Site is losing traffic after relaunch
-
Hello,
We've just relaunched this site in the last several days, and we're seeing some small (but stead) traffic decreases, as well as engagement decreases. We're aware that page speed (about 4 seconds from a non-cached browser) and some 404s are an issue, our team is currently working on both. But we're really looking for some constructive criticism here as to what we need to improve.
Other issues to be aware of: lots of our social counts went back to 0s, as lots of URLs changed, and it wasn't possible to migrate comments from the old system, so those have gone back to 0 as well. We wonder if this might be affecting both users and search engines perception of the site.
Your input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul -
Paul,
I would also add, as kevbudmonroe says, big site changes can create flux which can soon be recoverable, or better, on its own.
Im sure your scouring the analytics for clues but if you havent already look at your intelligence reports in Google Analytics - they might throw up something you didnt think of.
Good luck,
Andy
-
Hi Healther,
Thanks for your response.
1. There was no downtime whatsoever.
2. Yep, the comparison shows us that:
-
Direct traffic is down, just slightly, though there is a trend. The downward trend is still within normal bounds. I believe it will soon a be beyond these bounds, however, as there appears to be a user experience issue. Site speed being one, but would appreciate input on any others you might be able to identify.
-
Referral traffic is within normal bounds, some ups, some downs.
-
Organic traffic is where the site is taking the hit. The trend is downward, though not drastically so. Might site speed be the crux of search / engagement issues? Or do you see anything else in the site that might cause a downward trend in search traffic?
-
-
No problem Paul, hope it helps, let me know if you have anything to add the list, ill credit it back to you.
-
Other issues to be aware of: lots of our social counts went back to 0s, as lots of URLs changed, and it wasn't possible to migrate comments from the old system, so those have gone back to 0 as well. We wonder if this might be affecting both users and search engines perception of the site.
Yes, anytime content changes and it gets crawled it will influence rankings/perception. However, it does not mean you will necessary lose any positions.
Also, any site migration you will typically drop in traffic (unless it's a small site with all the correct redirects). It happens, but as long as the traffic doesn't drop significantly--you did your job. Just keep monitoring it.
-
Hi Andy, thanks for the checklist. Going through it now to make sure we've got all these bases covered.
-
Hi LoudNoise.
1. was there any site downtime during the migration?
2. Have you compared traffic sources before and after the migration to isolate the source of the problem?
H
-
Heres a relaunching a site SEO checklist I did a while back which may help.
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
-
Is having a site map page necessary?
Hello all! So I know having a sitemap XML file is important to include in your robots.txt file. I also know it is important to submit your XML sitemap to Google and Bing. However, I am wondering if it is beneficial for your site's SEO value to have a sitemap page displayed on your website? Or is this just a redundant action if you have already done the above two actions with your XML sitemap? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | Myles920 -
Internal linking for small site
I have a site with 13 pages, 6 are product pages, 5 are free tips pages (the other 2 are the home page and contact form). Currently I have the navbar at top of site with a "products" dropdown menu for the 6 product pages and a "Tips" dropdown menu for the 5 tip pages. All categories except the contact page are at the bottom as breadcrumbs, the homepage is "home" and the rest are relevant user friendly keyword anchor text. So I have 2 more pages to ad to "Tips" and am wondering whether to have a new 2nd level tips page that links to a 3rd level of 7 different tips pages, or keep it shallow as it is, with only 2 levels from the homepage to the other (now 13) pages, with a potential of 22 pages in the foreseable few years? (and some graphics work to make it user friendly like how Zappo's has categories to the side on each of its drop down navbar menu's and non-link text categories for its bottom of page breadcrumb links) Can those aforementioned pages linking to each other in the footer dilute link equity? (I think that's one of the primary reasons I'm curious). What do you think of this: http://www.dbswebsite.com/blog/2012/08/08/internal-linking-101-5-best-practices/ (I guess I should no follow my contact page), could it be better to have a 2nd level page for "Tips" to get more equity to that page rather than across all 7 tips pages? I have read around about this on here (hence how I found out about Zappo's) and elsewhere and wanted ask to make sure.
Web Design | | Zoolander0 -
Will updating our site from ASP .NET 3.5 to ASP .NET 4.0 negatively affect SEO?
I've checked out some of the other posts related to .NET upgrades, but none specifically address ASP .NET 4.0. I understand that there are many advantages to upgrading, but as with any change made to site code I want to be 110% positive that this upgrade will not affect how Google ranks my client's pages. Since the URL extension isn't changing (will remain .aspx), I'm thinking that there won't be much of an affect on SEO at all. In fact, I'm making the argument that the upgrade will only improve page rank. Anyone go through this upgrade and experience any immediate benefits or disadvantages? Thanks for your help!
Web Design | | FreightTEK0 -
Worth Splitting Up Main Site into Several Microsites?
The company I work for offers a variety of very different products, that are sold to different audiences. Right now (and for the past 4 years) all the products have been listed on one main website. Over the years, we have accumulated over 200,000 links and rank relatively well in most of the product-specific keywords. Still, for business purposes we really feel that having a unique site specific to each product would be more beneficial than having them all on one site. What are the pros and cons of making a move to different subdomains from a main site. (i.e. instead of www.cleanedison.com/solar we would set up a solar.cleanedison.com)
Web Design | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Best Way To Have HD Videos On Site That Will Work On Mobile Devices
Hi, I hope someone can help me with this. I am working on a site for a client who works at a video production company. They want to have a fair few HD videos on there site but also for the site and videos to be viewable on mobile devices. I have got a responsive wordpress theme and the site is beginning to take shape. I am wondering however how I can best get the videos to display on mobile devices while maintaining a good load speed. Until now I have been using amazon S3 which stores and feeds the videos and I use Easyvideoplayer to embed the videos. The problem is they do not appear to show up from mobile devices when using wordpress. can anyone suggest the best way for me to still feed the videos from S3 but get them to display on mobile devices. oh, they are private videos so they cannot be placed on youtube.
Web Design | | jensonseo0 -
Branding site
We are starting a new used car site in latam, and we are in the process of developing the brand, part of the team would like to have the "auto" (spanish for car" in the name and some no. The question is, form a SEO point of view, how strong signal is to have the string auto as part as the URL, and can you have a complete unrelated url and have several URLs with the auto string on it pointing in a 301 way to the non unrelated brand name as a way around? (sorry about my english, I hope you can understand the question) PS, yes, there are a lot of queries involving auto in our target market.
Web Design | | Bligoo0 -
Mobile Site Pages: Word Count Help
Hi there I am doing a mobile website for a client and they asked me what the dieal word count would be per page. They are SEO conciosu but we are not doing SEO on this site. I would just like to know a general rule of thumb. Regards Stef
Web Design | | stefanok0 -
Recommendation for a company to make a site more mobile friendly?
Hiya, We have a client who uses us for SEO, and a separate company for web development. They have a fairly large site on a bespoke CMS. They're happy with the site, but the user experience on mobile devices is not right. Can anybody recommend a company specializing in that area? Preferably a UK company but not essential. Thanks 🙂
Web Design | | SteveOllington1