Only homepage is ranking after site re-launch
-
We've been moving all our sites over to a new platform (Demandware) this year. In the process, they've all gotten updated designs (from the same template), on-page optimizations, etc. Since they're all on the same platform and are essentially copies from one template, any technical issues found have been fixed across all sites.
The problem I'm seeing is there are a few sites that haven't really seen much/any recovery from the site launch, and these are sites that were done 4-5 months ago. There's one in particular that's especially concerning, since it's showing issues that none of the other sites seem to have. In my Moz reports, it looks like of all the keywords that are ranking, they're only ranking the https version of the homepage (and from what I'm seeing, the https version wasn't picked up and ranked until the beginning of October, which was also the time that WMT shows a huge drop in clicks and impressions).
I've crawled the site (ScreamingFrog), done a site search in Google (all pages look to be indexed), etc. and I haven't come across any specific problems there that would suggest a technical issue. We're wondering if it might be a link authority problem, since this site had the most dramatic change in navigation. The navigation used to be product based (Boots, Shoes, etc.) and is now broken up by gender. I've noticed that a few other pages that are ranking are dual gender pages that also existed on the old site, whereas all of these new categories aren't ranking at all and I'm not seeing this happen with any of our other sites.
I've gone down a bunch of different paths trying to figure this out, but I haven't come up with any concrete answers as to why this is happening and how to fix it. Any thoughts as to what else I can look into or try for this?
-
Thanks for the link via PM.
- You have 20,000 links from Chinese spam.
- Your main anchor text is like 56%.
- Your main homepage is a country selector page.
- Meta titles are almost all related to the same 3 keyphrases.
I'll PM you - but yes, I see more than a couple problems.
-
If you want to post or PM me the link I'd like to take a deeper look at the specific domain in question. We're often shooting in the dark when we don't have the link as there could be 100 reasons it isn't working the way you want.
-
Hmmm..
Well, I would make sure to work on on-page SEO and use "fetch as google" in GWT after any work is done to ensure crawling of all changes.
Other than that - I'm not even sure what to say. Check periodically for tech issues and other errors and make sure that all redirects are properly working.
-
Ha! I know, I wasn't sure how much information was needed to help explain the situation, so I just included whatever I could think of.
So, yes, we expected a time frame where the site would drop in rank, the new pages would need to be indexed and the old pages would need to be de-indexed, etc. But none of the other sites that were moved over have taken this long to recover. Granted, I think most of them had an easier transition since there were many more landing pages that continued to have the same URLs. In some cases, once Google had figured out which pages to index and which no longer existed, I saw an instant switch out and the new page was ranking at the same spot the old one was.
On-page SEO isn't looking okay. We've made edits to it, we're trying to avoid cannibalization, so each page has a specific target, etc. We're working on writing body copy for any pages that are lacking, but the old sites didn't have any, so I'm thinking that's probably not the main issue (although I'm sure it'll definitely help once it's up).
-
Existing URLs were mapped to new pages and 301s put in place (we also used OSE and Search Console to identify pages that are being linked to and set up 301s for those). Any pages that weren't mapped (old products, for example), had a catch-all 301 rule applied that redirects those to the homepage (I'll go in to Search Console and see which pages are throwing soft 404s and clean those up. We'll be adding 404 pages in the near future). A small handful of these pages kept the same URL if it was SEO-friendly, but the majority of the dual gender pages we kept used some kind of filter, so those ended up being changed. Though, the majority of the site is completely new pages.
As far the migrating the sites, I believe once one site was done, the dev team basically made copies of that site and edited images/text/styles for each brand (these are all brand eCommerce sites).
Does that help?
-
Hi there.
Phew! After reading all that text I'm still not sure what the exact issue is. Correct me if i'm wrong. Basically, after redesign and restructure website doesn't rank, even though there are no technical issues?
Now, I understand that tech issues can be the reason for not ranking, but what about actual on-page SEO, is everything else perfect?
-
How did you migrate the sites across? Did you map all of your existing url's etc? More information would help.
If it were me I would look at the variances between sites already migrated with no problems and the one with problems, identify those and it may help you know where to look regarding the problem.
Sorry I couldn't help more.
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
-
Site shows up after re-indexing, then disappears.
