Could our drop in organic rankings have been caused by improper mobile site set-up?
-
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
-
Hi Greg, what did you find out? Please update the question and let us know if it has been answered, thanks! (Christy)
-
Hi Greg, what did you find out?
-
Thanks for the suggestion, I will get back into the analytics and reply with more detail.
-
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.
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
-
I'm doing a crawl analysis for a website and finding all these duplicate URLs with "null" being added to them and have no clue what could be causing this.
Does anyone know what could be causing this? Our dev team thinks it's caused by mobile pages they created a while ago but it is adding 1000's of additional URLs to the crawl report and being indexed by Google. They don't see it as a priority but I believe these could be very harmful to our site. examples from URL string:
Web Design | | julianne.amann
uruguay-argentina-chilenullnull/days
rainforests-volcanoes-wildlifenullnull/reviews
of-eastern-europenullnullnullnull/hotels0 -
Any second opinions as to why our organic search website traffic hasn't recovered from website rebrand (domain change, website redesign)?
I am hoping to see if anyone in the Moz community would be able to help troubleshoot or lend any advice on a major organic search traffic issue we've been experiencing over the last 8 months. In a nutshell, we decided our ~4.5-year-old business needed to undergo a rebrand in October 2015. After changing domains & redesigning our website (more below), our search-driven sessions have dropped 20% in 2016 v.s. 2015. We made quite a few on-site modifications (with some success) post-redesign but are still deep in a rut and not sure what more we can do to recover. I've listed my theories below as to why we're still suffering this hit. If anyone could weigh in on these and/or share any other troubleshooting ideas, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it (and owe you a lunch/beverage of your choice the next time I'm in your city!). ****Backlinks - despite our efforts to 301 all links, I sense we have lost many backlinks. According to Open Site Explorer, our old domain has 1,172 backlinks (some from some very authoritative pages domains), 1,068 of which are passing link equity. In contrast, our new domain has 367 backlinks, 321 are passing link equity, and very few overlap with our old domain. Domain Age - we may have lost much of our reputation with Google as our new domain is much younger than our old domain (1-year-old v.s. 5.5 years old). Domain Name - although I thought to have common keywords in one's domain was a myth, I am now questioning that belief. Our old domain contained a popular, topical keyword and our new domain is derived from a term that is topical, but very uncommon. New URLs - our developer has insisted all links were moved to the new domain, but I have a hunch they were not. When conducting a "site search" (i.e. "site:websitename.com"), the new domain returns 7,740 results. Prior to our switch, a site search with the old domain yielded 30,000+ results. 404s - we found and fixed 100-200 404'd links after the domain switch. We still see a few pop-up today and I'm wondering if this is a red flag in Google's eyes. For a little more background too, here are the nitty gritty details with a rough timeline: Pre-October 12, 2015 - registered new domain and designed the new website on Wordpress, while researching a range of articles and resources for a successful site migration (e.g. this and this Moz guide). October 12, 2015 - flipped the switch on the website design, domain, minor content reorganization, and social handles. We announced the change to our audience via an article, newsletter, and social; informed Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) of the new address, 301'd all links from the old to the new domain, and submitted new sitemap in GWT. October 12 - 16, 2015 - traffic is normal, everything seems to be okay. October 17, 2015 - search traffic drops by 54% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. October 26, 2015 - search traffic rises, so now only down by 30% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. November/December 2015 - re-added numerous elements from the old website such as category, tag, and page pagination and a few sidebar modules that linked to other important pages and tags. Search traffic rises slightly in November (down 27% year-on-year), dips again in December (down 31% year-on-year). January 2016 - today (June 17, 2016) - we published more content on a daily basis and search traffic fluctuates around the 20% versus the same period in 2015. January 2016 - down 23% year-on-year February 2016 - down 17% year-on-year March 2016 - down 20% year-on-year April 2016 - down 21% year-on-year May 2016 - down 21% year-on-year June 2016 (until the 17th) - down 23% year-on-year Thank you all in advance for your time and help, please let me know if you have any questions!
Web Design | | nick490 -
I want to create a 301 redirect on a WordPress site, nothing's working...
Hello all, I'm hoping someone out there can give me a hand with this. I'm trying to modify my .htaccess file so that the site will go from maxcarnagemusic.com to www.maxcarnagemusic.com and also, so viewers will be redirected to www.maxcarnagemusic.com/home when they try to access the site. I've tried a few different things, including adding the 301 redirect plugin for Wordpress, but nothing seems to work. Can someone out there show/tell me how to create an htaccess file that will execute as much. I apologize in advance, my Apache experience is very, very limited. Thank you all in advance!
Web Design | | maxcarnage0 -
Site lost in Google
Recently I switched my from Joomla to WordPress. I did 301 re-directs ...and promptly fell from Google results after 5 YEARS at no. 1-3 Still ranking 1 in Bing and 3 in Yahoo...but nowhere near the traffic I previously had. Here is my site: http://selfdirectedira.org Any suggestions? TIA
Web Design | | tvegas0 -
Getting ranked on google
I help run a small real estate site in ireland www.aplacetorent.ie and Im in charge of seo. I have read lots of books over the last year or so and while they offer lots of advice some of them dont actually show you what to do. I have joined distilled and I think its the best thing i have done in the last few weeks and am learning a lot but if anyone has any advice i would be very grateful. Thank you
Web Design | | Kessie0 -
I've set up my own site which is still fairly new but I'm a bit concerned that there is a bloackage SEO wise somewhere because when I try to crawl the site on SEOmoz it only crawls one page.
I'm really baffled and none of my research has shed much light on it. My url is www.emporiumofmanliness.co.uk I'd really appreciate any help! Thanks
Web Design | | JoshED0 -
Does doubling up on domains increase my ranking?
I own two websites. One is older and contains the bulk of my content. The other is a web-based tool that has less written content, but is equally important to my business. For the sake of examples we'll call the older website "oldsite.com" and new website "newsite.com". Would it benefit my old site to direct traffic to the web-based tool using a domain like "newsite.oldsite.com"? What's the best way to integrate the two sites so I am not splitting my traffic?
Web Design | | Travis-W0 -
How long will the 301 ranking swap-over take?
Hi all, I'm about to hit the crunch button and finalise the 301 setup for our website to redirect all traffic, and our old very nice ranking, to our new website. My only question is, how long will the ranking take to move to the new site? Once the 301 is in place what happens when someone searches my keywords? Currently when you search our preferred keywords we rank 1 and 2 depending on the wording. Once I've made the 301 happen, will you see the old site in Google rankings until they re-index it or will it swap straight away to the new site with its continued high rank (from the link juice) or will I have a blackspot period where I don't rank at all? I cannot afford to have a period of time, at this time of year, that I don't rank 1 or 2 - if this is even a vague possibility I might have to consider postponing my 301 till a less important time of year. Thanks for your help, Anthony
Web Design | | Grenadi0