We mapped 301's, uploaded htacces, submitted sitemap and still TANKED after redesign?
-
Hi All,
We had some great rankings on store.jrdunn.com since 2006 and we switched to just http://jrdunn.com with cleaner url structures about 13 days ago. We were on Volusion now Magento.
We mapped out a couple of thousand of 301's and carefully choose very similar landing pages on the new site. Uploaded an htcaccess file and submitted sitemap in GWT.
We have been correcting 404's and watching GWT like a hawk.
We dropped on several almost all of our great terms from page one to page 14 or 15 on the new site. We don't even rank yet on our own brand terms ?!?.
ORGANIC traffic has dropped more than 50%.
The only thing in our plan that we couldn't execute was using the "we moved" tool in GWT because they don't allow switches from subdomains to be entered. Bummer!
Do you think missing that one thing caused the plummet? In retrospect perhaps we changed too many things at once ie hosting, cms and going down to root url.
Anyways, I don't know what we can do from here but we'd sure be silly not to ask! Anybody's suggestions or past experiences with this situation would be huge!
Thanks so much in advance,
Sean
-
Yes, it really is a good video! I had the honor of Everett respond to one of my own QAs. By the way, what a nice website you have there! I'm actually in the watch niche as well.
-
Joseph what a great video. Truly had some actionable things for us and I highly recommend for business owners too! Thanks.
: http://moz.com/webinars/ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues as Everett Sizemore
-
Hi Marie,
Thanks so much for your input. What an amazing group of people here. We will check everything but pretty sure is wasn't an algorithm update since we didn't switch till the 9th and old site traffic was fine. Regardless we will be vigilant with your suggestions.
Right now I have to say Maximilian Peters nailed a lot of technical issues that needed correcting. Did I say this is a great site with tons a bright people. As a business owner, not an expert, this is huge!
Marie, thanks again
-
Thanks Marie...
Sean, you can read Marie's "Unnatural Link Penalty" articles on Moz.com....
http://moz.com/ugc/what-is-an-unnatural-link-an-in-depth-look-at-the-google-quality-guidelines
-
"Lots of pages like this and this on other websites pointing multiple links with big money anchor text like "engagement rings" at your site. These types of pages on other sites can trigger Penguin and Unnatural Links penalties. "
I haven't had time to take a deep look at your site but you mentioned that you made the switch to the new urls approximately 13 days ago. That would mean that the switch was around October 9. There was a refresh of the Penguin algorithm on October 4. I would perhaps have a look at your analytics data for organic traffic and see if it is possible that the drop happened on that day (Oct 4 or 5). It may be that this is a Penguin issue rather than a site change issue.
I'm not saying 100% whether this is the issue, but it's worth looking into.
-
Have you been watching your redirect log to see if there are any errors there? I would take a look at http://phantomjs.org and automate the redirect rules you have and watch the log file.
Also, go ahead and take a look here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/rewritemap.html which is faster then the 301s you have in your htaccess.
Also for magento seo, you're going to want to watch this: http://moz.com/webinars/ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues as Everett Sizemore done a lot with eCommerce and magento. He goes through common issues.
Good luck!
-
OK... Good to know.
I think that an "education" section like that would be a great way to earn some social shares, acquire some links and help customers. I know that as a GG, yours would be superb. Good to see you getting into the SEO of your site.
-
Yes jrdunnblog was our blog we started many moons ago but hasn't been too active lately and jrdunndiamonds is actually another store with that ironically has nothing to do with ours. He and my father share the exact name!
-
Egol,
Thanks for your response and providing us some additional actionable information! Much appreciated.
Best,
Sean
-
Why did the drop occur? I don't know.... but I see quite a few things that google does not like.
** Lots of pages like this and this on other websites pointing multiple links with big money anchor text like "engagement rings" at your site. These types of pages on other sites can trigger Penguin and Unnatural Links penalties. I would stop this type of spam immediately. You might need to have these pages taken down or links removed if you have been hit with Unnatural Links or Penguin problems.
** Many of your designer and product pages have standard text on them that is used on many many sites across the web (over 100 here). This type of duplicate content can result in your pages simply being filtered from search or a Panda problem. These must be rewritten with unique and substantive content if you want this site to perform well.
