Understand how site redesign impacts SEO
-
Hi everyone,
I have, what I think, is kind of a specific question, but hoping you guys can help me figure out what to do.
I have a client that recently changed their entire website (I started working with them after it happened, so I can't comment on what the site was like as far as content was before). I know they were using a service that I see a lot of in the service industry that aim to capitalize on local business (i.e. "leads nearby" or "nearby now") by creating pages for each targeted city and I believe collecting reviews for each city directly on the website.
When they redesigned their website, they dropped that service and now all those pages that were ranking in SERPs are coming back as 404s because they are not included in the new site (I apologize if this is getting confusing!)
The site that they moved to is a template site that they purchased the rights to from an already successful company in their same industry, so I do think the link structure probably changed, especially with all of the local pages that are no longer available on the site. Note: I want to use discretion in using company names, but happy to share more info in a private message if you'd like to see the sites I am talking about as I have a feeling that this is getting confusing
Has anyone had experience with something like this? I am concerned because even though I am targeting the keywords being used previously to direct content to the local pages to new existing pages, traffic to the website has dropped by nearly 60% and I know my clients are going to want answers-- and right now, I only have guesses.
I am really looking forward to and so greatly appreciate any advice you might be able to share, I'm at a bit of a loss right now.
-
Those pages will need to be recreated and then have a 301 redirect placed on them directing all existing authority to be passed onto the newly created city targeted pages.
I suggest pulling the data before the redesign that shows how much traffic was being sent to those pages that were killed and showing this to your client. Doing this should help them see that whoever suggested killing those pages in the redesign shouldn't be making decisions.
Once you've 301'd the old pages, that are showing 404's, to the new city targeted pages go into Webmaster Tools and submit them to be indexed/crawled right away.
-
A couple options come to mind: either create those pages and build them similar to when they had the plugin (assuming it was a plugin) or 301 those 404 links to the new pages. When doing the 301s I suggest you create a spreadsheet that outlines all of the 404 to 301 mappings and show that to the client so that they are aware of the issue(s), which can help explain why their traffic is taking a hit. I hope that helps!
-
The domain name stayed the same, I believe. And the pages that existed beforehand were killed-- not just content. They come back as 404 errors.
-
Quick question: Did the domain name or url's change with this redesign?
When you say:
"When they redesigned their website, they dropped that service and now all those pages that were ranking in SERPs are coming back as 404s because they are not included in the new site"
Does that refer to just content (what's on the page) or did they kill certain pages that existed before hand?
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
-
International SEO: reposting my own posts to different ccTLDs versions of my website
Hello there Moz community! Moz has been super helpful for me and the team, keep up the good work! I have searched online for answers regarding my specific situation, but I haven't found any. I'm asking my fellow Moz users in hopes of an answer. Maybe this thread will help others too. I currently have this domain: https://eco-reusable.com/ I would like to target Ireland and the UK with my keywords so I have just bought eco-reusable**.IE** and eco-reusable**.CO.UK** My questions are: 1. In order to rank as high as possible for Ireland, do I create a new website for eco-reusable.ie using the same pages but changing all the content slightly so it is not duplicate content OR do I point the eco-reusable.ie domain to eco-reusable.com? By having two sites, we will add more hours but we don't mind if that will be of benefit in the longrun for ranking high in Ireland. I have the same question for eco-reusable.co.uk
Local Website Optimization | | Gael_Regnault
If we have to create three websites and make similar content (not duplicate), we will if it will be better for ranking high in ireland for .ie, in the UK for .co.uk and for the rest of the world for .com 2. If we create three websites, can I safely "copy/paste" my blog posts without being punished by Google for duplicate content? If so, how much variation do we have to have for each of the three sites if we are writing blogs that are the same context. Thank you in advance! 🙂0 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
Even after doing every possible thing required for SEO my client's website is not coming on top.can you tell me where i am lacking?
