Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Alex Harber on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/19/2023).

Another ridiculous occurrence in my search rankings

Once again I am left absolutely baffled by another ridiculous occurrence in my search rankings. I have by far the best page for the search term "CBD patches" (https://www.cannacares.co.uk/collections/cbd-patches), as well as a substantially better backlink profile.This is of massive concern to how our business operates. This page has been in the top 3 positions for over 2 years now and has now dropped off to page 4. 95% of the pages now ranking above our own are terrible - lacking both useful content AND any substantial backlink profile.While previously when we have had ranking drops, some have suggested that it is as a result of poor E-A-T as a result of being in the health and wellness space. However, having looked at all the competitors ranking above us - none of them have any kind of substantial E-A-T either. This whole episode makes no sense whatsoever to me.I am completely at a loss as to how this has happened.If anyone can help to explain what on earth has occurred I would be most grateful.
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Michael Martinez: A more detailed list of things to consider.1. You should drill down in the traffic report to see if the dropoff is more pronounced by Device or Country.2. Some of the sites currently ranking well seem to be new (based on lack of history in the Wayback Machine). It could be they`re just shuffling the mix against you.3. Many of the sites include "FDA Disclaimer/Disclosure" links or paragraphs. Even some European sites have generic disclaimers, although yours is not the only site without a disclaimer.4. There are a few minor changes between your current site and older copies archived on the Wayback Machine. They don`t strike me as significant but taken together with other things they might contribute to the overall shift in search visibility.5. The only confirmed Google update timeframes that seem to align with the steep shifts in your chart are the May 25 and September 12 Broad Core algorithm updates. Core algorithm updates aren`t about anything specific (they don`t target niches or industries). They most likely improve things such as rules enforcement, score calculations, crawling, indexing, etc.*=> These correlations support Brenda`s thesis that you might have a page quality problem.6. There is a slight dip/shuffle around the time of the October 19 spam update.*=> That correlation supports Richard`s thesis you might have a link problem.7. Hard to be sure from the image, but the trend line seems to go wonky around the time of the December 5 Helpful Content update. However, I infer from the apparent recovery a couple of weeks later that it may not be a factor. Then again, Google paused rolling out the update in late December.8. I looked at Google`s cache image of your page in both the US and UK search results. Several times. Some of the times Google had a problem pulling the data (I have a 1-gigabyte fiber connection - it`s possible but seems unlikely to me that my connection was the issue). This is why I suggested you use the Test Live URL feature in GSC. It will pull the page from your server (not guaranteed to happen with the Mobile-friendly test) and tell you if it has any problems.*=> Could be your server is having an issue, although with the CDN that`s hard to diagnose. Still, you could check Google`s crawl stats and see what they show you - if the crawl stats look bad, you might ask Shopify to move the site to a different box and see if that makes a difference.
  • Juan Dalisay Jr.: Here`s a high ranking page on CBD patches.It`s better organized.https://cbdliving.com/products/cbd-patches-for-sale
  • Gav Lewis: From a user experience it goes to selling and annoying pop up way to soon.

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/19/2023).