I have a site, natvest.com, with which I sell real estate in Alabama and Georgia. I need to show up in an "Alabama Land for Sale" search. Same thing for Georgia. If I re-index my site, I show up for roughly one day, before disappearing again. Happens every time I re-index. Ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | natvest0 -
Having problem with multiple ccTLD sites, SERP showing different sites on different region
Hi everyone, We have more than 20 websites for different region and all the sites have their specific ccTLD. The thing is we are having conflict in SERP for our English sites and almost all the English sites have the same content I would say 70% of the content is duplicating. Despite having a proper hreflang, I see co.uk results in (Google US) and not only .co.uk but also other sites are showing up (xyz.in, xyz.ie, xyz.com.au)The tags I'm using are below, if the site is for the US I'm using canonical and hreflang tag :https://www.xyz.us/" />https://www.xyz.us/" hreflang="en-us" />and for the UK siteshttps://www.xyz.co.uk/" />https://www.xyz.co.uk/" hreflang="en-gb" />I know we have ccTLD so we don't have to use hreflang but since we have duplicate content so just to be safe we added hreflang and what I have heard/read that there is no harm if you have hreflang (of course If implemented properly).Am I doing something wrong here? Or is it conflicting due to canonicals for the same content on different regions and we are confusing Google so (Google showing the most authoritative and relevant results)Really need help with this.Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shahryar890 -
Chinese Site Ranking for our brand name - possible hack?
Hello, We have been notified in the weekly MOZ rankings that we no longer rank for our brand name, which is almost unthinkable as nobody would target it. When I googled it, there is a Chinese site ranking at number one and using our brand name and meta data. What is very strange is that although our internal pages rank in the secondary positions, our homepage does not appear at all for the brand name. Therefore, I am wondering if somehow we have had some sort of hack and they are somehow redirecting to their own site? The brand name is "uksoccershop". Has anyone ever encountered anything like this before or have any idea on what we should do? Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonukss0 -
Website Re-Launch - New URLS / Old URL WMT
Hello... We recently re-launched website with a new CMS (Magento). We kept the same domain name, however most of the structure changed. We were diligent about inputting the 301 redirects. The domain is over 15 years old and has tons of link equity and history. Today marks 27 days since launch...And Google Webmaster Tools showed me a recently detected (dated two days ago) URL from the old structure. Our natural search traffic has take a slow dive since launch...Any thoughts? Some background info: The old site did not have a sitemap.xml. The relaunched site does. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 19prince0 -
Micro sites?
Hi, I have been speaking to seo firms regarding strategies and they mentioned setting up micro sites under domains that are relevant. i.e setting up armanidoamin.co.uk and we use it as a blog type site to update all info, product reviews, news relating to armani. Whats peoples thoughts on this? Does it work? Is it worth the effort? Im not so sure but obviously looking for ideas. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
It appears that Googlebot Mobile will look for mobile redirects from the desktop site, but still use the SEO from the desktop site.
Is the above statement correct? I've read that its better to have different SEO titles & descriptions for mobile sites as users search differently on mobile devices. I've also read it's good to link build, keep text content on mobile sites etc to get the mobile site to rank. If I choose to not have titles & descriptions on my mobile site will Google just rank our desktop version & then redirect a user on a mobile device to our mobile site or should I be adding in titles & descriptions into the mobile site? Thanks so much for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Web site Migration from one server to another does cause any impact in SEO rankings?
Dear Seomoz members, We are going to migrate our website to different server location(new data center). does this impact on our SEO rankings? If so what and all checklist i have to do....to retain my SEO rankings. Regards, kathiravan subbiah Caratlane.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kathiravan0 -
What strategies to best use to boost rankings across long-tail articles on site?
Heya! I'm currently engaged in what appears to be a slightly unusual SEO task. I run a large, reasonably well-respected (but not global-standard, yet) site that I'm currently monetising through individual articles targetted at addressing specific search engine queries that I know have decent traffic. It's the EHow / Demand Media model, except with a focus on a single specific (video games) niche, and much, much better quality articles (sufficiently good that they attract a fair amount of praise - all the writers on the site are published authors and the quality's damn high). Most of our articles end up ranking with essentially no backup, but they don't rank high - usually 2nd or 3rd page of Google. I'm trying to determine what the most effective strategy would be for us to boost our article rankings with the least possible expense / effort (we don't have a huge budget). Our long-tail articles are mostly being trumped by articles with either a couple of external links to them or by other articles with no links but from a site with significantly higher Domain Authority (70+ to our 48).I'm working to improve our on-page optimisation, but it's already pretty good (an "A" report from the SEOMoz tools on most or all pages). So, I'm wondering what the best use of our time would be to increase traffic globally across the site. Strategies I'm considering: Focussing on building links to the homepage and to any other pages on the site, by asking for links from community members, doing linkbait articles, directory submissions, guest blogging, and so on. Long-term aim: increase our domain-wide MozRank and MozTrust. Build links to our long-tail articles specifically, most popular first. Get direct links from relevant blogs, press releases, social bookmarking, etc. Long-term aim: get to #1 on Google one page at a time. Something Else? I'm wondering what the big SEO brains here would suggest? Happy to provide additional details if it would help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cairmen1