We mapped 301's, uploaded htacces, submitted sitemap and still TANKED after redesign?
-
Hi All,
We had some great rankings on store.jrdunn.com since 2006 and we switched to just http://jrdunn.com with cleaner url structures about 13 days ago. We were on Volusion now Magento.
We mapped out a couple of thousand of 301's and carefully choose very similar landing pages on the new site. Uploaded an htcaccess file and submitted sitemap in GWT.
We have been correcting 404's and watching GWT like a hawk.
We dropped on several almost all of our great terms from page one to page 14 or 15 on the new site. We don't even rank yet on our own brand terms ?!?.
ORGANIC traffic has dropped more than 50%.
The only thing in our plan that we couldn't execute was using the "we moved" tool in GWT because they don't allow switches from subdomains to be entered. Bummer!
Do you think missing that one thing caused the plummet? In retrospect perhaps we changed too many things at once ie hosting, cms and going down to root url.
Anyways, I don't know what we can do from here but we'd sure be silly not to ask! Anybody's suggestions or past experiences with this situation would be huge!
Thanks so much in advance,
Sean
-
Yes, it really is a good video! I had the honor of Everett respond to one of my own QAs. By the way, what a nice website you have there! I'm actually in the watch niche as well.
-
Joseph what a great video. Truly had some actionable things for us and I highly recommend for business owners too! Thanks.
: http://moz.com/webinars/ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues as Everett Sizemore
-
Hi Marie,
Thanks so much for your input. What an amazing group of people here. We will check everything but pretty sure is wasn't an algorithm update since we didn't switch till the 9th and old site traffic was fine. Regardless we will be vigilant with your suggestions.
Right now I have to say Maximilian Peters nailed a lot of technical issues that needed correcting. Did I say this is a great site with tons a bright people. As a business owner, not an expert, this is huge!
Marie, thanks again
-
Thanks Marie...
Sean, you can read Marie's "Unnatural Link Penalty" articles on Moz.com....
http://moz.com/ugc/what-is-an-unnatural-link-an-in-depth-look-at-the-google-quality-guidelines
-
"Lots of pages like this and this on other websites pointing multiple links with big money anchor text like "engagement rings" at your site. These types of pages on other sites can trigger Penguin and Unnatural Links penalties. "
I haven't had time to take a deep look at your site but you mentioned that you made the switch to the new urls approximately 13 days ago. That would mean that the switch was around October 9. There was a refresh of the Penguin algorithm on October 4. I would perhaps have a look at your analytics data for organic traffic and see if it is possible that the drop happened on that day (Oct 4 or 5). It may be that this is a Penguin issue rather than a site change issue.
I'm not saying 100% whether this is the issue, but it's worth looking into.
-
Have you been watching your redirect log to see if there are any errors there? I would take a look at http://phantomjs.org and automate the redirect rules you have and watch the log file.
Also, go ahead and take a look here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/rewrite/rewritemap.html which is faster then the 301s you have in your htaccess.
Also for magento seo, you're going to want to watch this: http://moz.com/webinars/ecommerce-seo-fix-and-avoid-common-issues as Everett Sizemore done a lot with eCommerce and magento. He goes through common issues.
Good luck!
-
OK... Good to know.
I think that an "education" section like that would be a great way to earn some social shares, acquire some links and help customers. I know that as a GG, yours would be superb. Good to see you getting into the SEO of your site.
-
Yes jrdunnblog was our blog we started many moons ago but hasn't been too active lately and jrdunndiamonds is actually another store with that ironically has nothing to do with ours. He and my father share the exact name!
-
Egol,
Thanks for your response and providing us some additional actionable information! Much appreciated.
Best,
Sean
-
Why did the drop occur? I don't know.... but I see quite a few things that google does not like.
