URL no longer ranks after redesign, everything was done by the book. Can someone plz help?
-
Hey Mozzers,
After a redesign of our site we have a huge problem with 1 particular URL. We can't understand what is wrong with it. Our site was redesigned about 3 weeks ago everything was done to make sure the process was smooth. Content on the new url was exactly the same as before, title tags and meta descriptions were copy pasted, 301 redirects were set up. Our site has 47 pages and all other pages are still ranking the same way as they used to before the update but this one url has just dropped from serps or once a while is appearing on 2nd, 3rd pages.
URL in question is: https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service/
We are a MOZ pro client and have the data on where this url was ranking prior to the update. Keywords it ranked for #1position on page one- some examples ( car service to dulles, car service to iad, dulles airport limo service) and many more. The only thing that has changed was the url the old url was https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html
After the new design we got rid of the ".html" on all our urls, the funny thing is that all our 46 urls were updated the same way but only this url is experiencing this problem. Google search console shows that url is indexed and on Google but sometimes it does not show up on serps.
Can anyone please help? 20% of our business comes from this url and we are loosing real money everyday and I can't figure out was is wrong with it.
Thanks all,
Davit
-
This echoes what Thomas said but I'll weigh in anyway. This is your old URL: https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html. You say it has been redirected to the new page with a 301, which is only partially accurate. You need to install this Chrome extension which will allow you to inspect redirects and chains: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-path/aomidfkchockcldhbkggjokdkkebmdll?hl=en. Visit the old URL (http://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html) and you will see that it redirects no less than four times (instead of just once). Google probably didn't follow your redirect all the way through. This is your page's redirect path: https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html/ (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service/ (200) . Redirects should be A to B, simple. They shouldn't chain up like this
-
Hi Thomas, we are working on fixing the issues you mentioned right now. I will update you if it works. Thanks for your detailed analysis. It means the world to us.
-
You are facing problem due to redirection rule. You are saying you are redirecting as 301 but actually status code is 302. So you need to solve this issue first. http://prntscr.com/q9fbah
-
Hi Davit, I found the problem fix your servers redirect chains
Google recommends to not have more than 5 hops in a redirect chain. We found 6 hops. This could mean slower or delayed crawling as well as potential SEO problems caused by this.
Look https://i.imgur.com/w40qS3b.jpg
-
Your .html page
-
Fix your nginx config file.
-
https://cobwwweb.com/remove-html-extension-and-trailing-slash-in-nginx-config
Then this hits a 302 (will not pass Link equity)https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html/
| 302 | 302 redirect to:https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service |
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5730092/how-to-remove-html-from-url
Might be faster to use https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/224509547-Recommended-Page-Rules-to-Consider
<code>RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-f RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d</code>
checks that if the specified file or directory respectively doesn't exist, then the rewrite rule proceeds:
`RewriteRule^(.*)\.html$ /$1 [L,R=301]` [https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/page-with-to-without-extension/](https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/page-with-to-without-extension/)
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?(.*).(html)$ /$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule><ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule>Remove HTML Extension
There are a few different ways to go about removing the
.html
extension. I've found the following to work just fine:<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; }</code>
Then we have to make sure Nginx knows what files to look for, and for that we use the
try_files
directive. We'll look for a file with the current$uri
and an.html
extension, and if no file exists, we check for a directory with that name and serve the index. Otherwise, we render a404
error.<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; index index.html; try_files $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; }</code>
Remove Trailing Slashes
After that first step, we have a URL without a
.html
extension. However, if the file of interest was anindex.html
file, it could still be accessed via the name of the parent directory with a trailing slash.For me, for example, I was getting a URL at http://cobwwweb.com/page/2/, but I didn't want the trailing slash.
We have to remove the trailing slash after we have removed the
.html
extension.The gotcha here is that we have to alter the
try_files
directive to look for anindex.html
file first.<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; index index.html; try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; }</code>
Pulling It Together
To pull it all together, I'll share a slightly-altered version of my config for this site.
<code>server { listen 80; server_name cobwwweb.com *.cobwwweb.com; rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; root /path/to/project/root; index index.html; try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; error_page 404 /404.html; error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;</code>
Hey, regular site audit we'll find out more these problems. do you want one?
