undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
    Moz Pro

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

    Try it free!
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
  4. Lost 86% of traffic after moving old static site to WordPress

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Lost 86% of traffic after moving old static site to WordPress

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
3
4
1.4k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • JakubH
    JakubH last edited by Oct 18, 2013, 5:02 PM

    I hired a company to convert an old static website www.rawfoodexplained.com with about 1200 pages of content to WordPress.

    Four days after launch it lost almost 90% of traffic. It was getting over 60,000 uniques while nobody touched the site for several years. It’s been 21 days since the WordPress launch. I read a lot of stuff prior to moving it (including Moz's case study) and I was expecting to lose in short term 30% of traffic max…

    I don’t understand what is wrong. The internal link structure is the same, every url is 301 to the same url only without[dot]html (ie www.rawfoodexplained.com/science.html is 301′s to http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/science/ ), it’s added to Google Webmaster tool and Google indexed the new pages…

    Any ideas what could be possible wrong? I do understand the website is not optimized (meta descriptions etc, but it wasn't before either) .... Do you think putting back the old site would recover the traffic? I would appreciate any thoughts

    Thank you

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • JakubH
      JakubH last edited by Oct 20, 2013, 12:01 PM Oct 20, 2013, 12:01 PM

      WhiteboardCreations: thanks, I may try the plugin and cancel 301s

      Takeshi Young:

      • well it's over three weeks as mentioned above, the traffic dropped after 4 days

      • G Webmaster do not show any 404

      • new pages were indexed within two days

      • I use Yoast plugin and do not index tags, categories etc

      • there were no changes inside the actual pages and the traffic were through whole site, not just few high traffic pages

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • TakeshiYoung
        TakeshiYoung last edited by Oct 18, 2013, 7:21 PM Oct 18, 2013, 7:21 PM

        I would check in Moz Analytics or Google Webmaster Tools to see if there are any new 404 errors to ensure that the 301 redirects were put into place properly. It could be possible that not everything was redirected properly.

        I would also look at the indexation numbers in GWT as well as run a site: search in Google, to see if any new pages have been indexed. Wordpress tends to create a lot of duplicate content pages such as category archives, tag archives, date based archives, author pages, etc. so make sure those aren't being indexed. Use a All-In-One SEO or Yoast plugins to clear those up.

        Finally, go into Google Analytics and look at the landing pages that were driving the most traffic before, and compare it to after the change. You may be able to isolate a few high traffic pages that are responsible for the traffic drop.

        If none of those things turns up a problem, don't panic. 4 days is not a long time and an 80% drop is not unheard of. It can take some time for Google to digest all the changes, depending on the size and authority of your site. Make sure to submit your site to be indexed in GWT under Crawl -> Fetch as Google. You can also speed up Google's crawl by building more links to your site. Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+ are all easy ways to get pages crawled and indexed, as well as getting links from high authority sites.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • WhiteboardCreations
          WhiteboardCreations last edited by Oct 18, 2013, 6:12 PM Oct 18, 2013, 6:12 PM

          Jakub,

          It seems you/your developer have done all the right steps in a migration from HTML to WP, so it's a bit odd you took that hard of a hit in the SERPs. One trick a peer taught one of our developers was to consider this plugin http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-page-extension/. It can allow you to create custom URL extensions, which may help keeping it on WP but giving you the .html like you had before with 301. Just an idea to consider. Hope this helps!

          Patrick

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          1 out of 4
          • First post
            1/4
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • vtmoz

            How to enable lost trailing slash redirection in WordPress with Yoast plugin

            Hi, We have lost the non-slash to slash URL redirection in our WP site. We are using Yoast SEO. All the settings are normal and we have enabled the related code in .htaccess too. Still we couldn't able to find why we lost. Please help. Thanks

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 4, 2019, 4:15 PM | vtmoz
            0
          • timdavis

            Breaking up a site into multiple sites

            Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last.  I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 31, 2018, 7:21 AM | timdavis
            0
          • EcommerceSite

            Why is my Bing traffic dropping?

