New website put up and ALL my keywords fell a LOT!???
-
I helped a client redesign their new website and we just went live a couple weeks ago. This morning I checked his campaign and 53 keywords fell DRAMATICALLY. Like 35-50 places down in Google for dozens of keywords!?
I haven't ever seen a drop that's so dramatic when putting up a new site.
Have you ever seen this? Will they bounce back? This site isn't significantly different than the last one.
We did forward two other domains to this new site but that wouldn't make a difference, would it?
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Matthew
-
Matthew, I wrote a piece here a while back about what to make sure you do when relaunching/revamping a website to avoid ranking disaster. You may find it gives you some answers. I would also say, dont panic yet. A website redesign is a huge code change and flux can be expected initially.
-
I'm sorry. I should have been more clear. No, their domain name didn't change. Thank you very much for all the responses! You gave me some things to think about. I will give it a little time.
Thanks again!
-
Hi Matthew
Unless those domains had particular bad link profiles or indeed had a penalty put on them, then I think you're right and we can rule out that reason.
I'd first check webmaster tools and see if there are any large crawl errors - you basically want to make sure that all of the pages on the site are accessible by Google, all of the links pointing to the site are working (or redirected to a working URL) and that your 404 page is working (and not returning soft 404s). Should you find something irregular here, that's where I'd start ASAP.
I'm guessing one of these domains was the old website URL? In this case (and apologies if this sounds obvious and you've already done this) I'd double check the 301 redirect has worked properly, so that all the old links pointing to the website are now.
Now, as for the rankings that have dropped - are they across the board and for all keywords, or are they limited to specific keyword groups or specific landing pages? Depending what the result is here this could mean a number of things. When you did the 301 redirect, did you redirect the URLs to the equivalent pages on the new domain, or all to the homepage? If its the latter, is there a chance that the links you were pointing to the old site are now not "powering" the equivalent pages on the new site, as they're going to the homepage?
Similarly, if the rankings that have dropped all go to the same landing page, then there could be a problem on-site or off-site with that page. On-site, Google might not think the new page is very useful to the reader if there is not a lot of content it can crawl and read. Off-site, the algorithm may have devalued some old links to that page if it thinks they are not useful/editorial, such as old directory listings or article site links.
If the drop is across the board, for a number of keywords and landing pages, it could indicate a penalty of sorts, so I would check your webmaster tool messages for any link warnings.
If there's no warnings there, nothing out of the ordinary in terms of errors and your confident that your links are editorial and authoritativ and so would not have had a bunch of links devalued, then I would call for a bit of patience to see if things recover. After all, the Googlebot is going through a bunch of new pages and might have freaked out a little bit - but hopefully I've provided a few things to check in the meantime, in case the drop becomes sustained.
Hope this helps Matthew, wish I could be more of a help.
-
When you redesigned the site, did you change the URLs?
For example, did you change--
example.com/miami-homes/ to example.com/miami-homes.asp?
And if so, did you 301 redirect all of the old pages to their new locations?
With the info provided, that's my best guess.
-
Is it the same domain name or just a new site redesign and not a new site.
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
-
Need suggestion: What is the best internal linking structure for our website to gain in SEO & UX too?
Hi all, We have 3 different editions of our product we are selling with 20 features. 1st edition & 2nd edition comes with 15 features in which 10 are common in each edition. 3rd edition comes with all 20 features. Now what's the best way to interlink and show the navigational menu to highlight 3 editions and features as well? Much appreciated if some one refer me a website with such structure. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
New Re-design will my website rankings drop?
Hi guys, I have had to re-design my site although we are only 4 months into the seo game we have seen some good progress with our rankings. My question is there anything I need to consider before implementing the new designs so it doesn't effect my current rankings or any of our SEO work. Our current designs are content thing and so we have had to create more content to better optimize our site, however if doing so will this loose our current ranking position? Apperciate any advice around this Thanks
Web Design | | edward-may0 -
Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?
Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan) 25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space)
Web Design | | Kingalan1
15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take
30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space) High bounce rate
3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
300 PAGES Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words. My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan0 -
Wordpress or custom built website?
Hello fellow mozzers, Hope you are all well. I am looking to get a website done and I am struggling to decide whether to get a custom build website site done or a website built on the WordPress platform. Would you be able to share your experiences and advice/suggestions on what you would use, and why? (pros and cons, etc.) Thanks in advance. Kind Regards
Web Design | | JonathanRolande0 -
How to judge a good website designer?
I am looking into hiring a company to redesign my website. What tips can someone give me about how to judge whether a company is good or not? I am most interested in the website being designed to work well with SEO and crawls. Do I compare the rankings of the websites they have in their portfolio? I'm so petrified that I'm going to make the wrong choice.
Web Design | | CapitolShine1 -
What is Best Platform to Build Website - SEO in mind
Hello... I am going to be creating two new websites shortly that will need to be built with SEO in mind. These will not be e-commerce sites, but instead will be informational with a couple pages of content on each. One will be used to get people to input their contact info and that info will be sent to our call center where we will call them back from. The other site will be heavily used for graphics, but still needs to have room for content (seo purposes)... Can you guys please recommend what platform i should have these sites written on (and please remember I need to do this on whatever is the most SEO-Friendly)... Thanks
Web Design | | Prime850 -
Optimzing a new ecommerce site, Need help with URL
Hi We are putting up a new ecommerce website and for product description, our tech team indicates that they must have the skun numbers in the URL. Which one of the following URL structure do you find the most SEO freindly? 1. http://www.Site.com/SKUNumber/ProductDescription/ or 2. http://www.Site.com/ProductDescription/SKUNumber/ My personal opinion is that most relevant content should be on load page so I like option 1. Thanks
Web Design | | CookingCom0 -
Meta author. Is it relevant for website design company in its seo?
We don't usually add the meta author in the websites that we develop. I wonder if it would have any positive effect in our seo. We usually add a link in the footer like this "Diseño Web Vigo "(Website Development in Vigo). I am worry about this links. I'm not sure if they are positive because they are in the footer and so the link appears in all of the pages. Besides all these websites we develop are hosted in two different servers, and google could easily think that it is manipulative thing. What do you think? Thanks!!! 🙂
Web Design | | teconsite.com0