wondering if it is ok to match the alt tag to product titles. Imagine an e-commerce site that lists a whole lot of products on any one page for any one category. Each product listing has a thumbnail image beside it. The easiest way to implement this dynamically is to use the product title for the alt tag. Anyone had any experience with this? Is it overkill / spam of keywords - given that the product title is repeated. Our current situation is that our alt tags are simply blank or say 'photo' which is no good, and we have hundreds of thousands of pages. Cheers, Croozie
On-Page Optimization | | sichristie0