** Lots of pages like this and this on other websites pointing multiple links with big money anchor text like "engagement rings" at your site. These types of pages on other sites can trigger Penguin and Unnatural Links penalties. I would stop this type of spam immediately. You might need to have these pages taken down or links removed if you have been hit with Unnatural Links or Penguin problems.
** Many of your designer and product pages have standard text on them that is used on many many sites across the web (over 100 here). This type of duplicate content can result in your pages simply being filtered from search or a Panda problem. These must be rewritten with unique and substantive content if you want this site to perform well.
** Lots of pages like this and especially this that have almost no text on them. These are linked from your top level navigation - not a sign of a rich website with content of value to the visitor. Lots of these zero content pages will trigger Panda problems. A big content investment is needed.
** Some old content is still in the SERPs. Although redirects were working, there were many duplicate content pages on the old CMS. Your rankings might come back after Google chokes all of this down, but for now you might be suffering because of this.
** Also lots of links in your footer that go nowhere. On the homepage footer look at "Gemstones" and Watches"... they go to. jrdunn.com/#
** jrdunnblog.com appears to be a satellite site created with the intent of manufacturing links to your primary site. Lots of dupe content on jrdunndiamonds.com such as gemstone descriptions.
What is causing your current problems? Any one of the above could be the cause or a combination or things that I didn't notice.
For more information on diagnosing traffic drops see http://www.mytrafficdropped.com/
-
Maximilian,
A huge thank you for pointing me in the right direction and taking the time to respond! It looks like we certainly have our work cut out for us if we are to have a successful selling season. Oddly enough these were some of the things we set out to prevent during development but I was not knowledgeable enough to confirm it was done properly. Thanks again!
All the best,
Sean
-
Hi Sean,
The problem with Magento is that out of the box its not particularly that SEO friendly. There are quite a few canonical issues you get using just out of the box, caused by a variety of things such as sort= pages, duplicate category/product pages, duplicate home pages etc.
For example you have a duplicate home page which is indexed in Google here : http://jrdunn.com/home
There are duplicate pages caused by pages such as sort pages:
http://jrdunn.com/designers/marco-bicego.html?mode=grid&p=4 A duplicate of http://jrdunn.com/designers/marco-bicego.html (just sorted different)
Also having a quick look at your site in the index you have hundreds of duplicate home pages indexed. Some of these look like they are being caused by redirects from the old site and the fact that 404's are not correctly configured on the site, and others from search parameters on the new site.
The 2nd result from the Google search above is http://store.jrdunn.com/SearchResults.asp?searching=Y&sort=5&search=basha+pink&show=240
Which is one of the old site URLs which redirects (via a chain of redirects) to a page on the new site:
http://jrdunn.com/?searching=Y&sort=5&search=basha+pink&show=240 Which is a duplicate of the home page. This looks like non existing page and should return a 404 status, but you don't have 404's correctly configured, as any URL with a question mark in is a live version of the home page:
e.g: http://jrdunn.com/?TypeAnyThingHere
Also if you look on page 2 of that Google result above, you will see some URLs that are caused by the sort/search function of Magento and again are duplicates of the home page:http://jrdunn.com/?searching=Y&sort=5&search=tacori+diamond&show=160 This is really on scratching the surface of the problems that Magento can cause. You really need to carry out an extensive onsite audit, or perhaps consult with a Magento specialist.
Also you need to check the 301 redirects you have set from the old site, as you have all those invalid redirects from the old site that are going to non existing pages on the Magento site.
I hope this is clear and helps give you a starting point for your troubleshooting.
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
-
Are slides how's etc the new Splash Pages?
[How did Moz know that my question was about this?!] I've just completed an audit of nearly 50 websites in the tourism industry and 90% had a slideshow, large image or video taking up more than the initial screen on the fairly large screened Chromebook that I'm using. I'm advising them all to ditch this and am often getting resistance from the site owners and their web developers. I know that these can be better optimized for page load speed, which is poor for most of these sites, especially on mobile devices; but from a usability standpoint, are these affective at drawing in users? Do users take the time to view these? Are they annoyed at always having to scroll down to see if there is anything else useful on the homepage? I think they are like the splash pages of the past: poor for usability and SEO. I've advised to at least make sure that the images are sized so the top of the page fits any screen (some of them do resize well for mobile devices, but maybe not laptops/desktops), include text with calls to action and click through to relevant content. I've been noting that they aren't media businesses selling images or videos, so they need to get their offerings to the top of the page so that users can see and engage more quickly. Anyone have any stats or experience on this? Thanks, Ann
Web Design | | anndonnelly0 -
Are slides how's etc the new Splash Pages?
I just did SEO audits of approx 50 websites in the tourism sector. Nearly all had poor Google Pagespeed ratings, partly down to that, among other factors. I also feel that slideshows,, large images and videos in headers are poor for usability. I say get the content people need to engage with in front of them asap Are there any stats or studies that can provide insight on this? I've been telling those with these designs to keep an eye on bounce rates and let that guide them
Web Design | | anndonnelly0 -
Website Form Doesn't Work for Visitors from Google Search App
I've got a strange issue where if visitor is viewing a website from within the Google Search App, the app doesn't seem to be able to handle online forms. The form relies users on entering data, which is then POSTed to an external booking engine site. Normally this works fine, except when Google Search App is acting as the browser, the post payload is empty and the URL breaks. We're a bit stumped as to how to move forward. So far the only lead is that Android users can override having the app behave as a browser - but doesn't seem like iOS users can. Any additional ideas/tips are welcome here - thanks. 🙂
Web Design | | mirabile0 -
Should I do multiple 301 redirects?
We launched our website less than a year ago. We had another domain name and business name. I created 301s from the old domain to the new domain, that are still in place now. We are in the process of restructuring our current site which would result in pages getting a new title and URL to match. Essentially it would look something like this:
Web Design | | MAVENTRI
-- olddomain.com/page1 --> newdomain.com/page1 --> newdomain.com/newpage I recently checked the analytics and it looks like we are still getting traffic redirected from the old domain. What is the best way to handle these redirects? Should I redirect a redirect?0 -
ECWID Ecommerce Sitemaps (Lack of)
Does anyone know if the lack of sitemaps on ECWID built sites is a negative for SEO? Does Google somehow index these sites and do they penalize because sites can't include the urls in sitemaps? Also, any idea how to build a sitemap to include ECWID shopping carts?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Image URL's and naming
We're re-platforming on Magento and wondering about our images. 1. Should I be concerned about 301 redirects for my images. 2. Is there a "best practice" path for images? or is just the name important? Right now, all our images are in /meta/images/sm or /lg or /xlg. Since we're re-platforming, we're wondering if we should change the urls. But, I'm assuming this would require all of them to have 301 redirects and with all the other redirects, I'm not sure this is really feasible. thanks for any suggestions on this.
Web Design | | centralvacuumstores0 -
Please help. can't change widgets in wordpress
hey everyone, i am having a weird problem. for some reason. all of a sudden (without me changing ANYTHING) my widget page in the admin dashboard will not let me edit anything what i mean is, i login, go to the widgets page, and then the dropdown menus that you drag widgets into will not let me expand to drop widgets in them. was there a wordpress update i missed? who should i contact? what if i delete the theme and re-install. will i have to change ALL the settings back again?
Web Design | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Why is there no sitemap.xml for SEOmoz?
I noticed that SEOmoz does not have a "root" sitemap called sitemap.xml. On the other hand, there do appear to be sitemaps for various sections of the such as http://www.seomoz.org/blog-sitemap.xml I was planning on having a root level sitemap that referenced difference sections of my site (blog, support, etc.) but I'm a little concerned that this site itself doesn't seem to be following that practice. Presumably this website is submitting the individual section maps to Google directly since they aren't linkable through sitemap.xml?
Web Design | | schof0