** Lots of pages like this and especially this that have almost no text on them. These are linked from your top level navigation - not a sign of a rich website with content of value to the visitor. Lots of these zero content pages will trigger Panda problems. A big content investment is needed.
** Some old content is still in the SERPs. Although redirects were working, there were many duplicate content pages on the old CMS. Your rankings might come back after Google chokes all of this down, but for now you might be suffering because of this.
** Also lots of links in your footer that go nowhere. On the homepage footer look at "Gemstones" and Watches"... they go to. jrdunn.com/#
** jrdunnblog.com appears to be a satellite site created with the intent of manufacturing links to your primary site. Lots of dupe content on jrdunndiamonds.com such as gemstone descriptions.
What is causing your current problems? Any one of the above could be the cause or a combination or things that I didn't notice.
For more information on diagnosing traffic drops see http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/
-
Maximilian,
A huge thank you for pointing me in the right direction and taking the time to respond! It looks like we certainly have our work cut out for us if we are to have a successful selling season. Oddly enough these were some of the things we set out to prevent during development but I was not knowledgeable enough to confirm it was done properly. Thanks again!
All the best,
Sean
-
Hi Sean,
The problem with Magento is that out of the box its not particularly that SEO friendly. There are quite a few canonical issues you get using just out of the box, caused by a variety of things such as sort= pages, duplicate category/product pages, duplicate home pages etc.
For example you have a duplicate home page which is indexed in Google here : http://jrdunn.com/home
There are duplicate pages caused by pages such as sort pages:
http://jrdunn.com/designers/marco-bicego.html?mode=grid&p=4 A duplicate of http://jrdunn.com/designers/marco-bicego.html (just sorted different)
Also having a quick look at your site in the index you have hundreds of duplicate home pages indexed. Some of these look like they are being caused by redirects from the old site and the fact that 404's are not correctly configured on the site, and others from search parameters on the new site.
The 2nd result from the Google search above is http://store.jrdunn.com/SearchResults.asp?searching=Y&sort=5&search=basha+pink&show=240
Which is one of the old site URLs which redirects (via a chain of redirects) to a page on the new site:
http://jrdunn.com/?searching=Y&sort=5&search=basha+pink&show=240 Which is a duplicate of the home page. This looks like non existing page and should return a 404 status, but you don't have 404's correctly configured, as any URL with a question mark in is a live version of the home page:
e.g: http://jrdunn.com/?TypeAnyThingHere
Also if you look on page 2 of that Google result above, you will see some URLs that are caused by the sort/search function of Magento and again are duplicates of the home page:http://jrdunn.com/?searching=Y&sort=5&search=tacori+diamond&show=160 This is really on scratching the surface of the problems that Magento can cause. You really need to carry out an extensive onsite audit, or perhaps consult with a Magento specialist.
Also you need to check the 301 redirects you have set from the old site, as you have all those invalid redirects from the old site that are going to non existing pages on the Magento site.
I hope this is clear and helps give you a starting point for your troubleshooting.
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
-
Redesign Just Starting - Should I Leave The Previous Incomplete Site or Setup A Temporary Holding Page and Redirect Previous URL'S?
Hi All I've picked up a new website project and wanted to ask about the best way to proceed with the current site during the development process. The current site is incomplete although it has been live for a while and has over 80 pages in the sitemap. Link to site https://tinyurl.com/ychwftup The business owner wants to take down the current site and simply add a landing page stating "new website coming soon". From an SEO perspective, am I better to keep the current site live until the new site is ready? Or would it not make any difference if I setup the landing page and add 301 redirects from each page in the sitemap to the landing page. Many Thanks In Advance For Any Assistance
Web Design | | ruislip180 -
Website redesign- change of server . What to do with old site? Keep for a while or delete right away?