_ Hi team_ I have been working on a website called signboards.co.in since 4 months.it was not in top 100 but now below 50 for 2-3 keywords.even after submitting in many directories after competitor analysis moz shows only one external link in its link metrics.apart from this every possible thing required for SEO is done in a proper way,but still it is not giving results.can you help me out?all my other clients work is going good except this one.can you please let me know what is going wrong with my project?As the project submission date is near i need your help as soon as possible. Thanks Najia jehan
Local Website Optimization | | Najia-ali0 -
How to approach SEO for a national website that has multiple chapter/location websites all under different URLs
We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national umbrella site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local website. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago.) We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | timfrick0 -
Hosting Change & It's Impact on SERP Performance (with a Side of Domain Migration)
Hi everyone, I've read a lot on forums about the topic of hosting and it's impact on SEO, but I've seen conflicting opinions. I wanted to see if anyone might have a definitive answer for this scenario: Our parent company is based in the EU and wants to move our English domain to their site -- either as part of the main .com or potentially as a new subdomain. One of those things is going to happen; it's just a question of which one. One issue I have is that they host their .com with content targeting English speakers (mostly in the U.S.) in France, so if we moved our content to their site we'd be going from our existing domain hosted in the U.S. (with the majority of visitors coming from the U.S.) to a site that's hosted in France. I've read that folders are still usually better over subdomains in terms of passing the strength of the domain on to pages. So... would it be better to have a subdomain hosted in the U.S., or just have folders under the main domain, but that content would be hosted in France? Our existing domain and the domain we'll be moving to are about even in terms of domain authority and size. Happy to get any feedback you might have. Anyone come across any case studies on this particular topic that would be helpful? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | SafeNet_Interactive_Marketing0 -
Why a site just dropped out of ranks
I have a site i am working on link It was ranking fairly well and then I added content to the homepage to better optimize it for the keywords it was already ranking for. Ever since I did that the entire site is no longer ranking well. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | Atomicx0 -
Does building multiple websites hurt you seo wise? Good or bad strategy?
HI,rategy. So I spoke to a local Colorado seo company and they suggested to find whatever keywords is the most searched under my GWT's and put .com behind it and build other sites for other keywords. I was curious about this type of strategy. Does this work? This seo guy said I could just get a DBA bank account and such for each domain name etc. I am not wanting to mislead anyone, but I am curious if for the sake of promoting other services, if creating other websites with partial and EMD's are worthwhile? Another issue I worry about is if I put my companies phone number, then next thing you know there is 3 or 4 sites that use that same phone number. To me this does not build trust with Google. But being I am learning, maybe this is a common strategy, or doomed from the start. Just curious what you think. Would you build other sites to try and rank for other services? Or keep one sites and maximize it? Thank you for your thoughts. I just do not want to pay $3000 per site if it will hurt not help.
Local Website Optimization | | Berner0 -
Single Site For Multiple Locations Or Multiple Sites?
Hi, Sorry if this rambles on. There's a few details that kind of convolute this issue so I'll try and be as clear as possible. The site in question has been online for roughly 5 years. It's established with many local citations, does well in local SERPs (working on organic results currently), and represents a business with 2 locations in the same county. The domain is structured as location1brandname.com. The site was recently upgraded from a 6-10 page static HTML site with loads of duplicate content and poor structure to a nice, clean WordPress layout. Again, Google is cool with it, everything was 301'd properly, and our rankings haven't dropped (some have improved). Here's the tricky part: To properly optimize this site for our second location, I am basically building a second website within the original, but customized for our second location. It will be location1brandname.com/secondcity and the menu will be unique to second-city service pages, unique NAP on footer, etc. I will then update our local citations with this new URL and hopefully we'll start appearing higher in local SERPs for the second-city keywords that our main URL isn't currently optimized for. The issue I have is that our root domain has our first city location in the domain and that this might have some negative effect on ranking for the second URL. Conversely, starting on a brand new domain (secondcitybrandname.com) requires building an entire new site and being brand new. My hunch is that we'll be fine making root.com/secondcity that locations homepage and starting a new domain, while cleaner and compeltely separate from our other location, is too much work for not enough benefit. It seems like if they're the same company/brand, they should be on the same sitee. and we can use the root juice to help. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | kirmeliux0