Rankings Tanked since new Site redesign land new url Structure ? Anything Glaringly Obvious I need to check ?
-
Hi All,
I've just checked my rankings and everything on my eCommerce Site has pretty much tanked really badly since my new URL structure and site redesign was put in a place 2 weeks ago.
My url structure was originally long and had underscores but we have now made it clean, shorter and use hyphens. We also have location specific pages and we have incorporated these into the new url structure.Basically it now pretty much follows the breadcrumb trail on our website.
We were originally a general online hire site but now we have become niche and only concentrating on one types of products, so we got rid of all the other categories/products and pages we do not deal with anymore.
Our Rankings issue , was only bought to light in the most recent MOZ Ranking report so it's looking site google hates our new store.
Someone mentioned the other day, that Google may have been doing a Panda/Penguin refresh last weekend, but I am surprised to have dropped like 20 to 50 places for most of my keywords.
We have set up the 301 redirects, We have also made the site alot smaller and set up a few thousand 404's to get rid of a lot of redundant pages . We have cut down massively on the thin/duplicate content and have lots of good new content on there. We did new sitemaps , set up schema.org. , increase text to code ratio . Setup our H1-H5 tags on all our pages. made site mobile responsive.. Basically , we are trying to do everything right.
Is there anything glaringly obvious , I should be checking ?.
I attach a Short url link if anyone wants to have a quick glance- http://goo.gl/7mmEx
i.e Could it be a problem with the new urls or anything else that I should be looking at ?.. I.e how can I check to make sure the link juice is being passed on to the new url ?
Or is all this expected when doing such changes ?
Any advice greatly appreciated ..
Pete
-
Many thanks to everyone for their comments and help on this. I will def. take all on board and will have a read of your blog post as well Andy.
I did see lots of 500, 522 errors in GWT but that could be related to my CDN (Cloudflare) so will investigate that as well.
hopefully things will sort itself out.
Many thanks
Pete
-
I feel your frustration! You spent months planning & removing any type of old SEO tactic, and your rankings have tanked. I know it's a little late since you've already launched, but the first thing I have to say is how important it is to set the right expectation whenever making large site updates - especially those including URL rewrites. In my experience, it can take anywhere from 1-4 months to see a turnaround, but there are of course things you should be doing in the mean time.
You mentioned removing a lot of duplicate/thin content pages & letting thousands 404 - rather than creating so many broken pages (thus losing all possible link equity from those old pages), I recommend 301 redirecting them to the most relevant new page. So 50 pages with thin content about 'carpet cleaning equipment' should be 301 redirected to /cleaning-equipment/carpet-cleaners.
Other things to consider if you haven't already:
- updating all internal links
- updating all external links on sites you own (social!)
- stepping up paid ads at least until rankings turn around
- stepping up other inbound marketing tactics - email marketing
- stepping up social engagement, especially on Pinterest! Think of all the homeowners/DIYers/potential customers on that site!
- generating new content that will engage your audience & also build quality links
- ideas from this article: http://moz.com/blog/domain-migration-lessons
I hope this helps!
-
I've gone through several large relaunches in recent years. I kept bullet point notes on what should be done to avoid ranking decline & wrote about it on my blog, hope it helps - http://www.andy-maclean.net/seo-website-relaunch-checklist/.
If results fell off a cliff, my 1st port of call would be checking the redirects were handled correctly, nothing untoward is going on with your robots.txt file and check GWT for any significant issues.
Andy
-
Hi ,
We used do wedding hire aswell but we disavow those links we could not get removed and tidied up our link profile where we could. We have a few directory listings which we have kept but they are for citation purposes.
Thanks
pete
-
I'd look at your link profile. You have a strong connection to weddings which is not your niche, along with suspect directory listings.
-
Dear Pete,
i just checked your website with nibbler: http://nibbler.silktide.com/en_US/reports/www.bestathire.co.uk
Perhaps there are some things here which you can use to your advantage. Indeed it is possible that you were hit by one of the updates. This could be because of your backlink profile (maybe) or for some other reason which unfortunately may not be clear. All I can say at this moment is to keep doing good things and rankings might return in the same fashion as they disappeared (I've had that happen once or twice).
