New site started ranking, lost ground after 301...?
-
Hi everyone. So we decided to re-brand a website starting with a fresh domain and fresh website (new everything).
The first 4 weeks the site was performing really well and started bringing organic traffic for several targeted keywords (small amounts, but something).
Around 5 weeks later, we decided to perform a 301 Redirect from an older site we had that really hadn't changed since 2007. As soon as we performed the 301, we started loosing ground on the keywords that were starting to perform. I may help to mention that we were targeting different keywords on the new site, versus the keywords/industry that were targeted on the older site... because we were focusing on another but similar industry.
Now, 10 weeks later we are still not showing up for the keywords that we were starting to make headway on in the first four weeks of starting.... any ideas why? suggestions?
The 301's were performed properly. We verified them, and we check Google WMT for any additional ones that may still be out there, but try to fix them as soon as possible. We have grown the site from just a few pages to over 60+ pages in the last 2 months with unique and fresh content targetting those keywords...
Thank you in advance
-
Any other suggestions/help on this? In my last post, I explained a little more in depth what the specific issue was. Please advice, thank you in advance.
-
Thanks Federico for the reply... the Company is still the same, but instead of just offering capentry services, we started offering full home improvement services... so we redirected our old (capentry specific) website to our new (home improvement).
So in the 1st 4.5 weeks the new home improvement site started to perform well for home-improvement related keywords... but after the redirect (which brought a lot of branded & carpentry traffic) the home-improvment keywords started fading away... for the past 2 weeks they have been non-existent.
We haven't done anything devious or sneaky to the site. There are no penalties or anything like that.
Could it be that because we redirected the carpentry traffic, that it thinks "well maybe I should just rank for carpentry"?...
We don't want to undo the 301 because it is the companys website, and we even through the trouble of cleaning up old content and moved over everything accordingly. We ended up with over 140 manually created 301s
Any ideas/suggestions?
Thank you
-
Was the old site manually or algorithmically penalized? As making a 301 from a penalized site to a clean site will most likely forward the penalty to the new site.
If is wasn't, then my next question is why are you doing a 301 redirect from a Website that isn't in the same exact industry nor is the same Website? As that could lead to another penalty called backdoor pages, which is using other sites (not related or not entirely related) to gain more traffic on your site.
I'd suggest you undo the 301 and see what happens. It could take a couple weeks to see the results of the 301 removal.
Hope that helps!
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
-
301 old site to new site?
I have client with an old site - www.bestfamilylawattorney.com - which had a lot of spammy links (and bad rankings). Instead of fixing those issues, we started a new URL - www.berenjifamilylaw.com - with new content and redesign. Should I do a 301 redirect from old to new domain? If the old site was being penalized, would a 301 transfer that penalty? I just want to make sure I don't end up hurting the new site after doing all the work to start fresh. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
If linking to contextual sites is beneficial for SE rankings, what impact does the re=“nofollow” attribute have when applied to these outbound contextual links?
Communities, opinion-formers, even Google representatives, seem to offer a consensus that linking to quality, relevant sites is good practice and therefore beneficial for SEO. Does this still apply when the outbound links are "nofollow"? Is there any good research on this out there?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielpressley0 -
Does blocking foreign country IP traffic to site, hurt my SEO / US Google rankings?
I have a website is is only of interest to US visitors. 99% (at least) of Adsense income is from the US. But I'm getting constant attempts by hackers to login to my admin account. I have countermeasures fo combat that and am initiating others. But here's my question: I am considering not allowing any non US, or at least any non-North American, traffic to the site via a Wordpress plugin that does this. I know it will not affect my business negatively, directly. However, are there any ramifications of the Google bots of these blocked countries not being able to access my site? Does it affect the rankings of my site in the US Google searches. At the very least I could block China, Russia and some eastern European countries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
When migrating website platforms but keeping the domain name how best do we add the new site to google webmaster tools? Best redirect practices?
We are moving from BigCommerce to Shopify but maintaining our domain name and need to make sure that all links redirect to their corresponding links. We understand the nature of 301s and are fine with that, but when it comes to adding the site to google webmaster tools, not losing link juice and the change of address tool we are kind of lost. Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WNL0 -
Does link equity to a page that is 301'd to a new domain pass juice on?
If we build some quality inbound links to certain pages, that are a later date 301'd to another domain, does any equity or juice get transferred across? Or is the inbound link's value wasted? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
SEO for New Web Site Launch
I am going to launch a new website with digital marketing included SEO, SMO, PPC, SEM, ORM services. Please anyone suggest me what would be marketing & brand promotion strategy for this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afycon0 -
Does Mobile optimised site improve ranking and how to index it faster?
Hi i have several question with regards to mobile optimised site: Does having a mobile optimised site improve ranking in SERP? How can we push/index mobile optimised sites to users searching on mobile sites faster? e.g. returning m.abc.com or abc.com/m to users seraching on mobile earlier.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FWSBIO0 -
Our site has been up almost 2 months and no rankings yet?
Our site is www.AkinsSeptic.com. We spent a lot of time on the site and have not received any rankings yet. Can you advise as to what we can do to get this site ranked at all. I know it needs a lot of SEO work and some links, however, it should rank mildly due to the low competition of keywords we are using. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormz0