Why have we taken such a hit on page visitors?
-
One of our customers owns a stationary company, URL (http://www.costcuttersuk.com) which targets schools and education. In September my company launched a new website for our client with an external company providing SEO.
Since the switch the customers feels they have completely dropped from the rankings and from looking at the Google Analytics reports it has become apparent that they have taken a huge hit on the amount of traffic coming into the site, almost 500 fewer visitors per day.
What is interesting is that the average time spent on the website has increased as is the same with the bounce rate yet everything else has taken a drop.
The platform it has been built on is Opencart , The only thing I can thing that is causing the issue’s is the page load times. They are 62% slower on the home page would this have such a huge impact?
I look forward to hearing your feedback.
-
Yes, that's a lot of redirects. However, I wouldn't advise removing them just because Google has updated their index. You may still have a lot of backlinks pointing to the old URLs. If you remove the redirects, they'll be broken links.
Is it possible to use wildcards to cut down on the number of redirects?
-
Cheers Hutch, I will have a look into that.
-
Thanks for the feedback Laura, Our developer implemented the 301 redirects however I have been informed theres around 6000, 301 redirects in place on the website. My next question is would be are 301 redirects permanent? I assume once Google has indexed the new pages I can remove the redirects I am right in thinking this? If i am what is the time period that you remove the redirects.
I don't have a great understanding of what the other SEO company has carried out other than clearing any 404 errors, suggesting Meta Titles and descriptions for certain pages and suggesting our client add's new content.
The traffic was on a small decline before the new website went live, but it seem's to have carried on decreasing rather than increasing and companies that haven't been established for half as long with a much lower page rank and authority are appearing higher on the SERP's. Which is really frustrating.
I'll check out the Panguin tool.
Thanks again for your response.
-
Given what you've told us, there are any number of reasons why you have seen a dip in traffic. In addition to the load time (which would definitely have an impact, as Hutch says), I would check the following:
- Did you set up 301-redirects properly when you launched the new site?
- Did the internal link architecture change in any way with the redesign?
- What has the external SEO company done?
- When did traffic start to decline? Sharp decline? Gradual decline?
- Are there new competitors pushing the site down in the SERPs?
- Does the dip in traffic correspond to any algorithm updates? (Check the Panguin Tool.)
-
Your page has thousands of 301 redirects - this could be slowing it down and affecting ranking.
-
Increasing your load time by more than half will definitely have an effect on your rankings.
Instead of looking at traffic, why not look at conversions. There are ways of spoofing traffic that is no good, who cares if they lost 500 visits per day if none of those visits were buying their product or partaking in other conversion (email sign up, content interactions). I would look deeper into the traffic that is lost, see where it was coming from and what it was doing on the site to see if you lost useful traffic or not.
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
-
Too many on page links
Hello, I have a page that isn't ranking very well. http://nicontrols.com/uk/drives-motors/variable-speed-drives According to the MOZ research tools I have too many on page links. I believe most of these are a result of the advanced filtration options on the left hand side of the page. I don't want to remove the filters as they are extremely useful for customers but I am also worried about the number of links Anyone get any ideas about the number of links? Should I care?
On-Page Optimization | | DavidLenehan0 -
Local on-page SEO
If it feels like you are doing something wrong, then you 'probably' are... Local on-page SEO When optimising a page for local SEO, and trying tick all the usuals boxes, you find yourself adding words like 'golf clubs leeds' which sounds awful when part of a natural paragraph of text. Does Google recognise this poor use of grammar? We try to be as creative as possible, as not to offend the visitor, but it feels wrong... any advice? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | indicoll0 -
In-page Optimization check list....
Hey, Mozzers I have a question about optimizing a web-page. I was just having a conversation with our web developer about optimizing our website and which changes would make the most difference in affecting the SERPs as far as on-page optimization goes. I was explaining to her we wanted to optimize our pages in the following levels (ranked most important to least important): <title>: key word laden </p> <p>2) <H1> : key word in <strong>bold</strong></p> <p>3) page content: keyword laden as well</p> <p>The idea was to have three or four layers of keywords on the page. I work for a real estate brokerage and the context was the actual page of the property listing. So in this case, the keywords would be the address of the property. She explained to me that the the H1 tag is more important than the title tag.</p> <p>Does this ring true with you guys?</p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Why don't all my pages have On Page Optimization Reports
Apologies if this question has been asked a million times, but I can't find it. I have 35 pages, yet only 5 of them have generated On Page Optimization Reports. I know I can create them manually, but wondered if I've done something incorrectly? Iain.
On-Page Optimization | | iainmoran0 -
Limiting On Page Links
Right now, we have about 160 or so links on the home page. It's been recommended that we keep it to under 100, though that's not as big of a deal as it once was. Is it helpful to make a bunch of those links "nofollow" in order to preserve link juice? Is it going to make a difference, or be at all helpful? I assume it won't be harmful, especially as a bunch of them are to the same page but on different sections of the page. Would live your advice and thoughts! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | DeliaAssociates0 -
Ranking for specific pages
HI, Lets say my website is abc.com and my targeted keyword is abc for index page. Internal pages, like abc.com/apple.htm, abc.com/banana.htm. The targeted keyword for apple.htm is fresh apples, buy apples, and for banana.htm, fresh banana, buy banana. How to define these keywords in the campaign. Please suggest. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | younus0 -
Duplicate Page Title
Hi Guys, First off, it's an honour to be a part of this awesome community. I'm using WordPress and getting top 3 rankings for great keywords and I'm very excited, however my page titles are in this format "keyword optimised title here - site name here" eg: "This is my keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is another keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is a longtail keyword - this is the name of my blog" SEOMoz is reporting errors because of duplicate page title tags due to the "this is the name of my blog" being in every page title. Will this hurt my rankings? Thanks in advance and keep up the great work! Cheers, Troy.
On-Page Optimization | | TroyDean710 -
3 keywords optomize for home page. Should I create page with thoses keywords or leave it like this?
My online store home page, Furnace Filters Canada has 3 keywords with good ranking in google.ca keywords: ''furnace filters canada'' rank #1 position in google.ca keywords: ''furnace filters'' and ''furnace filter'' are on 5 or 6th position of page 1 in google.ca Those keywords are bringing most of the traffic to our site. To achieve this ranking, I had to use the On-Page Keyword Optimization, tool from seoMoz Questions: It is possible for me to create a page with the URL: https://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/Furnace-Filters or https://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/Furnace-Filter Can this improve my ranking with keywords like, ''furnace filters'' and ''furnace filter''? Is this a waist of time? If I decide to create a new page for optimization with, do I have to create one for singular and another one for plural? Creating a new page also mean removing, '' Furnace Filter'' in the home page title, until the new pages are index, I'm afraid to loss that 5th position in Google. Should I leave the home page title like it is now, '' Furnace Filter - Furnace Filters Canada - Online Shopping Store NOTE: we only do business in Canada, that is why Google.ca is more important to us Thank you, Jean Nichols
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050