Traffic drop 98% in two days
-
I changed my theme on April 12th and within 24 hours my traffic plummeted 98%. I have also seen a huge difference in my keyword ranking. A few things have been tweaked, but with no results.
I need to get to the bottom of this fairly quickly. Do you have any recommendations of a trustworthy someone I could hire to dig deeper and find out what the %#^!$@ is going on? I didn't see that SEOmoz does the "hire and let us check it" thing.
Of course, if anyone has any free suggestions...I'm open to those as well.
Thanks
Heather
-
Yes, that sounds really plausible. Thanks for explaining that to me! I'm passing your comment on to my programmer for him to take a look.
I have a few "tech smart" people I know, I'll ask them to take a look as well - Wisdom in many counselors!
Thanks so much!
-
I'm willing to bet that the reason you are seeing a 98% drop in traffic from simply changing a theme is that the Google Analytics tracking code was not properly installed on the new theme. I know you already mentioned that you checked with your programmer and didn't find any problems with the tracking code itself, but I can see that the GA account numbers are two different accounts. I checked the source code of a page using the current theme as well as a cached version from the old theme and the Google Analytics tracking account numbers are different.
This is the page in question - http://www.incredibleinfant.com/safety/pacifier-use/
**Current theme - ** _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-28262936-1']);
**Cached theme - ** _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-32310484-1']); (Google cache from April 5th, 2013)
So if you are looking at the Google Analytics data for the 323 account, then that's why you are seeing a 98% drop in traffic once the new theme was installed. The actual data should be captured in the 282 profile, which you hopefully have access to.
And it's not surprising that you've noticed some rankings drop since that often happens when doing a site overhaul if the site architecture, internal linking structure, on-site SEO are not kept exactly the same. This decrease in rankings is likely only temporary as the search engines will recrawl and reindex the new versions of the pages.
Hope that helps!
-
Matt, the old theme was custom. I'm just going to remove the squeeze page entirely and see what happens. That way the homepage will be the blog roll. I've also added the meta description for the blog page. Thanks.
-
Those are great suggestions Matt! Thank you! I will send those to my programmer and see if I can add a blog link on the squeeze page and see if that helps also.
Perhaps it's the combination of these other issues AND the squeeze page that tipped the scale...
-
I will go through the plugins idea, Moosa and check that. Good idea. thanks
-
That's true there isn't Federico. The blog is being relaunched. Since I'm not currently adding new posts, the homepage is a squeeze page.
I had it set it up that way for about 2 months before this dip happened, so I'm doubting that's the issue. It was gaining in traffic actually.
-
I have a couple theories but I'm having trouble finding a cached old page. What theme DID you have?
I'm going to posit a few theories and maybe some direction for you to check out.
First, there is definitely a problem here somewhere.
On this link: http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog/page/2/
I see: Sunscreen, Muppets, Bad Parents, New Foods, Breastfeed, Earn money at home,
On this link: http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog/page/3/
I see the same exact posts.
Same on page 4, page 5.
Also, according to your archives, you have one May post - the Sunscreen post. But
http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog/
is showing Muppets most recently. It's not picking up your posts or updating correctly
Also, I see 43 validation errors and some warnings. Usually these aren't a big deal, a bit of coding oops here & there. Yours are not what I normally see.
Some of the worst errors here may be contributing to problems. I'm not sure how the new theme compares to the old but this one looks like it has some coding issues - one of which may be causing Google to not like your site as much. (Imagine if you turned all your H3s into H2s at once. Google would probably not like that. Same if you went the other way.
The fact that the homepage doesn't link to the blog is probably "stopping" any juice from flowing through. You have over 6000 links pointed at your homepage and about 30 pointed at the blog. A tiny link on the squeeze page from the home to the blog may make all the difference.
The actual blog link (http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog/) doesn't have a meta description at all. This really isn't good and it should have one. You are using Yoast so this should be a simple fix. If you used to have one (ie. it was built into the theme) this could hurt. I know description isn't an SEO "factor" but not having one at all likely is, especially if the old one was related to your content.
I think your pagination issues and some of your validation errors are likely the issue, as is the theme change - I'm sure it changed either your headers, important bits of code, etc. and lacking the link from homepage - yeah, that would not help.
Hope the direction helps!
-
I really don’t think that the problem is with indexation as when i search for post title i still can see the post appearing in the search results...The only different thing is when I use this simple search “site:www.incredibleinfant.com” I see categories are appearing in the search results instead of the post titles... which is kind of different then usual.
I can be wrong but is there any plug-in that you was using in the older theme and actually not using in the current theme? Just wondering!
P.S: Idea by Fede also makes lot of sense to me!
-
Hi Heather,
There's no link in the homepage to your Blog...?
First thing you should do is remove that page and have the blog as the index page.
Then you can see what happens.
-
I've had a programmer check the code, and so far they haven't found any issues with the analytics implementation or noidexing. Not sure about the malware.
I've also taken your suggestion and contacted Marie Haynes for a consultation estimation. Thanks!
-
Sorry, I should have included the URL...it's late and my brain isn't functioning...
the website URL is http://www.incredibleinfant.com - but that is a squeeze page while I do a re-launch.
to see the back door, go to http://www.incredibleinfant.com/blog.
