How to bounce back after a new url & new site design?
-
About a month ago, my company changed domains (from the long-established www.imageworksstudio.com to the new www.imageworkscreative.com) and also did a complete overhaul of our site. We tried to do everything necessary to keep Google happy as we went through this change, but we've suffered a drastic loss of both rankings and traffic.
I know that can happen as a result of a redesign AND as a result of a new domain, but I'm wondering how long you would expect it to take before we bounced back and also, what can we do in the meantime to improve?
-
I was able to redirect all the links to the new site, so we shouldn't have lost anything that way. However, I did ask the webmasters/managers of many pages who were linking to us if they could please change the url they were linking to, to the new one.
-
Oh ok, I'm not sure what you mean by " ... wasn't able to get all of our old links changed over to our new URL, but I've requested changes from the "best" ones ..." then.
If there are old indexed pages that are giving 404 errors won't that affect the transfer of "link juice" to the new domain?
-
As far as I can tell, everything has been redirected to the new url.
-
What happens for old links that you weren't able to redirect to the new URL?
-
Thanks, Chris! We've done everything in the Webmaster Tools guide, and while we had an issue with redirects, that has now been resolved for at least two weeks.
I wasn't able to get all of our old links changed over to our new URL, but I've requested changes from the "best" ones and everything that is linked to the old site should redirect to the new without issue.
It's just anxiety-inducing to go through all this and see such devastating results!
-
Jess,
There are a number of processes that need to take place in your move and the time frame you mention allows for all of them to take place and still not see results yet. Perhaps you could list the steps you've taken so far so we can see if you might have missed anything. If not, here are a couple of resources for you review what needs to be done.
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
-
Alternatives to Wordpress for updating content of a static html site
I have a static html site which I cannot update myself. What solutions/ programs would you recommend for gaining the ability to update it myself? I'm reluctant to switch to WordPress because the sites that use any CMS that are hosted by my web hosting company get routinely hacked. Thank you!
Web Design | | translate0 -
Site Redesign: Bounce rate, converstion, page views, etc.
Hi Fellow Mozzers, I had a few questions regarding some analytics data we have been seeing since our redesign. Just last week we did a site design overhaul at www.lylif.com. One of the biggest changes we immediately saw was a 15-20% increase in our bounce rate. However, our conversion rates, page views, pages per visit, and site duration has increased. If anyone has some insight as to why we may be having such a large increase in our bounce rate that would be most helpful!
Web Design | | lylif11 -
E Commerce Product URL SEO
Hi, first question here. In response to Paddy's wonderful article and Rand's related article from 09 I've found myself asking this question. "www.home.co.uk/product" or "www.home.co.uk/category/product" As I'm currently reviewing the structure for so many of our e com sites the article comes at a great time. I'm going for home/category/product so I can optimise for a category, as category based searches are quite high and competitive. Yes some products can appear in 2 categories but I'm combating it with 301's or image based links. What are your thoughts.
Web Design | | PASSLtd0 -
The use of foreign characters and capital letters in URL's?
Hello all, We have 4 language domains for our website, and a number of our Spanish landing pages are written using Spanish characters - most notably: ñ and ó. We have done our research around the web and realised that many of the top competitors for keywords such as Diseño Web (web design) and Aplicaión iPhone (iphone application) DO NOT use these special chacracters in their URL structure. Here is an example of our URL's EX: http://www.twago.es/expert/Diseño-Web/Diseño-Web However when I simply copy paste a URL that contains a special character it is automatically translated and encoded. EX: http://www.twago.es/expert/Aplicación-iPhone/Aplicación-iPhone (When written out long had it appears: http://www.twago.es/expert/Aplicación-iPhone/Aplicación-iPhone My first question is, seeing how the overwhelming majority of website URL's DO NOT contain special characters (and even for Spanish/German characters these are simply written using the standard English latin alphabet) is there a negative effect on our SEO rankings/efforts because we are using special characters? When we write anchor text for backlinks to these pages we USE the special characteristics in the anchor text (so does most other competitors). Does the anchor text have to exactly I know most webbrowsers can understand the special characters, especially when returning search results to users that either type the special characters within their search query (or not). But we seem to think that if we were doing the right thing, then why does everyone else do it differently? My second question is the same, but focusing on the use of Capital letters in our URL structure. NOTE: When we do a broken link check with some link tools (such as xenu) the URL's that contain the special characters in Spanish are marked as "broken". Is this a related issue? Any help anyone could give us would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, David from twago
Web Design | | wdziedzic0 -
URL question for SEO...
I'm thinking of creating a new url off an existing url and was wondering if there would be any impact. For example I have the URL www.baseball.com and rather than secure a new url for a new product launch such as www.newbaseballproduct.com I want to do newproduct.baseball.com Will this hurt my SEO rankings for this new site? Basically wanting to figure out if this will hurt me or not? Should I get a new url or re-utilize an existing URL... really for a landing page/micro site, etc.,
Web Design | | gritacco0 -
Aged .com domain or brand new .co.uk for UK site?
Should i buy a 2 year old .com domain or brand new .co.uk domain for a site i am making for UK (google.co.uk optimisation). I am struggling to find good aged .co.uk domains, there are loads of nice .com's that are old, any thoughts? thanks
Web Design | | SamBuck0 -
PSD to WP Coding & Plugin Implementation?
Any recommendations? I am looking for a company that can do it to a very high standard. Need a review plugin implemented as well, which works with the theme. Clean coding, correctly named divs and clean comments. Thanks guys
Web Design | | getbigyadig0
