Drop In Rankings / Traffic... Can you find any technical issues with my site?
-
I haven't spammed the engines, if anything I haven't done enough link building. So let me start here:
I split my old domain www.STbands.com into two separate domains - www.Suddora.com and www.CustomOnIt.com . The main site now goes to Custom On It and each page directly 301 as it was relevant. I knew there was going to be a little blow back...
The first month went fairly well but last week we noticed a dip in organic search traffic and sure enough some of our main keywords are now suffering.
I am wondering if this is because we haven't been building enough links to the new domains or if our new eCommerce CMS (magento enterprise) has technical SEO issues that is giving Google trouble. Nothing on GWT looks terribly wrong, should i be searching for something specific?
Anything helps at this point, we are in dire need of some direction on what could be wrong. Any suggestions?
-
Let me just call this... "logical speculation"....
If you chop a domain's content in half and place it on two different websites, you have also just chopped all of the links, likes, mentions, etc in half.
If you do that you should expect every ranking everywhere to drop - because you now have less domain authority - you cut it in half.
-
I would do a few things in addition to what you have done already (I think the results you are seeing right now really also depend on when you did the switch):
- Introduce a robots.txt and hint it with a Sitemap. If you have not manually submitted a site-map, do this as soon as possible. This will push Google to re-crawl your content.
- Fix your PageSpeed - you are scoring 58/100 which is really bad - see here: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/121004_PY_42T/
- Although you have RichSnippet product information on your site, it looks wrong - i.e. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.customonit.com%2Fcustom-slap-bands-silicone-bracelet-wristband.html&html=
I would try and fix the above - those are all simple and quick technical fixes. The Sitemap submission is probably the most important aspect and you should monitor the GWMT health and index ratio as well as the crawl rate.
I would then also compare the traffic on your new domains with your old domains. I would look out for change in traffic patterns and change in search terms. Your drop might be related to different copy on the new site.
I personally do find your site, categories and product pages a bit confusing (perhaps I am not your target-market), but it does not quite feel like an eCommerce site, but others might think differently. I am saying this in regards to UI/UX and not onpage SEO.
-
Nakul,
Good point on the brand building the fact is all you need both to move-up in rank right now. I would concentrate on building relevant links from the most relevant authoritative sites you can. I would also focus on adding content strongly recommend that you have a blog to your websites. This will give you an opportunity to add content, a daily basis hopefully at least 4 times a week and get to much-needed attention from Google. I feel the matter what side is almost every site can benefit from a blog or a newsfeed whatever they want to call it basically new content that is relevant and well written. You may want to look into the entire structure of your site I'm not telling you to go nuts but really analyze it looks for small problems fix them then if you want some help with the writing I'd recommend a Word press plug-in that ALSO has a great web interface where you can copy and paste your content prior to posting in your blog or adding pages. It will then using your URL and give you suggestions based on different metrics it is a fantastic piece of software. FYI if you buy a theme I paid roughly 70% less than the advertised price because I purchased one WordPress theme not saying this is going to happen for you however I do know that every time I've put a studio press him up it at least gives me 50% off as a offer software is http://scribecontent.com/
please let me know if I can be of any more help to.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Nakul,
Just sent you a private message.
Paul
-
I would bet you are unfortunately suffering from the latest update in Google's algorithm. Approximately what time last week to this happen? How do you been going about building links can you going to a little but more detail about your methods? Here are your organic standings as of right now for each site. If you are to truly 301 redirect their website it should be to only one other site. You may be getting some blowback by 301 redirecting your site to two websites and not the one site is supposed to be redirecting to as you know it is a permanent redirect meaning the site no longer is here please look at the site not sites. is there a site you prefer over the other? Would strongly recommend linking the 301 redirect only one of those sites. Also I will take your link profile and have a look at it using a few different software's including my favorite SEOmoz however I will get more than one opinion. Have you done this yet? Have you looked for spam malware a bad links pointing to your site?
http://www.semrush.com/info/suddora.com+(by+organic)
http://www.semrush.com/info/www.customonit.com
I hope I can be of help to you I hope this is of help you in some way.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
Hey Paul. Good to see you here at SEOMoz.
Are you see drop in rankings for your primary head keywords or long tail keywords or both ?
You definitely do need to work on the link building as a continous process. Think of it more as Brand Building.
I also don't see any structural issues with either of your website that would cause any major indexing issues.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Sometimes I write a post for another site and then post the first 1/3rd on my site to help promote it. Is this a bad idea?
Sometimes I write a post for another site and then post the first 1/3rd on my site to help promote it. Is this a bad idea? When I do that should I be adding a canonical link to the original post? Should I have /make sure the 3rd party site does something? Is there anything else I should do? Thanks in advance.