This squeeze home page was in place for months using the old design and Google didn't seem to have a problem indexing my articles and bringing me traffic.
Thanks
-
That is a traffic drop so steep and fast that it probably extends beyond Google. It could be...
bad analytics implementation
malware
unintentional noindex
If this was my site I would hope that I could hire Marie Haynes to look at it.
-
Post or PM the URL in question. So that me and others can provide some thoughts.
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
-
My Ave. position and ranking is dropping!
Hi, I added canonicals last two days, and made a tiny change is our meta titles. (adding a secondary keyword). Now my ave. position and visibility has dropped very much. Can it be canonicals or is it the keywords? Can canonicals affect the website so quickly? My other question is can it be temporarily so should I wait more? how long? I should mention that our website content is not really good and I'm working on it. When I added meta tags we had a big jump in our ranking and then we stopped getting better,. But now we are going down! Can it be the content? Sorry I know that it is actually all, but i do not know which one matters more and do not understand why it happened immediately after adding canonicals. Our website is: www.pacificsmoke.com Appreciate your advice.
Technical SEO | | PSI.Account0 -
301 redirect to WWW on a 2 year old website with good SERPs and organic traffic?
Hi everyone, Recently someone pointed out that my website can be accessed in both ways i.e. by typing www.example.com or example.com. He further added that Google might identify this as duplicate content and penalize my website. So now I'm thinking about 301 redirection from non WWW to WWW using htaccess method. But my website is 2 year old now and I'm getting some decent traffic from Google. Will this redirection have an adverse effect on my rankings? Is there any other way to resolve this issue? I don’t want to lose my current rankings or organic traffic. Any help would be very much appreciated. P.S. Currently Google index my website pages with WWW.
Technical SEO | | nicksharma040 -
Combine two websites or keep them separate after Penguin 3 ranking drop and gain
Since 1995 we had one website which combined our wedding and portrait photography business.(website A) Three years ago we created a new website and new domain name for the portrait photography side. (website B) We did not delete the portrait information from website A. Both sites were ranking well on page one. After Penguin 3 website B is no longer ranking at all. Website A is still ranking well and one of the original portrait pages on the website A is now ranking on page one also. I am wondering what to do and considering the below options: 1. Should I go back to a combined wedding and portrait site? (and delete website B) 2. Should I create a "301" from the original portrait page on website A that is now ranking, to website B that is no longer ranking, and delete all portrait content from website A? 3. Will having a combined wedding and portrait site be harder to rank as they are competing against each other, or will they help each other rank? Any comments or advice greatly appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | annaberg0 -
Two of Pages Have Been SendBoxed
Hello, I was number 1-2 for my local keyword term, but now im nowhere, those two urls dont even show up in Google search results, my other pages DO, so that is obvious Google sendboxed them, i dont remember doing aggressive non quality link building, and its not a competitive term, since i was number 1 in Google for over 3 months or so i checked this tool and found that two of my urls are in sendbox http://www.searchenginegenie.com/sandbox-checker.htm I was never sendboxed before, can you help me how can i get out of this, since its my client's website, and i have to get those pages up as soon as possible Thank You
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
Rebranding and New Domain Effects on Search Traffic
If we are to change our branding and set up a new domain name to match that branding, we will need to set up redirects for all URLs. The new website would exactly match the old. Using HTACCESS we can redirect all URLs fairly easily. Will this exercise cause use to lose authority?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
My Website Ranking is terribly drop
So sorry I really need your all help 😞 I'm really frustrated and stressed. For my website http://www.cma-academy.edu.sg , it has been ranking on Google 1st page (with the keywords "design course/design courses") for the past over 6 months and the traffic was really good... But it has been almost 2 months since the big drop... my ranking all is gone in just a week and now it's even not on the top 50.. While my competitors websites are stand stil. 😞 I seriously really want to cry because of this.. And I'm sure there is nothing much wrong with my SEO to be abandoned by Google like this and Google still index my webpage, but the crawling rate is so much slow than before.. I really need some help from the expert, especially from seomoz.. Please help me in this, I'm willing to answer any questions as well...
Technical SEO | | AngieDang0 -
301 Re-direct as referral traffic
So we have this site set up in analytics as www.domain.com and then analytics is showing the referral traffic as coming from domain.com and I just wanted to make sure I'm right in the theory that Google is counting the 301 as a different site and showing what is otherwise direct traffic as traffic coming from domain.com. If that's wrong let me know. Otherwise I'll just go through with that theory since no one on any forums that I could find had an answer to it.
Technical SEO | | KateGMaker0 -
Are article sites a good way to generate traffic and links
I read a lot that article sites are a great way to generate links and traffic but i would like to hear from people on here to see about their experience with article sites. I have tried article sites and i have to be honest that most of them are no follow links and have also not generate any traffic. I have written over 30 articles for free article sites with no traffic coming from them and this has been done over a eight month period can anyone recommend any good article sites that can produce traffic and also ones that produce do follow If you feel i am wasting my time putting articles on free sites then please do tell me
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860