Good luck.
Regards
Jarno
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
-
How to rank a page on established site quickly
Hi, I'm looking for information about how I can rank an e-commerce category page quickly from a link building perspective. It usually takes me 6-12 months to rank these pages within the top 3 spots with link building, but I would like to get results faster. My site is established for more than 10 years and performs well in Google organic search. Here is what usually works over a 6-12 month time span: 15-40 links within articles on DA 15-60 sites, built within 6-12 months More than 75% of the links are from blogs Variety of anchor text Combination of follow/nofollow Deep links to product pages within the category we're trying to rank Might be important to note that it was easy for us to get category pages listed in DMOZ categories, when it was still around but it didn't seem to play any role in getting ranked faster. Note: We only build links on real sites with real traffic and decent performance metrics. No PBNs or other crap sites. I'd sincerely appreciate it if anyone can make any suggestions or point me towards helpful info. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0 -
Wrong URLs indexed, Failing To Rank Anywhere
I’m struggling with a client website that's massively failing to rank. It was published in Nov/Dec last year - not optimised or ranking for anything, it's about 20 pages. I came onboard recently, and 5-6 weeks ago we added new content, did the on-page and finally changed from the non-www to the www version in htaccess and WP settings (while setting www as preferred in Search Console). We then did a press release and since then, have acquired about 4 partial match contextual links on good websites (before this, it had virtually none, save for social profiles etc.) I should note that just before we added the (about 50%) new content and optimised, my developer accidentally published the dev site of the old version of the site and it got indexed. He immediately added it correctly to robots.txt, and I assumed it would therefore drop out of the index fairly quickly and we need not be concerned. Now it's about 6 weeks later, and we’re still not ranking anywhere for our chosen keywords. The keywords are around “egg freezing,” so only moderate competition. We’re not even ranking for our brand name, which is 4 words long and pretty unique. We were ranking in the top 30 for this until yesterday, but it was the press release page on the old (non-www) URL! I was convinced we must have a duplicate content issue after realising the dev site was still indexed, so last week, we went into Search Console to remove all of the dev URLs manually from the index. The next day, they were all removed, and we suddenly began ranking (~83) for “freezing your eggs,” one of our keywords! This seemed unlikely to be a coincidence, but once again, the positive sign was dampened by the fact it was non-www page that was ranking, which made me wonder why the non-www pages were still even indexed. When I do site:oursite.com, for example, both non-www and www URLs are still showing up…. Can someone with more experience than me tell me whether I need to give up on this site, or what I could do to find out if I do? I feel like I may be wasting the client’s money here by building links to a site that could be under a very weird penalty 😕
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ullamalm0 -
Why is my site not ranked?
Hey, does enybody have an idea, why my site www.detox.si is not ranked for the KW detox in www.google.si (Slovenia). It is being indexed, but it does not rank and i have no idea why. Best, M.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spletnafuzija0 -
How to change a site without loosing ranking .
