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I have recently had a major overhaul of the site, before it was very outdated, with lots of duplicated content.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
-
Migration to a new domain
Hi everyone, So i have one project where I'm planning to move current content on new domain, two reasons: 1. It seems current domain has some google penalty (backlink related, not manual) 2. Client wants rebranding and already has domain with new brand name. So as content is high quality and there is no content related penalty from google, what would be the best way to migrate existing content without passing any penalty AND without Google treating it as duplicate content. If i do 301 i suspect any penalty there is might follow, if i just copy existing content it won't be original content, what is the best solution here? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joelsemy0 -
SERP Ranking
Hi everyone, I'm struggling to figure out why our website has dramatically changed and is ranking far worse than ever. We were top for around 10 keywords, and had over 4 high traffic keywords in position 1. I think the website needs updating (as it's magento 1.7), and that the competition is increasing. Taking our eye off the ball has been a huge mistake. Could anyone advise on what the next steps would be to start increasing to a better serp rank? These two are own main ranking pages:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mg33dev
https://www.mediagenic.co.uk/
https://www.mediagenic.co.uk/budget-roller-banner.html Any advice or pointers would be absolutely awesome. Thanks0 -
Website Indexing Issues - Search Bots will only crawl Homepage of Website, Help!
Hello Moz World, I am stuck on a problem, and wanted to get some insight. When I attempt to use Screaming Spider or SEO Powersuite, the software is only crawling the homepage of my website. I have 17 pages associated with the main domain i.e. example.com/home, example.com/sevices, etc. I've done a bit of investigating, and I have found that my client's website does not have Robot.txt file or a site map. However, under Google Search Console, all of my client's website pages have been indexed. My questions, Why is my software not crawling all of the pages associated with the website? If I integrate a Robot.txt file & sitemap will that resolve the issue? Thanks ahead of time for all of the great responses. B/R Will H.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
Ranking with subdomain - Urgent
Does anyone have any experience if it is possible to get a website ranking on a subdomain? I'm trying out a business idea and need to keep costs to an absolute minimum. I have a site which I designed in wix.com they give a free subdomain and I want to know if there's any chance of getting it to rank Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
We have a website that has awesome metrics but will not rank - any thoughts?
Our website www.mikestaff.com (Detroit wedding services company..djs, photographers, videography) has fantastic competitive metrics, as in we beat the competition at every ranking factor, but we are still buried in the actual SERPs We are trying to rank for similar/identical keywords as our competitors in almost each of the main categories of the site: specifically detroit wedding dj...photographer...videographer..etc. We also have a Chicago office that we are trying to rank the site for with specific chicago pages. The website makes you choose right at the beginning what market you are in - Detroit or Chicago. We have A grades on all of our main keywords and the pages that we are trying to rank. But again we are buried on the second and third page of the SERPs in most of these keywords. Help - Moz community :-)Any thoughts on what we might be missing? BceI0XR
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GT-Biz-Design0 -
Moving half my website to a new website: 301?
Good Morning! We currently have two websites which are driving all of our traffic. Our end goal is to combine the two and fold them into each other. Can I redirect the duplicate content from one domain to our main domain even though the URL's are different. Ill give an example below. (The domains are not the real domains). The CEO does not want to remove the other website entirely yet, but is willing to begin some sort of consolidation process. ABCaddiction.com is the main domain which covers everything from drug addiction to dual diagnosis treatment. ABCdualdiagnosis.com is our secondary website which covers everything as well. Can I redirect the entire drug addiction half of the website to ABCaddiction.com? With the eventual goal of moving everything together.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
My website is not indexing
Hello Experts As i search site :http://www.louisvuittonhandbagss.com or just entering http://www.louisvuittonhandbagss.com on Google i am not getting my website . I have done following steps 1. I have submitted sitemaps and indexed all the site maps 2.i have used GWT feature fetch as Google . 3. I have submitted my website to top social book marking websites and to some classified sites also . Pleae
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aschauhan5210 -
New Website.. From where to start with a SEO Plan ?
Hi.. We have got two SEO and link builders working here in the office, putting in efforts is not a problem. And we have been doing SEO for our websites since a long time and they all rank well. Since, I have signed up for SEOMOZ, which is the one stop with all the heavy duty SEO guys, so we would like to get some suggestions from the experts. Ok here is the question. We have launched a new website this week and we have got a new SEO client, whose website is 6 months old. 1. What should be a proper SEO plan for a new website ? Got any Plan PDF or Buleprint, which you can send me ? 2. For the client website , he is ranking on 4-7th pages for his 4 keywords. Whats should be the correct way or plan to start doing SEO for them and get them to the first page ? 3. I feel like, doing competitive analysis is lacking with us and we are not good at evaluating that step. Whats the bet way to do competitive analysis ? 4. We are looking to build more and more links to the website . Whats the best way to make links ? Got any SEOMoz Blog post link, which explain this better or any forum thread which has got the tricks for this ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qubesys0