Branding | | mcarroll0 -
Re-directing Multiple Sites to a Single Location
Hello Mozzers! So, I have a client whom has purchased a number of different domains that they want to re-direct to their main website. Their thinking is: that by doing as much, they will increase their opportunities to rank for related KW terms. To the best of my recollection, that is not the case, especially if they are not posting any content on those other domains, but simply redirecting the page to their "main site". I am very concerned, however, that by doing as much they run the risk of receiving a penalty from the Google Search team. I am a little hazy on this issue, as it's been some time, but to the best of my recollection doesn't this constitute "spammy behavior". Again, since it's been so long since I've had a client try to implement a strategy like this, I'm a little unfamiliar with how it may play out in the current landscape, so I'm eager to hear all of your opinions on the utility of such a strategy and whether or not it will spell doom for my client. I'm anxious to hear what you think, thanks for reading!
Branding | | maxcarnage1 -
How to Host Microsites: Mission Critical or Six of One / Half Dozen of the Other?
Hello, fellow Mozzers! Been racking my brain. Thanks for your help on this one! I am in the process of putting together several microsites for our marketing agency. The sites feature similar theme and design elements, but are focused on delivering a customized industry-specific visitor experience with unique navigation, brand messaging, services, case studies, etc. I am struggling with whether I should host as entirely separate websites, as subdomains of the parent site, or as separate WP installs in subfolders of the main domain. I have been leaning toward the sub-folder option to share domain authority and keep our SEO efforts consolidated. But I am also concerned that the microsite "home pages" will underperform as sub-folder pages, versus being an actual home page of a unique domain or sub-domain. Is this a six-of-one or half-dozen of the other situation, or are there some important considerations I'm missing here? Thank you for your help here!
Branding | | Alaniz0 -
Site Architecture for Sub-Brands
I am working on launching a few industry specific sub-brands for our marketing agency and am trying to figure out the best way to deliver a tailored user experience using subfolders instead of subdomains, if this is indeed the best option... Since I am trying to provide separate experiences, I looking at housing microsites in sub-folders - say /technology or /medical. Each with its own navigation, home page, and industry specific content/blog/portfolio. A couple things I am considering: Will my microsite "home pages" and site pages rank as well in a sub-folder versus if they were actually the primary pages on their own sub-domain? Will separate Wordpress and theme installs and separate primary navigations have any affect on SEO if they are in sub-folders of the same site? Thanks in advance for any input. I really appreciate it!
Branding | | Alaniz0 -
Enigma of Google & China - Can you solve it?
In March, my team in Shanghai launched a site redesign of our English language website (targeted at expats in China) which: Changed the URL's to be more SEO friendly (keyword based, shorter, etc) Implemented endless scrolling to replace previous pagination Changed some front end layouts Changed page title and meta description tags to use keywords, be unique, use correct lengths Since then, we see in Google Analytics, traffic form Google organic branded search terms has been steadily dropping (between 5 - 20% depending on the term). Not provided is down 2%. We do not rank for many non-branded terms, so have no statistical significance there. However in Google Webmaster Tools, impressions of branded queries are also down, along with non-branded search terms (including those we tried to optimise for). We see similar traffic drops from other search engines as well (Bing, Baidu) but not at as high a level (only 3% or so). We have not changed any other marketing strategy online or offline. We have tested / done: 1. Changing title tags 2. Reverting to old pagination (as we say in GWT a drop in indexed pages) 3. Checked the tracking code is working 4. Checked our rankings (we still rank position 1 for our branded queries and even some non branded) 5. Submitted new XML site map The only large issue we could find is that from that day there were over 300,000 page not found 404 errors (which we are now redirecting by 301s as Google shows them to us, and have been doing so for 2 weeks). Nothing is helping us so far, organic traffic continues to drop week on week, so I am reaching out to the Moz community. Can anybody think of a reason for such a dramatic drop? Please help!
Branding | | RingierOneAfricaMedia0 -
What's the best strategy for dealing with old ripoff reports that dominate your name rankings?
We are just now starting to work on our site optimization. There are a lot of old ripoff reports and other complaints that surface, specifically around our name search. Our competitors use this commonly and our clients come accross regularly. We have made management changes, and real changes in the business since then, but we don't know the best way to get our positive news to replace old negative news. Any ideas? Specifics would be great. Thanks,
Branding | | JosephFrost0 -
Anybody use Twibbon to promote a website/cause/event?
I stumbled across Twibbon today - it's a service that basically creates an easy way for you to brand your Twitter/Facebook pictures, and to allow others to promote your cause as well. I'm not sure if I'm late to get on board here or if this is a relatively new thing, but it seems pretty cool. I can definitely see this really working out for promoting philanthropic causes. It would also work really well for events - imagine if every speaker at an SEO conference used Twibbon to brand their Twitter/Facebook? I think it would really help with branding, for both individuals and businesses.
Branding | | AnthonyMangia1 -
Can we submit Press release to Google news
Hello, Can we submit Press release to Google news ? If yes, is there any criteria for Google news to accept the Press release ? Is there any benefit in this ? Thanks
Branding | | seoug_20050