Product Cat Rankings Nosedive

[NewGardenStyle]

Hi guys,

My two product category pages have recently taken a nosedive in the SERP's. I use Serpfox to track their positions and both pages dropped down to Google page 10 + last week and haven't been seen since.

The pages are still indexed and the rest of the site (homepage, product pages) have held up. I haven't made any changes to these two pages except to add new products. There was, however, a major update from Woocommerce a couple of weeks ago.

I've have checked Search Console, no errors to report

The two pages are:

https://newgardenstyle.co.uk/product-category/garden-ornaments-shop/
https://newgardenstyle.co.uk/product-category/garden-decorations-shop/

Can anybody make any suggestions...either about the two pages themselves or how / where I should investigate?

Thanks,

Nick

 

[Rob Herron]

Hi Nick,

Just to quickly confirm.... what search terms are you tracking?

What position did Serpfox say the two pages ranked for 2 weeks ago and also now?

If you can let me know the above then I'll take a look and make some suggestions.

 

[Clinton]

Try your Yoast settings - SEO for categories can be turned on/off. Check, also, your XML files (sitemap/s) and the "priority level" for these pages.

I haven't made any changes to these two pages except to add new products.

Any changes can have an effect. Your PR (or whatever the current equivalent) is now being spread over a larger number of pages.

There is the possibility that the WooCommerce update caused some issues, but I'm not seeing any chatter about that ... so it's unlikely this update is the cause of your troubles.

 

[webgeek]

85 URL's in a half dozen sitemaps vs 118 indexed URL's (several of which are in the omitted/dupe content index). You've clearly got a disconnect between content and indexation and need to find the 3 issues to see if they are dupe content issues (and noindex them), then find the 30 indexed URL's not in the sitemaps (and figure out if they should be sitemapped or noindexed).

As you get more familiar with the site, you'll find several issues needing sorted.

The two key category meta descriptions read like spintax. They're danged similar. One of their titles looks like a keyword stuffed list - not like a search result one would want to click.

 

[NewGardenStyle]

Thanks @webgeek, precisely the type of advice I was looking for. I'll look into it.

 

[lulu1979]

also if you added new products then the content of the page has changed which of course affect the rankings...
Highly recommend the freshbananas course https://www.freshbananas.co.uk/ you can find the best tips there regarding on site seo, i made a huge improvement to my site, and rankings with the help of Ray, rankings are still rising as I have a lot of pages to fully optimize, for more than a year now my rankings are going only one way and that is upwards

 

[StevePoster]

Decrease in rankings does not always relies on your On Page process but take a look on the site's performance in the related field. Google Analytics is one of your best buddy here because it will tell you how your website behave on the web. Does your page really engage with the users? How long is the time? Do they navigate elsewhere within the website? then the conversion rate like, Does the user sign up? How often they leave the website? these are some considerations that affects your competition in the field.