Hope this helps,
Let me know if not,
Tom
-
-
Hi Davit,You need to link internally from your current site
-
The page is an orphan according to Moz and only has when the mean pointing to it according to link research tools
-
You are #5 in the SERPS as on now I searched from New England
-
Google is not indexing the full page.
-
You change from Wordpress to?
-
https://web.archive.org/web/20170928065156/http://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html
-
LRT Power3
-
3
-
LRT Trust1
-
Backlinks 2M
-
Ref Domains 510
-
PAGE
-
LRT Power3
-
6
-
LRT Trust2
-
Backlinks 2
-
Ref Domains 1
-
Links
-
I will run a test and post if that's ok?
-
Have you checked Google search console will you try to make sure that it crawls it again. It appears that it's not very high priority page considering the last time crawled by Google was November 20
Hope this helps,Tom
-
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
-
Webpage is not ranking
https://www.nextheadphone.com/oneodio-a10-hybrid-review/ I just published a new article. Keyword is : OneOdio A10 Hybrid Review Before writing the article, I researched that This is Easy keyword. I should rank as soon as I publish the article. After publishing the article my Current rank is #32 Why its not ranking? Any idea
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NextHeadphone0 -
Can some one help how to fix spam problem. please see the attached file
Hi have spam link issue in my website at attaching report please help to fix this so my domain can get better. thanks. aEP1vVy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grbassi0 -
Please Help (Newbie)
Hello, guys and gals, I am new to SEO and I am vigorously trying to rank my site here in Michigan for my company and respective niche. I have had some luck as I took many days to learn the basic foundation and apply what i have learned, but even after so I have had zero luck with establishing domain authority, page authority or even seeing the slightest SEO rank improvements. could someone please help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charlesp31 -
Why is this site have a PR 0 rank? Anyone can figure this out? LegionSafety.com
Our site dropped in PR and we haven't done anything and not sure why the drop. Anyone have any recommendations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | legionsafety0 -
Rankings dropped - Why?
At the end of November a client site dropped significantly in the rankings. The drop effected almost all the keyphrases we monitor. Historically the homepage has always ranked higher than the sub-pages - however now it seems Google is no longer ranking the home page, and instead ranking the sub-pages, just far far lower down. Any ideas what could cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg0 -
Page Rank
Hi guys I have an ecommerce in prestashop (unfortunatelly I can not change it at this moment). I made all main activities both off and on the page. And actually it is working pretty well since I am up on the SERP for all the target keywords. BUT, the page rank still be 0. The site is about 2 years old. My main competitor has the same domain authority than mine, but he has a page rank > 0 Moreover I have more quality links then it has, but it is older Any suggestions? Many thanks Ciao Diego
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrelax0 -
Emergency Help...
Hello All, I'm trying to get a better handle on this, but any help would be hugely appreciated. Per my Pro account, i just found out that the keyword i was severely trying to rank for "Boston Wedding Phot*grapher" i just declined by over 40 positions. Just last week i was in the #3 position. Needless to say, this is extremely bad. I feel sick from it. This is my livelyhood. I recently hired a 'so-called' SEO expert to look at it, but i'm having my doubts. I'm using a php based site with a wordpress blog. He added a bunch of 301 redirects from pages that the crawler was complaining about to my .htaccess file. He also installed the following plugins: Link Juice Keeper NoFollow Free The SEO Rich Snippets Udinra All Image Sitemap WP Robots Txt WP-PageNavi Add Meta Tags These are essentially the only changes made. Does anyone see anything blaring and/or obvious? I could really really use some help. My blog link is : http://www.symbolphoto.com/blog/ I'm assuming it's the blog because that's where most of my site content is located. Any advice is hugely appreciated. TIA.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | symbolphoto0 -
URL Length or Exact Breadcrumb Navigation URL? What's More Important
Basically my question is as follows, what's better: www.romancingdiamonds.com/gemstone-rings/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (this would fully match the breadcrumbs). or www.romancingdiamonds.com/amethyst-rings/purple-amethyst-ring-14k-white-gold (cutting out the first level folder to keep the url shorter and the important keywords are closer to the root domain). In this question http://www.seomoz.org/qa/discuss/37982/url-length-vs-url-keywords I was consulted to drop a folder in my url because it may be to long. That's why I'm hesitant to keep the bradcrumb structure the same. To the best of your knowldege do you think it's best to drop a folder in the URL to keep it shorter and sweeter, or to have a longer URL and have it match the breadcrumb structure? Please advise, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing0