Too many 301 Redirects caused lower rankings :(
-
1. Ok so I code my eCommerce site myself first
2. Then switched to Shopify and re-direct all my URLs (terrible mistake)
3. Then Shopify didn't do in terms of seo, so I switched to BigCommerce and re-direct all my URLs (Yes I know but at least this platform is much better)
I started getting 404 errors as you can imagine in webmaster tools after switching from Shopify and there were 504 of them. Why its too many because I realized that Shopfiy just creates so many urls for the same pages. One by one I re-direct them to their new destinations. As you can imagine my rankings dropped. As my site speed is now 5.5s at gmetrix. mobile 47 - desktop 80 on Google Site speed tool.
Looking at the links now, some of the 404's does not make sense to redirect. How should I approach this? Should I remove some of them if they were not used on web anywhere, no sites linking to that page and let them die in time? OR Should I keep them all?
I am giving some examples below, there are so many for each. Thank you all!
/account/login/
/blog/?page=7
blog/tagged/recipe
/blogs/news
/blogs/news?page=6
/collections/all/category-name
/collections/frontpage/category-name
/collections/frontpage/products/product-name
/collections/shop/category-name
/collections/shop/products/product-name
/product-name/
/pages/terms-privacy
/pages/frontpage
/products/product-name
/shop/products/product-name
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Couple of things -
1. Have you redirected from original website to the BigCommerce site and also redirected the shopify links to BigCommerce? The last thing you want is a chain like this - original > Shopify > BigCommerce
2. How long ago was this change? If this wasnt long ago then its probably best to wait for it get back up to the same/similar rankings as your original website. If you have done your redirects well, it should take a few weeks and the rankings should get back to normal.
3. Was there a structural and content change to your pages? If the answer is yes then its not really a straightforward migration. This is a complete new website you have got now that is not just a changed platform but different architecture and structure and maybe content. In this situation, its fair to say that there will be a lot of ranking changes. Was your original ecommerce website was handcoded by you and with shopify you used their templates?
4. As for 404, if there is no organic traffic going to these pages then you dont have to redirect them. You may have to spend some time looking at Google Analytics
A lot of times this happens when you switch from one platform to another, there is an impact on the organic rankings. There would be something performing differently which can impact your sites visibility. Like Jordan mentioned, I would also suggest that you should focus on improving the site speed.
- Malika
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What I would do first is look in Google Analytics and see which Organic landing pages are referring traffic. If those pages are showing a 404 error then I would redirect those pages. I think at this point you will need to prioritize your redirects and investigate ways to improve your site speed.
Use Google's page speed tool see where you are having issues and compress images, cache static resources, and minify HTML, CSS and javascript where you can.
I hope that helps some.
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