How to change a site without loosing ranking .I have a WP site for my own company .locally i have good ranking for few keywords .but I decided to change site theme and improve site contents further .but still i am not sure how to change these thing and doing without loosing ranking .expert advices welcome .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Help me choose a new URL structure
Good morning SEOMoz. I have a huge website, with hundreds of thousands of pages. The websites theme is mobile phone downloads. I want to create a better URL structure. Currently an example url is /wallpaper/htc-wildfire-wallpapers.html My issue with this, first and foremost is it's a little spammy, for example the fact it's in a wallpaper folder, means I shouldn't really need to be explicit with the filename, as it's implied. Another issue arises with the download page. For example /wallpaper/1234/file-name-mobile-wallpaper.html Again it's spammy but also the file ID, is at folder level, rather than within the filename. Making the file deeper and loses structure. I am considering creating sub domains, based on model, to ensure a really tight silo. i.e htc.domain.com/wallpaper/wildfire/ and the download page would be htc.domain.com/wallpaper/file-name-id/ But due to restrictions with the CMS, this would involve a lot of work and so I am considering just cleaning up the url structure without sub domains. /wallpaper/htc/wildfire/ and the download page would be /wallpaper/file-name-id/ What are your thoughts? Somebody suggested having the downloads in no folder at all, but surely it makes sense for a wallpaper, to be in a wallpaper folder and an app to be in an app folder? If they were not in a folder, I'd need to be more explicit in the naming of the files. Any advice would be awesome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-wanna-bs0 -
URL structure + process for a large travel site
Hello, I am looking at the URL structure for a travel site that will want to optimise lots of locations to a wide variety of terms, so for example hotels in london
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onefinestay
hotels in kensington (which is in london)
five star hotels in kensington
etc I am keen to see if my thought process is correct as you see so many different URL techniques out there. Or am i overthinking it too much? Lets assume we make the page /london/ as our homepage. we would then logically link to /london/hotels to optimise specifically for 'london hotels' We then have two options in my mind for optimising for 'kensington hotels': Link to a page that keeps /london/hotels/ in its URL to maintain consistency ie A. /london/hotels/kensington or should we be linking to: B. /london/kensington/hotels/ (as it allows us to maintain a logical geo-landing page hierarchy) I feel A is good as the URL matches the search phrase 'hotels in kensington' matches the order of the search phrase, but it loses value if any links find these pages with 'kensington' in the anchor text, as they would not really strengthen the 'kensington' hub page. /london/kensington Ie: i land on the 'kensington hotels' page and want to see more about kensington, then i could go from /london/kensington/hotels
to
/london/kensington quite easily and logically in the breadcrumb. I feel B. is the best option for now.. Happy to I am only musing as i see some good sites that use option A, which effectively pushes the location (/kensington/ to the end of the URL for each additional niche sub page, ie /london/hotels/five-star-hotels/kensington/) Some of the bigger travel sites dont even use folder, they just go:
example.com/five-star-hotels-in-kensington/ Comments welcome!!! Thanks0 -
New Domain Name For Site That Ranks Highly on Key Terms
Here's my problem -- which is actually a pretty good problem to have. My client is a speciality service provider in an extremely competitive field. It charges 3 to 5 times what others do for providing a super-premium level of service. It doesn't have -- nor does it want -- many customers. I can't go into details, but let's just say the business model is a bit like the charity or premium newsletter publishing model. It is extremely hard to recruit new members -- but once recruited, members tend to stay for a long time at high price points. Personal referral is key. As result of my efforts over the last 90 days, the client's SEO results have skyrocketed. After a couple of false starts, we have focussed on key terms the target demographic is likely to search, rather than the generic terms others in the industry use. We have also had great success with a social media strategy -- since the few people likely to be interested in paying such high prices know like-minded folks. For the first time, my client is getting "walk in" prospects. They are delighted! But they are not really walk-ins. They have already found the site -- either through SERPs or Facebook or Twitter. Now we need to get to the next level. Here's the problem: the client's domain name sucks. It is short, but combines an acronym with one of the words in its long-version name. It uses the British spelling version of the long name fragment, even though most Canadians now use American spelling. And it is a .ca, rather than a dot.com So I think we have to bite the bullet and change to the long, dot com version of the name, which is available and has the additional benefit of having embedded within it a key search term. I am basically an editorial/content guy and not a tech guy. The IT guys at my firm are strongly encouraging me to make the change...in very "colorful" language. We can certainly do 301 redirects at the page level. But I would like some additional validation before proceeding. My questions are: how much link juice might we lose? I've seen the figure of 10% bandied around. Is it accurate? might we see a temporary dip in results? If so, how long would it last? what questions did I forget to ask? What additional info do you need to offer informed advice ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanielFreedman0 -
New sites what is the first things to do?
Hi Guys, If you have a baby of a domain which is only a few months old what should be the priorty for getting establish once all the on site stuff has been done? I know the directories are not as important as they use to be but is there a top list that should be worked through steadly to get the new site setup on? Kind regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ao.com0