Hey Mozzers, Two days ago, we redesigned our website and changed the server at the same time to get faster loading times. Here is what we have done. The old site was hosted on ipage, new site with a new design hosted on UPCLOUD. We changed the A record to the new server, uploaded a new site, submitted a new sitemap to Google Search console, 301 redirected all old URLs to new ones, most have changed a bit. Old URLs were ending with " .html "the new ones do not have that at the end. Submitted AMP pages to Google as well. Now here is my question. Should we delete the old site completely from ipage or should we keep it for a while? Google has indexed the new URLs that were created with the redesign, these URLs did not exist on the old site. But it still shows most of the old URLs on SERPs (these are URLs that have been 301 redirected to a new equivalent page) I understand 2 days is not very long for Google to get everything right, but I am not sure what we should do with the old site? Keep it or get rid of it to help Google index the new one only. FYI every single old URL that appears on Google search when clicked on will take you to the right place, we made sure there are no 404s at all. As this is very important to our business and we get most of it from Google I want to make sure we do it right for SEO purposes. The agency that designed the site did not really know the answer to that question, as they do not have SEO specialists. Please help, any input you might have will be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | Davit19850 -
Website Redesign - Will it hurt SERP?
Hi - I am planning to redesign my blog and I was wondering if this will affect my rankings? The new website template (custom designed) is much more user and seo friendly. The content, url structure, internal linking structure, meta tags, and site structure will remain exactly the same, but the visual design will be different (new sidebar widgets, and slightly different layout on inner pages). The current website is ranking very well (mostly top 5), has a healthy backlink profile, strong social media presence, and great traffic. I have heard that switching to a new template will dramatically hurt the rankings. Is this true? Are there any exceptions? Any ways I can prevent the rankings from dropping? Would really appreciate your input. Thanks in advance. Howard
Web Design | | howardd0 -
301 redirect on Windows IIS. HELP! (Part 2)
My webmaster's trying (but struggling) to 301-redirect the non.www version of my site to the www version. He's following these instructions given to me in a response to an SEOMoz Private Question (ah, the good old days!). So far he's 301-redirected the homepage but seems stuck on how to do the entire site. Any clues on what he should be doing?
Web Design | | Jeepster0 -
After a website redesign, what is the impact and is it a good practice to use /v2/ naming convention?
Hi mightyful SEOMoz community. We just launched a redesign of our commercial website from https://www.data-field.com to https://www.data-field.com/v2/ All URLs from previous website were 301 permanent redirect to the appropriate page in the new website, and the root domains ( /, /v2/ ) send the users to their own language content /v2/en/, /v2/fr/, /v2/zh/ Up to here everything is fine. But then I setup the usual "Share" buttons, only to find that they were displaying a "0" count. Then I realized that it was because of the root URL change from / to /v2/ My question is the following: 1. Is using /v2/ a good practice? 2. If yes, then should I link the Social tool to https://www.data-field.com/ ( only ) instead of linking it to the actual page in the address bar? Thanks for your answers.
Web Design | | NicolasE0 -
Map Search Tools to integrate on Accommodation Website
Hello all, Can any recommend a Map Search tool that i can integrate into my accommodation website. Ideally I want to be able to pin my clients on the map search with links back to their listing page on my website and provide an alternative search facility for clients looking for accommodation. Am covering the South Africa region specifically. Am assuming that i could go down the Google Maps route but would really like to know what alternatives there are on offer. Also what SEO considerations do i need to think about when adding this to my website. Thanks in advance for any help.
Web Design | | SamanthaRiggien0 -
What have your experiences with rankings after a redesign?
Hi, I am looking to get a site of mine a much needed redesign and was wondering what other peoples experiences have been with rankings in Google after the new site has gone live. It will be converted from html/css design to a PHP based CMS with added functionality such as filtering, sorting etc. I'm aware of some of the preventative measures that can be done to prevent loss of rankings (e.g. 301 redirects) but are there any others and in your experiences have they been successful preventing the site dropping out of favor or losing rankings? Kind regards Rosh
Web Design | | bizarro10000 -
Are HTML sitemaps still in use today?
I'm trying to help a client understand the importance of having a well-organized HTML site map as a method of helping usability. As part of this process, I spent some time searching for good examples of well-organized HTML site maps, and found that many sites don't offer one (including SEOmoz). I'm wondering if webmasters and/or SEOers think they aren't valuable any longer?
Web Design | | EricVallee340