SEO's done, 301s in place, old site STILL outranks new site. What to do?
-
Since Sep 2010 I have had a site up with minimal SEO optimization (www.chrisbrushmusic.com). Oct 29, 2012, I launched a new site on a new domain (www.chrisbrushdrums.com) with more content and tons of SEO work behind it. The content of the new site is significantly different from the old site, and I wish to keep the old site around. I have 301's in place for specific URLs on the old site that point to the new site. I have submitted xml sitemaps for the new site. As of now, the old site still outranks the new site (i.e. Google search for "nashville session drummer" and my old site is #9 - my new site is nowhere). What should I do? Thanks.
-
The old site deals primarily with me as a music producer and a mix engineer -- two other things I enjoy doing and make money doing. However, drums are definitely the primary focus of what I do.
I guess I am not opposed to ditching the old site if I could find a way to present my other skills in a way that wasn't branded with drums (doing that might indicate that I wouldn't be as good as a dedicated mix engineer and the like). Would it make sense to design a couple of specialty pages and host them under a subdomain of my current new site?
I guess I am fearful to ditch the old site because it actually does rank in Google. Would I see better results by getting rid of the old site or just 301 redirecting the whole thing?
-
If I was you I'd 301 everything to the new site. Perhaps you could have an archive section for the content you mentioned you want to keep separate? You are competing with yourself, especially with the similarities in the domain name, and I'd guess there might be a duplicate content/keyword targeting overlap somewhere.
How does the focus of the new site differ from your old one? If you think of it from a potential client's point of view, why would they want to visit two websites to find out about you? Might it be useful to? Surely any relevant information should be on the same website?
Unless the sites have a completely different focus, say you were a photographer too, so one site was about that side and the other your drumming, I'd say it's best to have one site.
-
Thanks Paul! Actually, my home page is optimized for "session drummer." I merely used the "nashville session drummer" example simply because it showed in one page of results 1) my competitors (who don't have their sites optimized for "nashville session drummer either"), and 2) my old site showing.
However, your thoughts, especially the reminder about building links with other organizations and about the timeline for expected results, were re-assuring and served as a call to re-focus my efforts.
I am still a bit concerned about whether or not my old site, while displaying information separate and apart from the new site, is hurting my rankings. I read a few frightening snippets online hinting that old sites staying live after a relaunch could be killing search results for the new site. Thoughts?
-
Chris, the new site likely won't rank for "Nashville session drummer" because the site isn't optimised in any way for that phrase. In fact, as far as I can tell, the phrase is never even used on the site? (I used both the built-in search and a custom Google search and neither could find the phrase.)
The closest I can find is on the front page where the term "Nashville-based session drummer" is the closest you get, and it's only used once in the body of the page. The only way you'll rank consistently for that term is if you strongly optimise a full page around just that term - especially since it's your "money" term.
Just using the individual words Nashville, session, and drummer randomly throughout the site isn't going to be nearly enough. You can certainly use variations of those words on the target page to support the term, but if the phrase you need to rank for is "Nashville session drummer" you're going to need to use that exact phrase in the strongest locations on the page - in the page title, the meta-title, the URL, and the strongly written page content, for starters.
That's the on-page part of the battle.
In addition, you're going to need to get other relevant, high-value websites to link to your site, and specifically that page, if you're going to build and maintain rankings for that term. And you'll need at least some of them to link using that specific phrase.
In order to avoid frustration, you need to realize your time horizon for expecting rankings is far too optimistic. A brand new domain/website with no authoritative external links pointing to it is more likely to require months, not weeks, to begin to rank for competitive terms - and then only if the on-page optimization is done and the off-page work is ongoing.
You say in the title of this question that SEO is done - what keyword terms was the site optimised for - and on what specific pages? Search engines don't rank a site, they rank individual pages. So each page should be targeting a specific term or two (if they're closely related). At a quick glance, I'm not seeing that kind of on-page optimisation having been done on the site.
Lastly, just a heads-up. SEO is never "done" - it's an ongoing process because competitors who continue to improve their optimisation will come along and displace you even after you do get ranked.
Paul
-
Thanks for the quick response. My motivation in keeping both sites is that the old site deals with aspects of my career that are still relevant but beyond the focus of the new site. As to the 301s, I did indeed use 301 redirects pointing to the new site from select pages of the old site.
-
Evelyn, keeping in mind that you launched the site end of Oct, you'll have to be patient with the rankings. I would have been very surprised if you new site had started ranking already. The fact that you are keeping both the domains might also make things tricky. Does the new site have any links pointing back to it. You could have done a 301 redirect from the old to the new URL and that might have helped the new site rank faster. What's your motivation to keep both the sites in the index?
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
-
How on earth is this site ranking so highly?
I'm trying (& struggling) to rank for the keyword property in italy. Yet in the past 5 weeks I've seen this site -- betterpropertyitaly (dot) com -- rocket from about #30 to #2 for the keyword and am trying to figure out why. The obvious is that it's in the domain name, but that can't be the be-all-and-end-all, surely? It's a 2 yr 9 mth old site, so why the sudden spurt? I look in Open Site Explorer and the metrics look pretty weak: Domain Authority: 17 Page Authority: 29 Linking Root Domains: 9 Absolutely zero social shares. Good luck to him and all -- but I'm trying to figure out what he's doing right and I'm not. My site apart, he's beating some pretty big-hitters.
Competitive Research | | Jeepster0 -
Why is this site ranking higher?!
