Strange rankings on new website
-
HI All
My website is 10 years old, and has decent rankings. The domain is www.advanced-driving.co.uk
I have recently had a major overhaul of the site, before it was very outdated, with lots of duplicated content. My main keywords are "advanced driving course" and "advanced driving courses" both of which I am on page 1.
However, since I have been live with new site - (5 days) I am not ranking for some easy win keywords. I have submitted new content thought webmaster tools, and whilst some content is ranking, others are not. The content not ranking is fresh and unique ( have used copyscape on all new pages).
For example my homepage is on page 1 for "advanced driving courses london" - around rank 6. So I hand made some content titled advanced driving courses london to provide more of an exact match, outlining our courses in London and the routes we take - http://www.advanced-driving.co.uk/defensive-advanced-driving-courses-london/
However, this page which is unique does not rank at all....I have done this with another website and it worked well, but google is not understanding this at all.
Also I am now on page 1 for "advanced driving course" but not for "advanced driving courses" - well I am but the page for the plural keyword is a page not really related - surely Googles semantic search should realise course and courses are the same!
I suspect that Google is still getting used to my new website? No errors or anything in Webmaster tools...
Can anyone confirm this - or outline if I have done something awful..!!
Thanks
Rob
-
Another strange (frustrating!) thing is that there are other websites with little content, few links and a low Moz rank who outrank me for locational based terms i.e: "advanced driving courses london" "advanced driving courses berkshire" "advanced driving courses cheshire"....
We all offer these courses around the UK, but Google doesn't "get" my site does this - I have even created a locational page search accessible from the homepage....
-
Hi Dirk
The only fluctuations was when I had to delete a large number of pages when I took over the site as they were in conflict with my business, but other than that no massive drops in ranks. All the pages do include Analytics, and I can see all in Analytics too...Some visit the forum, other the skid pan training page, some driving tips etc etc....
-
Hi CleaverPhD
Here is my responses:
1. These pages (advanced driving regions, driving lessons) were actually in conflict with my business (advertising competitors) and so had to be deleted. I removed them from Wordpress, and are no longer on the website so I could not 301 them...I have only recently bought the website.
2. You can see the traffic reports and Driving Instruction from homepage - if you click "Tips" and then at the footer of that page you will see both.
I am doing more internal linking but to be honest I think, from the outset, the website is clearly linking...maybe I am wrong..
-
Two things I found when using the Wayback Machine to look at your site
- Did you setup 301 redirects from old to new content?
https://web.archive.org/web/20150225025506/http://advanced-driving.co.uk/
I pulled links to various and random advanced driving groups and they 404ed vs 301
http://www.advanced-driving.co.uk/advanced-driving-lessons/region5/
http://www.advanced-driving.co.uk/advanced-driving-lessons/region6/
Also on the page for driving lessons
https://web.archive.org/web/20150219123145/http://www.advanced-driving.co.uk/driving-lessons/
I pulled links to various and random advanced driving lessons and they 404ed vs 301
http://www.advanced-driving.co.uk/driving-lessons/norwich/
http://www.advanced-driving.co.uk/driving-lessons/liverpool/
Looks like you did not properly migrate the URLs from the old site to the new site. You should be seeing 404 errors in Google Search Console and so that can be a starting point to find what pages need to be updated. It sounds like you tracked rankings for pages on the old site, start with those URLs and make sure they are 301ed to the correct new URL.
- Site structure
On the new home page, you are not linking into any of the pages such as your Driver Instruction and Traffic Reports page. Likewise, your header and sidebars used to link into your content. Your new design is cleaner, but you pretty much blew up your previous internal linking structure. Google will use your internal links to find pages to crawl and also to determine what pages are important on the website. I see much much less of this on the new site. You may want to consider updating how your internal linking is structured so that you are showing your users and Google what your most important pages are.
Good luck!
-
If you check your rankings in Search Console - do you see major fluctuations after the relaunch?
How do you track traffic - in the forum you seem to use Google Analytics. The other pages however do not contain an analytics tag.
