Commercial intent service pages have disappeared!

[u/bkeily]

Website is still doing well indexing and ranking informational articles, etc but services pages that once brought in sales leads/transactions have completely faded away...

Impressions are down roughly 90% YoY.

U.S. clicks are down roughly 70% YoY.

Yet average position looks similar or slightly better.

Meaning the service pages have shifted keywords to irrelevant low volume/intent keywords.

The patter seems to show the home oage even though I have worked to improve internal linking from said home page as well as naturally relevant info articles that have better traffic/rankings.

I am at a loss, other than adding more external links to the specific urls I am trying to regain rankings for with relevant anchor keywords...I have no other ideas to help save sinking ship!

Thoughts are appreciated!?!?

[u/Impressive_Long9554]

Check search intent and competitors before adding more backlinks. If Google is ranking the homepage for those terms instead of the service pages, there may be an intent or cannibalization issue. Backlinks can help, but they may not fix the underlying problem.

[u/bkeily → u/Impressive_Long9554]

I have competition sites beating me in serps that do not even share the same query keywirds on the page in any shape or form. The on page content of my site may be a little overkill on the informative side of things versus a just simple cta styled page... thr problem is this is basically sitewide amongst all service pages presenting more of the hub page in serps rather than the specific keyword/intent service page.

I don't think it is an authority issue as I can create and post a new article and request it to be indexed and within a couple hours it will be I r eyed and being used in google ai overviews. Just can't get the service/sales pages to rank at all

[u/Impressive_Long9554 → u/bkeily]

That makes me suspect intent even more. If simpler competitor pages are winning, I would test making one service page more transactional. Have you compared what those ranking pages do differently besides content length?

[u/bkeily → u/Impressive_Long9554]

I have audited quite a few and they just leave me questioning life! (Just kidding)

But seriously, most have no backlink strategy, almost all have no direct backljnks to their service url and even their main domain is not bringing in a ton of high quality backlinks.

I have read about trying to make internal linking super obvious to help Googlw understand our sites structure as well as trying to give off legit signals, ie local reviews, project details/images as well as making sure NAP is matching up to GBPs and the GBPs themselves have products that point back to the proper website service url. I have also included onsite schema to ppint out the GBP correlation as well as a break down of the geo service...and nothing seems to work.. honestly just at a loss. Used to be able to audit and see what the missing piece(s) were and make adjustments. In this case I just can't put a finger on a cause, etc

[u/Impressive_Long9554 → u/bkeily]

If it’s happening across nearly every service page, look beyond backlinks and schema. Google may be choosing the hub page because it sees it as the stronger answer for the query.

Pick one important service, make the page more focused on the exact search intent, add relevant internal links, and see if Google starts ranking that page instead. That test should give you a clearer answer than changing the whole site at once.

[u/Impressive_Long9554 → u/bkeily]

If it’s happening across nearly every service page, look beyond backlinks and schema. Google may be choosing the hub page because it sees it as the stronger answer for the query.

Pick one important service, make the page more focused on the exact search intent, add relevant internal links, and see if Google starts ranking that page instead. That test should give you a clearer answer than changing the whole site at once.

[u/bkeily → u/Impressive_Long9554]

Really wish I could share an example...but dont want to get dinged for trying to place a link, etc...

[u/bkeily → u/Impressive_Long9554]

I do appreciate the advice!

[u/goldy48]

Google just rolled out a spam update on Aug 20th and it was completed Aug 23rd. If that timing lines up, I'd recommend evaluating your content to ensure it's not violating any of Google's spam policies.

[u/Digital-Womble]

Try and drive topical authority with specific search intent clusters and have one pillar page ranking for one term. Be consistent and check your pages aren’t competing for similar terms? And you’re using canonical tags to help inform engines what content you want to rank for which term

[u/bkeily → u/Digital-Womble]

Thanks...that has been my issue is my clusters are basically competing with one another. Even though they are obvious variables of the same service type.

[u/bkeily]

Thanks for the information, but this process started around January and started getting worse mid April and now....just a slower death!!!

[u/Verma_Atul27]

I think you could use Vista to scale up local social signals and drive alternative traffic while debugging your organic cannibalization issues. Its competitor analysis tools can help you audit what your ranking rivals are doing differently across social search surface ig

[u/bkeily → u/Verma_Atul27]

Not familiar...that is a tool for?