Dramatic drop in Domain Authority
-
I have a client who has reported a drop in Domain Authority from 16 to 1 in a matter of a few weeks. Also, MOZ was reporting links, but now none!
I know there were some issues with the recent MOZ index update. However, this sounds like something else. Anyone got ideas on where we should start looking?
-
Hey Andy,
Somewhat heartening to know we're not alone, but I share your pain!
My client went from a Domain Authority of 16 in December to a DA of 1 after moving to https. They have finally bounced back to 11, but it has taken 3 months AND they still only have 2 referring domains linking to the https version.
There are 53 referring domains still linking to the http version. In fact, this has risen from 40 referring domains in the last month. So how can the number of referrers to http be increasing, when there is an https verion? I just don't get it!
Anyone know (a) how this can happen and (b) how to address the issue?
-
Hi,
We're experiencing a similar issue. We did have a DA of 27 now 16, a huge 11 drop since our change to https in Feb. Our competitor changed to https in September and has gradually dropped 32 to 20 but only by 4 this month.
It's making little sense when our links are still higher as well as other metrics - but we now have the lowest DA compared to our competitors.
-
Definitely looks like something to do with http/https...
Just checked the domain in ahrefs (http and https):
- The http version has 102 links from 45 referring domains
- The https version has 'no data' for backlinks or referring domains
I also noticed in ahrefs:
- The http version has a Domain Rating of 28 and a URL Rating of 20
- The https version also has a Domain Rating of 28, but a URL Rating of only 3
Although all the http pages appear to be redirecting to https, it seem that the backlinks have been lost.
If this is the case, can they get them back? And if so, how?
-
The challenge is I've only just started with this client, so I don't really know what has/hasn't been done over the last few months.
What I can see is:
- They moved from http to https on 18 December 2016
- A number of keywords then lost their rankings, but almost immediately returned on the https site
- Although there were ups and downs, looking at a sample of 20 keywords, on average they moved up 1.5 ranking positions
So does it sound plausible that the switch from http to https could also affect DA?
-
Hmm, I look after 7 websites. Haven't done any link building on any of them, but one maintained its DA, one dropped from 10 to 1 and the others all dropped a bit but not as dramatically. Most competitors have also seen some drops.
DA is helpful as a guideline, but I wouldn't use it as a KPI because it is a relative metric.
One of the things you could do is manually check those links that showed up in OSE before and check whether they're still there. Other than that, if you are sure that something is wrong, go through everything you've done in the past couple of months and any changes that have been made to the website to see if any of them caused any issues.
However, I still think that if your rankings haven't gone down and your traffic haven't suffered, I wouldn't assume there is an issue purely because the DA has gone down.
We have seen huge increases in organic traffic and conversions over the past 6 months but our DA has gone down.
-
Yes, I read that post before.
Unfortunately this client's primary competitor has maintained their DA of 19. So I suspect (the client is certain) there is something else going on. So I need to know where to start digging!
-
This sounds exactly like the problem many have seen after the recent API update. I would suggest reading this topic: https://moz.com/community/q/is-everybody-seeing-da-pa-drops-after-last-moz-api-update You'll find a few more in the Q&A section but this one has a really helpful reply from Rand Fishkin.
We also saw one domain drop from 10 to 1 and I have seen someone else here mention a drop from 12 to 1. I for one am not going to worry about it for now, fairly certain it will get fixed with the next update which is expected in a little over two weeks.
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
-
Gradual Increase in Domain Authority After Domain Migration But No Improvement in Organic Traffic Yet
We migrated our domain in early April and simultaneously added an SSL certificate. Everything was done by the books. All redirects implemented perfectly, very few errors. Google notified via Search Console. Despite all steps being done perfectly our domain authority dropped from 24 to 8. Organic traffic dropped from about 80 per day to about 10. Each month domain authority increases by 2 or 3. We are now back up to a DA of 16. But no improvement in organic traffic yet. At what point should organic traffic start to return? Hopefully the consistent improvement in DA is a good sign. I have been told that adding SSL and moving the domain at the same time was a very bad idea. We are starting link building next week. Hopefully that will help further. Any ideas as to when this situation will improve? Needless to say it has been awful for our business.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
How Can I Redirect an Old Domain to Our New Domain in .htaccess?
