Gradual Increase in Domain Authority After Domain Migration But No Improvement in Organic Traffic Yet

[Kingalan1]

We migrated our domain in early April and simultaneously added an SSL certificate. Everything was done by the books. All redirects implemented perfectly, very few errors. Google notified via Search Console.

Despite all steps being done perfectly our domain authority dropped from 24 to 8. Organic traffic dropped from about 80 per day to about 10.

Each month domain authority increases by 2 or 3.  We are now back up to a DA of 16. But no improvement in organic traffic yet. At what point should organic traffic start to return? Hopefully the consistent improvement in DA is a good sign. I have been told that adding SSL and moving the domain at the same time was a very bad idea.

We are starting link building next week. Hopefully that will help further.  Any ideas as to when this situation will improve? Needless to say it has been awful for our business.

[Chris.Menke]

Have your keyword rankings changed?  As Sean pointed out, it appears that at least some of them currently look decent. If your rankings are where they were before but your traffic has decreased, are you sure that traffic that you lost wasn't bot traffic?

[Kingalan1]

Hi Chris:

We migrated the exact, identical content from domain name "A" to domain name "B". No on site optimization was done at the time. We did file a disavow file for some very spammy links at the time of the migration.

We are planning on launching a design upgrade next month (4 months after the domain change).  In the meantime we will focus on link building.

But is the gradual improvement in domain authority a sign that the site is recovering; that organic traffic will return eventually?

We depend on this site for lead generation so this is a serious issue.

Thanks, Alan

[Chris.Menke]

Since it seems like this migration (what did you migrate your domain from and what did you migrate it to?) was well planned, it seems like you would have been versed in how long these things can take in Google.  3 months? Not really that long, actually.  Did you do any optimization at the same time? If you did, (not that you should overlap such things) that could add to your down t time.  Best plan of attack at this point--give it another three months and find something else to occupy your time other than you domain.  That link building best be top notch.

[TucsonAZWebDesign]

Ok,

I looked at your page for one of your top ranked keywords 3rd place for "Class A Office Buildings NYC" If you took 1st in that you'd be getting substantially more organics. The competition really doesn't appear too tough to beat, with a slight boost in your content I think many of your keywords you could improve your ranking and dramatically increase your monthly Google referrals. I didn't notice videos or a Youtube social link, but I noticed Youtube embeds boost rankings slightly and also improve the user experience and total visit times.

Additionally you could take all your Youtube content and gain from 3 other media sites by uploading them to Twitch.tv Vimeo, and Daily Motion as well. Your on site looked very solid, I didn't check the accuracy of your directory listings, but I saw Google Business present in the local results so I assume as solid as your on site is, you probably already handled the directories.! So ya, videos will help out quite a bit!