Do I have to start over?
-
I have a client of which we put up an extensive responsive landing page with a blog in the backend, this was done with Worpress.
Over the new years, our web developer pushed the new site live without telling me, and left the privacy settings on (meaning: please ask search engines not to index this site).
The robots.txt I had set up was set up so that the site would be crawled weekly. The site had privacy settings on for 9 days (more than a week, ugh!). Thereby, taking away all the SEO work I had done prior and basically starting with a brand new slate.
My question: Do I need to start over with all the seo, or do I need to continue pushing forward and waiting for them to come back up? Either way, still need to do work, but I want to really know if my prior work has become moot. Thanks for your replies.
-
You are welcome. I hope all goes well.
-
Site was indexed for 3 months and ranking fairly well, and then privacy settings happened, lost all the rankings. Oh well. So keep on trucking. Thanks for the answer.
-
Appreciated, I thought along the same lines but wanted to make sure I was correct. Thanks for the answer
-
No, in my opinion, you don't need to start over. I've seen worse things happen and still have the site rank fairly quickly and well. Just adjust the settings so that google and other engines can now crawl the site and submit the sitemap via GWT. Other than a temporary bump in the road, I don't think it's going to have a long-term impact on your SEO.
Hope that helps!
Dana
-
Ugh, leaving the privacy settings on for WordPress is always frustrating.
I don't think you have to redo anything. The site will eventually be re-crawled (which you might be able to speed up with some smart link building), and I don't think you'll have lost anything when that happens. If there were links in place, they're still in place, and the SEO work you've done on-page will still retain its value.
It might just take a bit of time for the whole site to get re-indexed again (of course, if it was never indexed then you have nothing to worry about). I wouldn't worry about the robots.txt crawl rate, it gets ignored anyway.
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
-
Discussion: Ecommerce SEO - What would you recommend as high Impact tasks to start campaigns with?
Calling all those with ecommerce SEO chops! What are the high impact tasks that you would always start out your new campaigns with? I've got this far in my thinking: Identifying query classes, identifying the intent of each query class and setting up ranking indices ensuring templated META page titles match the most valuable query syntax identify any issues with crawl budget that might prevent deep product page indexing
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QubaSEO
???
??? Hoping this can be one of those discussion threads that is so useful people bookmark it for future reference! Many thanks!1 -
Www PA is 29\. Http version is PA of 21\. Should I start using the WWW one?
I think I know the answer but i need to ask anyway in case i am wrong. The www PA is 29. Http version is PA of 21. Should I start using the WWW one? A number of years ago, they hired an agency that built a ton of links to the WWW version. I should also point out that most of the site urls are for the http, so i would have to redirect all the other pages. Advice? Thanks, Nails
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | matt.nails0 -
Penalized domain, starting over. 302 or just add a link that site has moved?
Hello, our .com domain got a fred update and to be honest we need to start over. Now my first idea was to 302 the domain as the penalty should not come with this. Other option is just to have a landing page saying, we have a new address its www.example.es . What would be better?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | advertisingtech1 -
Starting over after a Penguin Penalty
Hi, Has anyone tried starting a new domain after being hit with a Penguin penalty? I'm considering the approach outlined here: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2384644/can-you-safely-redirect-users-from-a-penguin-hit-site-to-a-new-domain. In a nutshell, de-index the OLD site completely via Google's Removal Tool, and then relaunch old content under new domain. This seems to have merit, unless Google keeps a hidden cache of content (or uses other sources like Wayback Machine). My concern is doing the above listed approach, but Google still passes the old links to the new domain. We have great content, but too much spam (despite me removing a lot of the links + disavow). Any feedback based on experience would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14401 -
Start a new site to get out of Google penalties?
Hey Moz, I have several questions in regards to whether I should a start a new second site to save my online presence after a series of Google penalties. The main questions being: Is this the best way to spend my time/resources? If I’m forced to jump my company over to the new site can Google see that and transfer the penalty? I plan on all new content (no link redirect, no dup content) so do I need to kill the original site? Are there any Pro’s/cons I am missing? Summary of my situation: Looking at analytics it appears I was hit with both Penguin 2.0 and 2.1, each cutting my traffic in half, despite a link remediation campaign in the summer of 2013. There was a manual penalty also imposed on the site in the fall of 2013, which was released in early 2014. With Penguin 3.0’s release at the end of 2014, the site saw a slight uptick in organic traffic, improving from essentially nothing to next to nothing. Most of the site’s issues revolved around cheap $5 links from India in the 2006-09 time frame. This link building was abandoned, and replaced with nothing but “letting them happen naturally” from 2010 through the 2013 penalties. Since 2013 we have done a small amount of quality articles on a monthly basis to promote the site, social media, and continuous link remediation. In addition the whole site has been redesigned, optimized for speed/mobile, secured, and completely rewritten. Given all of this, the site has really only recovered to page 2 and 3 of the SERPs for our key words. Even after a highly circulated piece appeared on an Authority site (97 DA) a few months ago there was zero movement. It appears we have an anvil tied around our leg until Penguin 4.0. With all of the above, and no sign of when the next penguin will be released, I ask, is it time to start investing in a new site? With no movement in 2.5 years, it’s impossible to know where my current site stands, so I don’t know what else I can do to improve it. I am considering slowly building a new site that is a high quality informational site. My thought process is it will take a year for a new site to gain any traction with Google. If by that time my main site has not recovered, I can jump to that new site, add a commercial component, and use it as a life boat for my company. If I have recovered, then I have a future asset. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
Best way to start a fresh site from a penalized one
Dear all, I was dealing with a penalized domain (Penguin, Panda), hundred of spamy links (Disavoved with no success), tiny content resolved in part and so on .... I think the best way is to start a new fresh domain but we want to use some of the well written content from the old (penalized site). To do this task I will mark as NOINDEX the source (penalized) page and move this content to the new fresh domain. Question: do you think this is a non-dangerous aprouch or do you know other strategy? I'll appreciate your point of view Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharewarePros0 -
Where do I start with cleaning up our link profile?
We have just taken the steps to start building links to www.towelsrus.co.uk, I am concerned about the state of external links to the site created by previous companies, i.e are they OK, or doing us harm, could I get more out f whats already in place or should we focus purely on getting new links? We also have about 25 pages that have 302 errors and contain external links to the site. What should i do with these. try and get them re-directed to our site with appropriate anchor text or simply put a 301 re-direct in place? In essence where I start, We want to build and increase traffic in particular for towels, bathrobes, dressing gowns and bolster our position as our positions are fluctuating a little but steadier than they have been. Any help appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
New Website.. From where to start with a SEO Plan ?
Hi.. We have got two SEO and link builders working here in the office, putting in efforts is not a problem. And we have been doing SEO for our websites since a long time and they all rank well. Since, I have signed up for SEOMOZ, which is the one stop with all the heavy duty SEO guys, so we would like to get some suggestions from the experts. Ok here is the question. We have launched a new website this week and we have got a new SEO client, whose website is 6 months old. 1. What should be a proper SEO plan for a new website ? Got any Plan PDF or Buleprint, which you can send me ? 2. For the client website , he is ranking on 4-7th pages for his 4 keywords. Whats should be the correct way or plan to start doing SEO for them and get them to the first page ? 3. I feel like, doing competitive analysis is lacking with us and we are not good at evaluating that step. Whats the bet way to do competitive analysis ? 4. We are looking to build more and more links to the website . Whats the best way to make links ? Got any SEOMoz Blog post link, which explain this better or any forum thread which has got the tricks for this ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qubesys0