Why did I drop ranking after setting up perm redirect, sitemap, and Google places??

[fsvatousek]

I have a site that was ranking in the top two for my search terms. We had a funky url (it contained hyphens) and was advised to change it for SEO, so I setup a perm redirect through my web host (before it was a temporary one I think) At the same time I installed a sitemap plugin for Wordpress and also registered for a Google Places account. I can't remember the exact order I did this -- does it matter? Anyway, within a couple days of doing the above, my ranking dropped to the bottom of the second page. I would like to fix this, but I'm not sure. I need help please!

[fsvatousek]

The site is three months old and I did the 301 about two weeks ago.

We can rule out the EMD problem since the old domain was just the name of the business. Plus everything was fine until two weeks ago when I messed it up, and that would be too coincidental.

Is there any issue with redirecting an html site to a php site?

[ChadBreezy]

I am not totally sure if it is a big difference. However, my Dr. House side to my brain still wants to focus on the 301s.

The only exception I can think of is if your previous domain violated the EMD Algorithm; exact keywords domain name for a website. I am wondering if Google devalued it and whatever backlinks that were helping your website?!? I am so paranoid about Google's filters...I swear it's like they have rat traps everywhere and when they go out to look at one caught in a specific trap, they audit it for field testing. You could be just unlucky?! Also the keywords you are competing with also would have a big factor if Google randomly sampled your site and audited it??? Any thoughts?

Also do you have a Webmaster Tools account? Google would report any directories that are not found. If they are there this would definitely prove my point of 301s not properly written. If so then click all of them and mark them as fixed and let Google recrawl.

*New websites with no much authority tend to do a Google dance. So if you're site is less than 12 months old or even 2 years old without a huge domain authority it could take a while to rebound.

[fsvatousek]

Hi Chad,

I have an htaccess file that is in there already and it said that with the exception of the "Options+FollowSymLinks", so I added that line in. Could that be it? Is there something I could try next?

Thanks so much!

[ChadBreezy]

Looking at this I would definitely say or question the actual .htaccess rewite. It's a little clearer to me that your site lost back-links or page flow. Also the domain rank is an important metric of "authority". This is the stuff related to your website's actual content. Backlinks "deep or inner links" to various pages helps bolster the home page and "domain authority score". So I believe the actual 301 redirect technique is in question.

I know you said you did a redirect in the html files direct. I have never learned or heard of that technique (an example would be great aka markup/code); however, if your website is on an Apache Server, you would need to create .htaccess file and use this code:

Options +FollowSymLinks 
RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^newdomain.com 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Redirect /yourdirectory http://www.newdomain.com/newdirectory // for any other unquie content you want to redirect manually

*this is the way to do it, you can always Google or YouTube a video to show how to setup a .htaccess file on your server or on your cpu and then some special settings in filezilla (or whatever ftp software you use) so you can see the file. In FTP software .htaccess files are hidden, so you would create it and go nuts trying to locate the actual file. Filezillia I know has a feature or setting to unhide it so you can transfer it to the route of your server.

Let me know if this works!

[fsvatousek]

Hi, thanks for your response. Yes, I did a 301 from the old domain to the new domain and the redesigned website. I had initially redirected the site using code in each of the html files, and that was fine, and my rank was climbing with the new site for awhile, before I did the 301 through the host. I went to ahrefs and copied and pasted the results below. I'm an SEO newb, so I'm not sure how to analyze the results.

Old Site:

URL Rank: 0Ahrefs Domain Rank: 0.17Backlinks: 58
Referring domains: 1

New Site:

URL Rank: 7.9Ahrefs Domain Rank: 0Backlinks: 3Referring domains: 1

[ChadBreezy]

Hi Quick question, did you redirect 301 to new domain? I tried to read this, but I am just a tad unclear.

In theory a 301 to all or the exact anchor structure should pass all your page juice; however, sometimes doing this will enact a filter that spot checks for a link building footprint that violates Penguin Algorithm.

I know this sounds like a stretch, you might want to audit the link building you did initially. You can use Ahrefs (they have a free version) or if you want to take it to the next level use Authority Labs. They have great tools and reporting to help you look at your back-links.

If you have a ton of exact anchor matches and the same type of links on the same sites (site-wide-links), this can serve as a signal that could of had some of the links devalued.

The last option is if your previous url had exact anchors for keywords your ranked for. I am assuming you were able to obtain a branded url and this could affect to.

Reach back out to me, I can chat a little to help you hone in on the real issue.