There is an old version of http://chesapeakeregional.com still floating around the web here: http://www.dev3.com.php53-24.dfw1-2.websitetestlink.com/component/content/category/20-our-services. Various iterations of this domain pop up when I do certain site:searches and for some queries as well (such as "Diagnostic Center of Chesapeake"). About 3 months ago the websitetestlink site had files and a fully functional navigation but now it mostly returns 404 or 500 errors. I'd like to redirect the site to our newer site, but don't believe I can do that in chesapeakeregional.com's .htaccess file. Is that so and would I need access to the websitetestlink .htaccess to forward the domain? Note* I (nor anyone else in our organization) has the login for the old site. The new site went live about 9 months before I arrived at the organization and I've been slowly putting the pieces together since arriving.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smpomoryCRH0 -
When should you redirect a domain completely?
We moved a website over to a new domain name. We used 301 redirects to redirect all the pages individually (around 150 redirects). So my question is, when should we just kill the old site completely and just redirect (forward/point) the old domain over to the new one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | co.mc0 -
Sub domain on root domain
Hello,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dror999
I have a question that I can't find a good answer on.
I have a site, actually a "portal"/ "directory" for service providers.
Now, for start, we opened every service provider own page on our site, but now we get a lot of applications from those providers that thy want sites from their own.
We want to make every service provider his own site, but on sub domain url. ( they don’t mind… its ok for them)
So, my site is www.exaple.com
There site will be: provider.exaple.com
Now I have two questions:
1. can it harm my site in SEO?
2. if one from those sub domain , punished by google because is owner do "black hat seo" , how it will affect the rood domin? It can make the root domain to get punished?
Thanks!!0 -
Keyword Frequent On and Drop Off
Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me. I am currently doing SEO for a client’s site, over the past few weeks the keywords have gradually gone up steadily. One of the keywords however continues to jump on and off rankings. For a few days it will jump up to 23<sup>rd</sup> in Google Rankings, but then it will completely drop of the radar, not even in the top 200 anymore. I’ve gone through the site to check if there is anything wrong and stuck to guidelines offered here on SEO Moz but I’m stumped to figure it out. The Keyword has a page that helps target it, there is no stuffing, all I can think is if there are bad back-links coming in to us that Google that continues to push down the rankings. Can anyone help shed some light on the situation for me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kal-SEO0 -
Microsite as a stand-alone site under one domain and sub-domained under another: duplicate content penalty?
We developed and maintain a microsite (example: www.coolprograms.org) for a non-profit that lives outside their main domain name (www.nonprofit-mainsite.org) and features content related to a particular offering of theirs. They are utilizing a Google Grant to run AdWords campaigns related to awareness. They currently drive traffic from the AdWords campaigns to both the microsite (www.coolprograms.org) and their main site (www.nonprofit-mainsite.org). Google recently announced a change in their policy regarding what domains a Google Grant recipient can send traffic to via AdWords: https://support.google.com/nonprofits/answer/1657899?hl=en. The ads must all resolve to one root domain name (nonprofit-mainsite.org). If we were to subdomain the microsite (example: coolprograms.nonprofit-mainsite.org) and keep serving the same content via the microsite domain (www.coolprograms.org) is there a risk of being penalized for duplicate content? Are there other things we should be considering?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marketing-iq0 -
Simple ways to boost Domain Authority
Hi, Any simple methods to boost Domain Authority? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
How do I list the subdomains of a domain?
Hi Mozers, I am trying to find what subdomains are currently active on a particular domain. Is there a way to get a list of this information? The only way I could think of doing it is to run a google search on; site:example.com -site:www.example.com The only issues with this approach is that a majority of the indexed pages exist on the non-www domain and I still have thousands of pages in the results (mainly from the non-www). Is there another way to do it in Google? OR is there a server admin online tool that will tell me this information? Cheers, Dan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlaidler0