Why has my home page replaced my sub-category page for set of keywords? Happened 2x in last 2 weeks for day or so only to fix itself. What is going on?

[cajohnson]

Today I noticed a really weird problem. Our LED Step Lights page (https://www.pegasuslighting.com/led-step-lights.html) has been replaced in the search results with our home page.  See screenshot below.

As I started to research what was going on, I noticed that this same thing must have happened on January 26 and 27 because in my Analytics I can see that our LED Step Lights sub-cat page had a sudden drop in traffic on those two days only to bounce back again on the 28th.  See screenshot below.

Our LED Step Lights page has had no changes in content, meta information, or anything in months.  We have done no recent link building to this page in years.

I don't understand what is going on.  This is a popular page for us generating decent traffic.  I really don't understand what is going on or even how to try and resolve this problem.

I checked our Search Console.  No messages.  No manual web spam actions.  Nothing to suggest that anything is going on except for the weird drops in traffic.

Has anyone ever seen this happen before? Does anyone have any ideas as to what may be going on?

serp-led-step-lights.png organic-traffic-drops.png search-console-led-step-lights.png

[VERBInteractive]

Good morning,

Although you haven't changed anything, it's very likely google has changed how they interpret your info. How else could they keep the ever-changing landscape of SEO interesting and sometimes frustrating,

There looks to have been a google algorithm update in January and Yoast is saying they are seeing "a high correlation between the keyword(s) being the first word(s) of the slug (the URL) and the ranking" see: https://yoast.com/google-core-algorithm-update/. Google might be playing with results based on the more descriptive slug to see if leads to a higher CTR. When I look at the first 2 positions in the SERPS I see that pegasuslighting.com/led-step-lights.html ranks for 6 terms as of Jan 16th and pegasuslighting.com ranking for 497 terms, so although you might see some fluctuation over the next little bit I think your home will continue to dominate results.

Is anyone else noticing drops in organic traffic or weirdness in Analytics and have some theories?

pegasuslighting.com/led-step-lights.html

[cajohnson]

I checked this morning and our sub-cat page is back in the SERPs for appropriate keywords and our home page is gone.  The SEO world is "normal" again.

I have attached 2 screenshots...1 shows the SERPs this morning and 1 shows that the organic traffic we are getting has already returned.  We already have more visitors as of 745am ET then the past 2 days.

I understand a little volatility around a particular page while Google does "something" (for lack of a better word this early morning).   Maybe pushing the page down while it "rechecks" things?  But, to show the home page on Page 1 for these sets of keywords is strange.  While I love our home page (smile) it really does not belong Page 1 for these keywords.  Plus, to see this happen 2x in the last 2 weeks each time lasting 1-2 days.  Never seen anything like this before.

Anyone else experience this?

serps-we-are-back.png traffic-returns.png

[Dr-Pete]

This happens more than you'd think, and it can be frustrating. It can, on occasion, be a sign that Google is on the fence about your category page. In other words, it could signal quality issues, although that's not always the case.

Could you tell me what search you were running when this originally happened? There are ways to see how Google is viewing the pages on your site that match that search.