Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Website rankings drop significantly after moving to new hosting provider
-
My website - www.isacleanse.co.nz has dropped from being top10 rankings for all of my keywords to not even being in top 50 after just checking now.
It used to be hosted on: www.1stdomains.nz
It got migrated to Sitground servers about a month agoSee attached screenshot - would moving hosting provider cause such a huge drop? Or would there be anything else I should be looking at ?
-
Now that I check rankings for isacleanse.co.nz (without the www.) the keywords are all ranking in the same spot they used to be... so what I can gather there is no issue but instead my 'rank tracker' for keywords within MOZ was updating the rankings for a www. when the rankings have now moved to the non www. site?
Does that make sense? I've now reinstated back the www. before the domain name as I prefer it this way.
I will still make those changes that you've mentioned above! Much appreciated
-
Make sure that you are doing 301 redirects from your www links to your new non-www links. This will tell search engines where the new pages are.
-
Not as important reason as the rest I mentioned. Correct all and will be fine.
-
Thanks for your responses Frank & Krzysztof!
From what I can tell the site has been migrated and is now showing as isacleanse.co.nz and it used to have a www. before it - would this be the reason for the drop?
-
Hi Sandi Matic.
Indeed, server location is in US and that matters.
On the other hand I see in google search result versions of your website: with www and without www. I see also this at the end of google results:
"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 89 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."
so this means you have some amount of similar content.In code I see this: but your website is dedicated to New Zealand right? Change this (and all other) to en-NZ. Setting hreflang can help too.
Also you have little amount of linking domains (weak or weaker domains after new penguin 4). Worth to do is linkbuilding.
Another errors are meta descriptions are part of main content, heading h1 doubled, etc. To check all, page by page seo audit is needed. Even if you had it before, now you have to fix those onpage things to get better serps/traffic.
-
I only see 2 reasons for your rank to drop like this after switching servers. Your site is slower after the move and your servers location(not sure about this one, maybe someone else can confirm).
#1 - Site speed is a key factor for ranking so if you had excellent speed and you switched to average speed, this could be one of the cause.
Did you notice if your site is slower after the move? And how long after the move did your rank start dropping?
#2 - If your server was in New Zealand and now it's, lets say in the US, there is an added respond time for people looking for you website in New Zealand.
Do you know in which country is the new server located in? A good CDN might help if that's the issue.
I hope this points you in the right direction to get your issue resolved!
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
-
Mergers & Acquisitions - Website Transition Good practice
Hi everyone, I was wondering if anyone has come across good practice for maintaining websites after a merger or acquisition where there needs to be an association between two websites of the two companies involved. For an acquisition, I'm considering moving the acquired company to a sub domain of the parent company e.g. aquiredcompany.parentcompany.com. On both websites there wmay be a prominant popup so visitors can switch between the websites if they have visited the incorrect one. One worry I have is the acquired company has some good rankings, which I want to keep. I will of course manage the process through 301 redirects. But I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this approach or can suggest any better solutions. Thanks in advance, Stuart
Web Design | | Stuart260 -
Website organic traffic unchanged, impressions took a 98% drop in the last week.
Hi all, I have a very curious predicament and I'd be grateful if someone could shed some light on the situation. As mentioned in the title, organic traffic to our website has remained unchanged, but organic impressions have taken a 98% drop in the last week. This happened suddenly over one day; on October 22, impressions were 700, on October 23, they were 500, and on October 24 they drastically dropped to 50. The next two days they were at 22 and then up to 35. Organic traffic, however, showed the normal "weekend drop" as of October 24, and is still showing normal level (even increased a bit) continuing into this week. These are organic impressions according to Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools. We did perform a complete site redesign a month ago. Could this be an effect from the redesign? We also noticed drop in Domain Authority, but our competitors suffered a similar (if not greater) drop as well, so we wondered if it could be due in part to the algorithm update. If anyone could shed some light on the situation I would be so appreciative! Thanks!
Web Design | | Joanne_Pendon0 -
E-Commerce Website Architecture - Cannibalization between Product Categories and Blog Categories?
Hi, I have an e-commerce site that sells laptops. My main landing pages and category pages are as follows:
Web Design | | BeytzNet
"Toshiba Laptops", "Samsung Laptops", etc. We also run a WP blog with industry news.
The posts are divided into categories which are basically as our landing pages.
The posts themselves usually link to the appropriate e-commerce landing page.
For example: a post about a new Samsung Laptop which is categorized in the blog under "Samsung Laptops" will naturally link somewhere inside to the "samsung laptops" ecommerce landing page. Is that good or do the categories on the blog cannibalize my more important e-commerce section landing pages? Thanks0 -
Does a loading homepage animation effect rankings?
Our website ( panphoenix dot com) has a Javascript animation when you load it for the first time which takes just over 2 seconds to load. Does having this animation effect rankings negatively? Would appreciate your thoughts!Thanks Rob
Web Design | | roberthseo0 -
My Site Is Using A Lot of Hosting Bandwidth. Suggestions?
My website http://www.socialseomanagement.com/ is using tons of bandwidth. I received a message from the hosting company saying I exceeded my monthly bandwidth and it has only been a few days. Can anyone take a look and make suggestions? Thanks
Web Design | | JChronicle0 -
Self hosted or YouTube Hosted Videos for SEO?
I am trying to plug holes in my site and the one thing that is lacking is unique videos. I was wondering what is the best way to go about videos for seo purposes? Should I just post onto a youtube channel and then embed into my site or should I look to just place videos on my site with software or should I use any of the other venders out there like Vimeo? Not sure which is the best route. Any tips?
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Changing from Squarespace to Wordpress - Will I Lose My Rankings?
I have a friend who has a squarespace site that is giving him lots of trouble. For one, even though it is supposed to redirect to GreenSpaceConstruct.com...Bing and Yahoo don't seem to recognize this domain. Instead, they show greenlightconstruct.squarespace.com in the serp's. Oddly, Google shows the site as GreenSpaceConstruct.com. The site is ranking well for some terms. I'm afraid that converting to wordpress will hurt his rankings in the short term. If bing and yahoo are crawling this squarespace domain, and he moves it...is there a way not to just completely lose the rankings? Thanks for any thoughts. Much appreciated! Josh
Web Design | | JoshTurner0 -
How would restructuring the navigation of my website affect my rankings?
I want to restructure the navigation of my website for a few reasons: 1. It isn't intuitive/clear to the user 2. It is way too big, it has too many links and thus causes the number of links on many pages to be >100. 3. I want to get rid of file extensions as part of the URLs (.html, .php) 4. I want to achieve a "tree"-like navigation system, with categories, subcategories and so on. In the process of cleaning up my website, I had to 301 redirect a lot of duplicate pages, fix broken links, etc. I have a lot of 301 redirects already, and in the process of restructuring the navigation of my website I know I'm going to get more. Will the addition of new 301 redirects have an effect on my rankings? (I'm basically going to be changing all of the URLs) What kind of SEO effect will restructuring the navigation at the top of the page (reducing the # of links on the main menu) have on my site? What is the best strategy to implement in this situation?
Web Design | | deuce1s0