I'm trying to figure out why www.lvimmigrationattorney.com would be ranking higher on several keywords than www.immigrationlawnv.com. It doesn't make sense to me because the latter site has a higher page authority and mozrank, as well as more followed links. The domain authority from the linking sites to each site are pretty close. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I can't put my finger on it. Any idea?
Competitive Research | | atstickel120 -
Confused about sites ranking when compared to each other
I'm looking at the keyword "snow guards" for two competitor websites: snogem dot com (SG) snoshield dot com (SS) I've been watching these two for about 4 months. SG stays in the top 5 SERPs consistently, while SS bounces around from 15-20 on Google. I've looked at the competitive link comparison and SS appears to have a much better link profile when it comes to DA. Page specific metrics in OSE show SS with a higher mozrank, moztrust, internal followed links, linking root domains, total linking root domains, and linking C Blocks. It appears to me that SG has many more links, but their links seem to be many site wide exact match keyword links, and paid for advertisements on a major site in the metal roofing industry. Honestly the linking profile of SG surprises me that they rank so much higher than SS after the Panda/Penguin updates. I have two questions: 1. When competing against these sites, should I model SG's link profile? I'm nervous to because of my previous statement thinking they will get hit with Panda/Penguin like updates. 2. What would it take to bounce SS to competing with SG on the first page? Is the number of links the only thing this site is missing, or is there something else to focus on.
Competitive Research | | kadesmith0 -
Training Recommendation for In House SEO
Hi, I'm a business owner who has been dabbling in SEO for years. I have a bright, capable employee with a development/coding background and I would like her to start doing full time SEO for me. (competitive analysis, link building and content marketing specifically - I like the strategy laid out here and would like her to implement it for me) What do you think is the best training resource for her to develop an in-depth understanding of SEO for my business? Any recommendations for specific courses she can take? Thanks.
Competitive Research | | plrkieran0 -
Improving SERP rankings via strategic SEO tactics
Hi, We just build some of our new content pages on our website 1.https://www.practo.com/ray/dental-software 2.https://www.practo.com/ray/dermatology-software 3.https://www.practo.com/ray/homeopathy-software Could someone explain how do I build around a good SEO strategy to compete with others for better positions on the SERP's. I have not done anything apart from fixing proper title tags , and meta descriptions etc and of course putting down relevant fresh content onto these pages. These pages were published about 3 weeks ago - Only this url ranks on the 2nd page as of now for keywords like "dermatology software" https://www.practo.com/ray/dermatology-software The rest of the URL's do not rank anywhere till the 10th SERP too! What could be wrong and where could I have the opportunity to boost the SEO tactics since all the pages which rank above it are just not providing the right kind of product as we are and still they take up the top positions and genuine users miss out on our domain. Thanks . Looking forward to some awesome responses.
Competitive Research | | shanky10 -
Why does my site get sandboxed but this one doesn't?
I'm currently working on an entire website redesign and restructuring. My current website is extremely spammy. I really worked on it before I knew much about SEO. Now that I have a better foundation I have been remaking my site to get rid of duplicate content and to have a much better UX. With this said, I still depend on the current site to bring in my income while I'm working on getting my new site up. Google seems to constantly kick me out for about a month at a time and then let me back in. The few other times I thought it was because the new site I have been working on is on a different domain and was exactly the same for a while (I don't want google to find this new domain it's just for testing purposes). So I removed the new domain from google and in a couple weeks my main site was back in. Problem is yesterday google hit me again. I'm out of google for all my search terms. Before I was ranking on the first page for just about every "keyword + city" phrase I was trying to rank for. I can find plenty of reasons why google would give me problems with my current site. For example I have TONS of duplicate pages with just the keyword/city changed. Pretty spammy. I did buy about 5 links a year ago or so but they are pretty nothing sites. My question is if google's going to ban me why don't they just do it? They keep taking me out and putting me back in. No messages in webmaster tools. My domain is below: http://yourmusiclessons.com Also when I just started out I got the idea of "keyword + city" from a competitor that ranks for EVERYTHING which is also found below: http://www.musikalessons.com All of the links I bought were the same links the above site bought. I tried buying a link from classical.net which has a high page rank and links to musikalessons.com on each page of their site. As soon as google found the links, I was kicked out. I had them remove it. My question is musika has basically the same "spammyness" as me just on a much larger scale and yet they never seem to be kicked out of google and still rank high. I've thought about reporting musika, but I'm afraid Google will ban me as well because my site is just as bad. Again I'm working all day on fixing my site and doing a 180, it's just taking a long time and I can't launch quite yet. I live off the income from my current site though, so it's very disheartening when this happens. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | BrianJenkins0 -
Why is this site ranking #1?
I've done extensive research into http://www.maggiesottero.com/ and cannot come up to any definitive conclusions as to why this site is ranking #1 for the term "wedding dresses." The page is not optimized for the keyword. **Any thoughts? **
Competitive Research | | craigsmith3330 -
Should I link to this site or is it too spammy?
Hi all, I've been asked if I want to exchange links with http://www.myteetimesonline.com/ and I'm tempted but fearful that its link profile looks spammy. What do you guys think? I'm basically starting from scratch with my own site http://www.golfgear4you.com and have a Page Rank 0 and Domain authority 32. The guys that want to link to me are Page Rank 3 but Domain authority 35. Their content would be of interest to my site's users and vice versa but my biggest concern is their link profile looks awful because the sites that link to them don't appear to be very relevant. I've done a lot of reading on this and have found the resources on this site to be a goldmine. The generally message is avoid easy links to spammy sites because they could hurt credibility. I just want to check I've actually learnt something and my instincts about this site are correct. i.e leave it alone!! Thanks, Andy
Competitive Research | | getzen560