            In the middle of September we launched a redesigned version of our site. The urls all stayed the same. Since site launch traffic in Google has steadily increased but Bing traffic has dropped by about 50%. Any ideas on what I should look at?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 5, 2016, 4:08 PM | EcommerceSite
            0
          • inhouseseo

            Merging Niche Site

            I posted a question about this a while ago, but still haven't pulled the trigger. I have a main site (bobsclothing.com). I also have a EM niche site (i.e shirtsmall.com). It would be more efficient for me to merge these site, because: I would have to manage content, promos, etc. on a single site. In other words, I can focus efforts on 1 site. If I am writing content, I don't have to split the work. I don't have to worry about duplicate content. Right now, if I enter a product URL into copyscape, the other sites is returned for many products. What makes me apprehensive are: The niche site actually ranks for more keywords than the main site, although it has lower revenue. Slightly lower PA, and DA. Niche site ranks top 20 for a profitable keyword that has about 1300 exact match searches. If you include the longer tail versions of the keyword it would be more. If I merge these sites, and do proper 301s (product to product, category to category) how likely is it that main site will still rank for that keyword? Am I likely to end up with a site that has stronger DA? Am I better off keeping the niche site and just focusing content efforts on the few keywords that it can rank well for? I appreciate any advice. If someone has done this, please share your experience. TIA

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 20, 2015, 2:21 AM | inhouseseo
            0
          • kchandler

            Proper 301 in Place but Old Site Still Indexed In Google

            So i have stumbled across an interesting issue with a new SEO client. They just recently launched a new website and implemented a proper 301 redirect strategy at the page level for the new website domain. What is interesting is that the new website is now indexed in Google BUT the old website domain is also still indexed in Google? I even checked the Google Cached date and it shows the new website with a cache date of today. The redirect strategy has been in place for about 30 days. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to get the old domain un-indexed in Google and get all authority passed to the new website?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 23, 2014, 6:05 AM | kchandler
            0
          • LeeAbrahamson

            Question about moving content from one site to another without a 301

            I could use a second opinion about moving content from some inactive sites to my main site. Once upon a time, we had a handful of geotargeted websites set up targeting various cities that we serve. This was in addition to our main site, which was mostly targeted to our primary office and ranked great for those keywords. Our main site has plenty of authority, has been around for ages, etc. We built out these geo-targeted sites with some good landing pages and kept them active with regularly scheduled blog posts which were unique and either interesting or helpful. Although we had a little success with these, we eventually saw the light and realized that our main site was strong enough to rank for these cities as well, which made life a whole lot easier, not to mention a lot less spammy. We've got some good content on these other sites that I'd like to use on our main site, especially the blog posts. Now that I've got it through my head that there's no such thing as a duplicate content penalty, I understand that I could just start moving this content over so long as I put a 301 redirect in place where the content used to be on these old sites. Which leads me to my question. Our SEO was careful not to have these other websites pointing to our main site to avoid looking like we were trying to do something shady from a link building perspective. His concern is that these redirects would undermine that effort and having a bunch of redirects from a half dozen sites could end up hurting us somehow. Do you think that is the case? What he is suggesting we do is remove all of the content that we'd like to use and use Webmaster Tools to request that this content be removed from the index. Then, after the sites have been recrawled, we'll check for ourselves to confirm they've been removed and proceed with using the content however we'd like. Thoughts?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 17, 2014, 1:04 PM | LeeAbrahamson
            0
          • webestate

            What Wordpress Update Services Should You Be Using on Your Wordpress Blog?

            I have been told that pingomatic.com is all that you need however yesterday I went to a conference and others were recommending to have a good list of pinging services to cover all your bases Here are 4 that have been recommended: pingomatic technorati blogsearch.google.com feedburner Any others that should be included on this list?  My goal is not to spam these ping lists however want to make sure my content is getting indexed quickly

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 7, 2013, 8:49 AM | webestate
            0
          • DavidKonigsberg

            Badges For a B2b site

            love this seo tactic but it seems hard to get people to adopt it Has anyone seen a successful badge campaign for a b2b site? please provide examples if you can.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 31, 2011, 2:23 PM | DavidKonigsberg
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Digital Marketers
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.