Website Refresh - Lost Rankings
-
Hi, we refreshed our website a few weeks ago, with a new design.
The structure has changed and pages do have new URLs.
But the content, meta titles, etc have stayed the same and I have put 301 redirects in for all of the new pages (using the redirection plugin in word press).
I have found that pages which ranked in the top 3 in the past are now nowhere.
The page authority also shows as 1 for all of the pages.
Is there something we should do to get the rankings and page authority back?
Many Thanks
-
Did you ask Google to crawl and index your new URLs? You can do it from Google Webmaster Tools. Small thing, but it could help speed up the process.
-
Thanks for your reply, so it may be that it takes a while for Google and the Moz crawls to pickup.
We also added in some new web pages, as we have some new areas of services we provide.
How long will it take for those pages to start to rank better when searched for specifically?
A competitor has a similar page and is optimized like ours in the same way. Their page authority is 14 and ours is 1.
How long does it take to get from 1 to 14? is it weeks, months or years?
Many Thanks!
-
HI Daniel,
In theory 301 redirecting should pass the link juice directly to your new URL, but if the URL has never been indexed by Google, those 301's may take a period of time to get indexed and reflect. This is really a subject matter, I have heard 301's and site redirects working very quickly (like same day), and other times it has been a couple months. I "feel" like this has a lot to do with the sites original traffic and Google crawl rate. For example when SEOMoz became Moz, they were re-ranking relatively quickly. While sites I have worked on have in fact take several weeks to return to the SERPs.
What that really means is it can take awhile for Google to re-evaluate your new URL's, likely on their next index pass of your site.
It is also very important to note that just because your "old url" ranked in the top 3 does not mean the new URL will rank in the top 3. Google will re-evaluate the new url and place it in the appropriate spot. It does of course consider the link juice that your old URL had, but that does not necessarily mean it will rank the same. There are a lot of factors that go into the way page ranks.
I hope this makes sense and helps,
Don
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 do you find out all the keywords Google is ranking you for?
Hello, Is there anyway of finding out all the keywords that Google is currently ranking our website for so that we can then build on those keyword positions? Many thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions0 -
Domain authority decreased but rankings increased
Hello! I'm a bit confused. It seems the industry as a whole that my company operates in has taken a bash from the update a few days ago as all of the competitiors have taken a hit to their domain authority. What is confusing is that my websites rankings have increased as well. There has been a change to the robots.txt file in an effort to stop being crawled by SEMRush which is messing with my site stats but that is the only change. Thanks in advance, Ben
On-Page Optimization | | Ben-Cleaver1 -
Internal Linking From Blog to Website
Hi all, I'm just seeking opinions on something an external company have told us about linking from our blog to our website... Our website is; www.XYZ.com and our blog is www.XYZ.com/blog I add content to the blog on an almost daily basis and generally link on average 3 times from the blog (internally) to a various relevant pages on our website. Today I was told that by doing this I am 'diluting' the link juice which I understand but don't agree with... All I am doing is a form of internal linking which as far as I am aware is a good on-page technique? Just curious to learn other people's view on this... Many thanks Andy
On-Page Optimization | | TomKing0 -
Will it hurt my rankings if I change the permalinks so late?
I think I did something wrong in the past. My permalink structure is www.keyword.com/postname-keyword Now my website with over 1000 pages has this structure. Now I really would like to change it to a normal structure like www.keyword.com/postname But the problem is my website and its page have good authority and page rank and above 100k pageviews monthly. It will really have a big impact on my business if something goes wrong. Is it worth the risk to change it? Because now often pages who have nothing related with the keyword have the keyword in the permalink. I think this is really not good for the ranking of my subpages. Change or not to change?
On-Page Optimization | | vulonl0 -
Are flip books - pdf readers on websites SEO friendly?
I have a client with bar, most of their content is menus that are displayed in a flip book format. Is this content indexed by search engines, and if so, are they of any value for ranking?
On-Page Optimization | | SteveK640 -
Regarding Ranking.
Hi, Could anyone please advise me on how long would he take to get my website ranked in the top 3 results on first page on google. It's an university's website and close to no university's in Malaysia are doing SEO
On-Page Optimization | | navinan0 -
Looking for advice on rewriting page that is currently ranked.
Hi, we put up a page 2 years ago (available from our home page) that is currently ranking in top 5 for a few of the key words we built it for. The challenge is we did this quickly and know we can (and actually have) built out a better quality, informative page. The content while similar is completely rewritten. Does anyone have experience in rewriting low quality pages that are ranking well? Essentially we are trying to step up our game and build up our quality from a human perspective, but unsure what/if any would happen with our SEO and keywords we are currently ranking for. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | redfishking0 -
Rankings
The rankings have been in a pending status for several day. Is there a problem with the software? We are in the middle of our test month and need to be able to evaluate the software to decide if we will continue. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | Barb1230