Dirk
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
-
New Website SEO Implications
Hi Moz Community, A client of mine has launched a new website. The new website is well designed, mobile friendly, fast loading and offers a far better UX than the old site. It has similar content but 'less wordy'. The old website was tired, slow, not mobile responsive etc but still ranked well. The domain has marketing leading authority and link metrics. Since the launch, the rankings for virtually every word has plummeted. Even previously ranked #1 words have disappeared to page 3 or 4. New pages have different URLs (301s from the old urls are working fine) and still score the same 98% (using the Moz page optimiser tool). Is it usual to experience some short term pain, or are these rankings drop an indication that something else is missing? My theory is that the new URLs are being treated like new pages, and that those new pages don't have the engagement data which is used for ranking. Thus, despite having the same authority of the old pages, as far as user data is concerned, they are new pages and therefor, not ranking well - yet. That theory would make logical sense but I'm hoping some experts here can help. Any suggestions welcome. Here's a quick checklist of things I have already done: complete 301 redirect list
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | I.AM.Strategist
New sitemap
Submitted to console
Created internal links from within their large blog
Optimised all the new pages (img alts, H1s etc) Extra info: Platform changed from Wordpress to Expression engine
Target pages now on level 3 not level 2 (extra subfolder used)
Less words used (average word count per page from 400+ to 250) Thanks in advance 🙂0 -
How to improve my rankings?
Hi guys, I'm targeting a specific country NZ to start off with as my site is only new 3months old - whilst I'm trying to rank for various keywords such as - psychic readings, online psychic readings, love psychics, clairvoyant, astrology, tarot card readings etc I can see I'm slowly ranking around 18, 20,30,40 through my blog page, but nothing from the site. I know the site is content thin and were currently working on improving this, is there anything else you can suggest that perhaps I might need to be aware of? Or any tools I could use to go about getting information that could help put me ahead lol Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Looking for help with my website
Hi does any one know of a good seo company that will get results, i.e., fix site issues and get the site improving in the serps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
Coupon websites as affiliates
We recently started using shareasale.com for affiliate marketing and have received literally hundreds of applications from coupon websites wanting to become affiliates. Most we have not approved as the quality of the sites is poor. However, a few sites seem more legitimate. Could having these types of sites harm our seo in any way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unikey1 -
100% links within the website - could it rank?
Hi, If I create blog posts inside my website and link it back to my website, Would it still rank? I understand that its better to get links from the established domain. But I just wonder what kind of impact would my site have if the blog posts within my site link back to itself for ranking. Please let me know. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zsyed0 -
Web developer won't 301 redirect to my new website....what can I do?
I want to come away from our third party web developer and use a new website with different web developers, however the web developer wont 301 redirect the old url's to the new ones. Is he required to do this by law? Is there away of doing the 301 redirects without him? Any advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks,Tom
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CoGri0 -
Regional websites
Hi, I run 4 websites London, New York, Singapore and Dubai. Same company but some of our products are different in each region. Each domain is registered in the relevant region and I have google webmaster tools set so they know the location of each website. The problem is that our Dubai and US websites are appearing higher that the UK website in google.co.uk organic. Does anyone have any ideas why? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markc-1971830 -
Ranking A Website For Mulitiple Counties, Cities And Towns
Hello All, I am optimizing three websites for a services based company in the South Jersey Area. Of course within South Jersey there are certain counties, cities and towns I would like to show up for. For example- Pool Cleaning South Jersey Pool Cleaning Cherry Hill NJ Pool Cleaning Burlington County NJ Pool Cleaning Voorhies NJ Pool Cleaning. Do I need to create a page on my websites for every possible county, city and town I want to rank for? This would entail creating thousands of pages targeting these geographic keywords. I have seen other similar sites just list all the counties, cities and towns they service in the footer and it seems to work. Of course this would be beneficial for any business who is looking to not only rank in their home base but a predetermined radius around their home base as well. Thanks so much, Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wparlaman0