Technical SEO Question: Why is our new platform showing a small decline in traffic?
-
Hi there!
We are in the process of transitioning to a faster platform, and we recently moved a subset of URLs over. The subset that moved over saw a drop. We didn't change the URL pattern, or the content. The only thing that is different is the new platform. Here's a link to one of the URLs that is currently served from the new platform:
And, here is an example of a URL currently served from the older platform:
Any ideas why the newer platform is seeing a decline in organic traffic?
-
I would also look at how you are currently managing the sitemaps between the two platforms to make sure that the new pages have not been left out of the sitemap generation.
-
There are a lot of factors that could be contributing to this, for example, the tracking isn't implemented properly or implemented differently than on the previous platform. Or on the non-technical side maybe the search volume is down overall for that time period that affects that particular page, or your rankings decreased due to competition strengthening even if your site stayed completely the same... It's hard to say exactly without more precise details from Search Console, Analytics and so on.
If the dip isn't major, you know for a fact that your code is implemented properly, and the site loads much faster for your user base, you should likely go ahead and finish the complete transition. A low site speed is a conversion killer and a major factor that should be addressed.
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
-
Unexplainable drop in traffic
Hello Mozzers, I am new at Moz and certainly hope you can help me!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | svsanchez75
I used to consider myself very knowledgeable in SEO since I had hundreds or maybe thousands of keywords very well ranked on Google Guatemala (www.google.com.gt) for more than a decade. That was until a year ago: November 8th, 2019... On that date, all of my rankings plummeted, never to return. At first I thought it was just a hickup from the Google Algorithm, but as days turned into weeks I became very worried, so I started doing a bunch of things: Reworked the pages (except home page) to make them responsive (I used to have two versions of each page, one for desktop and one for mobile). Removed the ads from the pages to make them faster, thinking it could be due to the speed (even if my competitors sites were slower!) Fixed thousands of 404s Disavowed thousands of bad domains and spammy URLs (I never bought a single link but there were thousands of links from forums, theglobe network, etc) Removed more than 12,000 members from my own forum who had never posted anything: about 4000 of them just had created a profile to include a link to different extenral sites. Fixed a few other technical aspects... Nothing helped. In fact, my rankings have kept going down. My content is good and unique, my site has good DA but still I get outranked and buried by several sites which don't have as much information as I have. There are NO manual actions against my site according to Search Console. As I mentioned before, I have never bought any backlinks, so all of my links should be natural (although there were thousands of links to my forum from spammy sites which I disavowed). So, I am frustrated as I really don't know what the problem is. I am giving you 3 examples of Keywords and URLs of pages that were number one for years, and now are not even on first page, so that you can see them and tell me your thoughts about what may be happening: KEYWORD: VOLCANES DE GUATEMALA
URL: https://www.deguate.com/geografia/volcanes/Los-volcanes-de-Guatemala.shtml Note: was #1, now is on 5th page. Removed all the ads to see if it would help. KEYWORD: MINISTERIOS DE GUATEMALA URL: https://www.deguate.com/artman/publish/politica_ministerios/Los-ministerios-de-Guatemala.shtml Note: was #1, now is on 2nd page. Removed all the ads to see if it would help. KEYWORD: LEYENDAS DE GUATEMALA URL: https://www.deguate.com/artman/publish/misterios-leyendas/las-leyendas-mas-famosas-en-guatemala.shtml Note: Was #1, now is on 3rd page. It's stuffed with ads, as it doesn't seem to matter wheter my pages have ads or not, and since I lost my rankings on thousands of pages at least I can probably generate a little more income like that. Thank you so much for the help you can provide!0 -
SEO Migration Options
Hi Guys, We have a www.sitename.com.au domain name and looking to move into the US market, and other markets in the future such as UK, Canada, etc. We are reviewing our options. Currently the .com.au is ccTLD to Australia so won't perform well in US. It seems the best option at this stage is to get a generic domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) like a .com. Then create different sub-folders for each country for example: .com our main country .com/us/ target us .com/uk/ Then in Google Search Console don't set country targeting for entire domain but use Hreflang Tags to specify the targeting for each page? -- This seems like a complex strategy to execute so i just want to check if this would be a optional option? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cerednicenko0 -
I have rebuilt a website on a new domain and followed SEO protocol to maintain authority, but the results and rankings are declining.
We took over an account for a company called knightdoorservices.com who specialize in doors and windows in Edmonton, Alberta. We built them a new website on a new domain: knightdoorsandwindows.com. We did 301 redirects on all of the old URLs so that they now point to the new URLs so most of the authority should transfer over. Additionally, each page has a properly optimized title, h1 tag, a series of pertinent alt tags, and many instances of the focus keyword for that particular page. Additionally, the website loads quickly and has many high authority inbound links pointing to the domain. We have done this for many other companies and have seen their rankings maintain their position or increase. Is there something that I am missing for this company in particular? Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Web3Marketing870 -
Technical 301 question
Howdy all, this has been bugging me for a while and I wanted to know the communities ideas on this. We have a .com website which has a little domain authority and is growing steadily. We are a UK business (but have a US office which we will be adapting too soon) We are ranking better within google.com than we do on google.co.uk probably down to our TLD. Is it a wise idea to 301 our .com to .co.uk for en-gb enquiries only? Is there any evidence that this will help improve our position? will all the link juice passed from 301s go to our .co.uk only if we are still applying the use of .com in the US? Many thanks and hope this isn't too complicated! Best wishes,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TVFurniture
Chris0 -
To redirect or not to redirect, that is the question
I work for a software company that is redeveloping the website (same domain.) We have tons of content in the form of articles and documents for support, how to use the product better, case studies, and blog posts. I've downloaded a landing page report and many of these have low impressions and little or no clicks (some ranked high other very low.) Should I redirect all this content to the new site where some of it won't exist or forget about it because of the lack of juice? Is there a rule-of-thumb threshold for redirecting for content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody15969167212220 -
Negative SEO + Disavow
My site is very new (~1 years old), but due to good PR we have gotten some decent links and are already ranking for a key term. This may be why someone decided to start a negative SEO attack on us. We've had less than 200 linking domains up until 2 weeks ago, but since then we have been getting 100+ new domains /day with anchor texts that are either targeted to that key term or are from porn websites. I've gone through the links to get ready and submit a disavow... but should I do it? My rankings/site traffic has not been affected yet. Reasons for my hesitations: 1. Google always warns against using the disavow, and says "you shouldn't have to use it if you are a normal website." (sensing 'guilty-until-proven') 2. Some say Google is only trying to get the data to see if there are any patterns within the linking sites. I don't want the site owners to get hurt, since the villain is someone else using xrumer to put spammy comments on their site. What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ALLee0 -
Simple Link Question
Hi Guys, I will appreciate if you answer 1 small question..... Will our site benefit from that link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
Valuable website related to our business ---nofollow link--> PDF Doc(on second site) ---link to our site ---> Kind Regards,
webdeal0 -
Advice on further SEO
I am frustrated by a lack of progress for a major keyword I want to rank for. I have made several pages, optimized with Onpage and even a whole site but I can't seem to get my ratings up. I am hoping somone can take a look at my pages and efforts and offer me some advice... Keyword is "National Currency" One site is devoted to this keyword: NationalCurrencyValues This site is ranked 30th and is down 9... and this page on another site is devoted to the same keyword ranked 26th is: http://www.antiquebanknotes.com/National-Currency.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Banknotes0