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Hello!

I'm helping a Client with a platform migration from an SEO standpoint.  They are working to implement canonical tags, but I've noticed that each of the ones they are implementing are including a "data-rdm" attribute:

data-rdm="">

I'm not sure the Client has a way to suppress this before the launch date.  Do we think this will be an issue for Google?

Wowser - sorry to hear about the drop in rankings & traffic.

RE: "Is this normal?" Yes.

It's normal to still see traffic coming from your "old" links.  Google needs time to get all of your old domain URLs out of its cache and replace them with new.  Your 301 redirect map and your new domain's XML sitemap will definitely help speed up the process of the replacement.  You can keep an eye on how far Google's come with removing the old URLs from its cache by searching "site:whitefusemedia.com" as well as see how many of your new domain's URLs it has indexed by searching "site:whitefuse.com."

It's also normal to see your traffic drop like this with a domain switch, unfortunately.  You've switched a domain with a domain authority of 40+ to a domain with a domain authority of under 20.  Your website, even with the redirect strategy, is less authoritative than it once was, and thus, it will rank lower.

RE: "Should I expect to see this bounce back?"  It depends.

You have a big gap to make up with your domain switch in the overall authority your new domain has.  You will see some improvements likely happen over the first few months after launch, but in my experience, it's not very likely you're going to be able to close that gap just with a redirect strategy.  (Remember, too, a 301 redirect doesn't transfer 100% of the previous value).  If it's been more than a few months already, then you might expect that this is your new baseline of organic traffic.  In order to reach authority levels at the same level, you're going to have to undertake a significant amount of authority-building and link-building efforts.  In past projects like these, we've even gone so far as trying to contact/reach out to some of our most credible back-link suppliers to let them know that we've updated our site, and to link directly to the new site at the new location.  We had some success with those, but you're relying a lot on webmasters to make those updates on their time/own merits. Regardless, it will take time and energy, and unfortunately a lot of it.

RE: "is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?" Yes.

Are you willing to switch back to the previous domain?  That is the best way to reclaim your lost rankings/traffic at this point (and do the reverse 301 redirect strategy, now that the new URLs are also in the world.

If you can't go back for branding/internal/other reasons, then my recommendations are to:

1. Survey your most credible backlinks from the old domain and reach out to see if they're willing to link to the new site/location.

2. Work on building new/credible links.  As a first step, making sure your new domain is replaced across the main reputable web directories is a good start.  You can find categorization directories for your business here: https://moz.com/local/categories.  Make sure you update your Google Business listing, Yahoo!, Bing, Social Media profiles, YellowBook, etc, etc.

3. Build new content and promote it to get more valuable shares/links/traffic!

Hope that helps and good luck!

Hi there!

From my experience, the best results I was ever able to achieve for a Client is when we consolidated all URLs to a single URL solution.  Canonicals are amazing, no doubt.  But I've experienced a canonical structure being ignored if there are instances where the canonical structure isn't 100% 'correct.'

If there is a way that you can have your website navigation & internal/XML sitemap reinforce your preferred URL, that would certainly reduce the number of URLs Google would crawl.  Then, if you permanently (301) redirect all the now non-navigable URLs to the single preferred URL, you should see a significant boost in traffic (from consolidating all of the authority into a single page, now reinforced throughout your entire website).

If that's not possible, and you have to have multiple URLs within your site for budget/platform constraints, then yes, let Google crawl them.  Otherwise the algo won't be able to see your canonical tag across them.

So in short: If you have a means to reduce the number of duplicates and redirect them - awesome. If you don't have a means to reduce duplicates, opening them up to Google is good, too.

For more information on making sure your canonical structure is set up properly, check out this Moz blog post: https://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions