Traffic has not recovered from https switch a year ago.
-
I have an ecommerce site that was switched to https a year ago almost to the day. Our category pages are about half of what they were. The redirects were put in properly, and everything in webmaster tools looks good. Anything out there I may not have thought of?
Want to add that the drop is only in Google, Bing stayed just fine.
-
I have read in so many places that it caused a dip for others as well. I had a really bad experience with a site move once so I had a checklist of everything and double and triple checked it, but it has just been a slow decline.
-
We experienced the same thing and I am fairly certain that we did EVERYTHING right. I just think the algorithms are messed a little. I even made a competitor analysis and found that all the websites that did the https move have experienced a major dip in the past. I cannot tie it to the move date, but it is clearly visible on semrush.
I have a feeling that google endorsed this https move because they need the referer data to make their analytics product work better over time, but while this whole web wide move is happening they accept some collateral damage. I even hired consultants and there is no proof anywhere that https is that "positive ranking signal" Matt Cutts vaguely indicated...but then again he said it is a ranking signal and it might as well be a negative ranking signal by that wording. My hunch so far.
-
Hi Cyrus,
1. I believe that pagination is implemented correctly. Is there anything specific you think I should check?
2. Canonicals are in place.
3. The category pages do not have their own introductory text.
4. We have the title tags and descriptions set.
Wanted to also add that we have the correct schema on the pages as well.
-
We've actually seen Google get harsh on category-type pages across a wide number of industries and sites. It's even happened here at Moz. If your HTTPS is implemented correctly (and sounds like you are reasonably certain it is) you might want to look to other areas.
I'd look at your category pages and make sure:
- Pagination is implemented correctly
- Canonical are in place, where appropriate
- If possible, each category should have it's own introductory text, i.e. https://moz.com/ugc/category/link-building
- Basically, do everything you can to treat your category pages like actual landing pages worthy of search traffic, including unique content, value, title tags, descriptions, etc.
-
I don't see where he asked about the site structure, but no it didn't change.
Reporting has not changed, no new filters, we block our company's visits, tracking code is consistent.
-
You didn't answer Dirk's question (above). Has the site structure changed at all?
Has your reporting changed? Added any new filters? Forgot to block your own company's visits from being tracked? Is the tracking code consistent on all pages? (Although it's probably not a reporting problem if, as you say, rankings and sales have also dropped.)
It's good you're doing the audit. Doesn't appear to be an obvious problem.
-
All pages have dipped a little but the category pages seems to have lost the bulk. We have had rankings and sales drops. Canonicals are in correctly and sitemaps have been updated properly.
-
1. The traffic decline wasn't sudden or initially very much. If you look at our traffic it looks like a pyramid with the peak being when we switched to https. It has just been a slow gradual decline every since.
2. The migration was Sept 11 last year, I don't think there was anything that week.
3. User behavior has stayed constant.
4. No spike in errors, the migration went very smooth.
-
Is it just the category pages that have lost traffic? Have rankings and sales also changed significantly? Are canonicals pointing to https? Have sitemaps been updated?
-
Did the traffic drop occur right after the migration to https or a few months/weeks later?
Was the migration close to the date of an algorithm change?
Did you see any change in behaviour of your users after migration (time on page, bounce rate, avg. pages/session,...)?
Was there a spike of errors in WMT after migration or did everything go quite smoothly?
Was it just a migration to https - or did other elements change on the website?
To be very honest - trying to figure out one year after migration what went wrong is an almost impossible task - especially because you don't have access to the WMT data from migration.
The best you can do is to dive deep in to your analytics figures (search traffic) and compare data before/after migration and try to understand what might have had an impact.
rgds,
Dirk
-
I am in the middle of doing an audit to see if I may have missed something. We are fully mobile optimized. Maybe it was a penalty but there has never been a single black hat trick used on the site. Panda hit that month but we have just been on a slow decline for the last year so that it is now 50%. As an ecommerce site I can't think of a scenario where Panda would hit us unless we were doing something we shouldn't have.
-
HTTPS did cause the site speed to slow down a little bit, we knew that was coming so right after launch we did some optimizations so it is now faster with https then before with http.
-
It's impossible to say without seeing the site and, likely, without seeing analytics. What I can tell you is that the issue may not have anything to do with HTTPS. There have been updates to Google's algorithms, and many other things. Mobile optimization has become a huge point, for instance. I would run an audit of your site for both technical and SEO issues to see if those might help.
-
Moving to https could have an impact on your site's perfomance - which may counter the potential benefits of migrating to https. If you compare page load times in Analytics before/after migration - did they go up/down or remained stable?
Dirk
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
-
Does traffic for branded searches help a site rank for general terms?
A year or two ago we put up some websites which were specific to brands we own. Sure enough those sites (eg 'myBrand.com') started to rank pretty well for those brand terms eg 'mybrand curling tongs' (it's not curling tongs, btw, but you get the idea). We were getting a decent amount of traffic presumably from people who have bought or seen these products on our amazon/ebay stores. Before long, we see us starting to rank well for non branded searches eg 'curling tongs' even among decent competition. Next thing you know I'm getting told by the boss that we need to put up websites for all specific ranges, not just brands, because specificity is a bonus for ranking well. While there's probably a point that a site for MybrandCurlingTongs lends itself well to ranking for curling tongs, is there also an element that the branded searches we got (via making our brand known on amazon/ebay) helped the site gain recognition and authority? As such a new website about 'ionising hair dryers' would not rank well based on being specific, because it wouldn't be helped by a lot of branded traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HSDOnline2 -
Gradual traffic drop of personal finance website in the last three months
Dear All, I have personal finance website https://mymoneysouq.com and the traffic dropped by less than half of what is was before last three months. I am figuring out all the possible issues and doing everything that comes to our mind to improve the quality of our website. I tried the following before posting here:1. Tried contacting website owner which we think spam and add all such domains to our disavow list2. We found little duplicate content on sites like Quora, we made those answers down by reporting to Quora3. Reported to DMCA on 3 articles articles(partial) from our website.4. We are trying improving user experience5. Removed one of our page that shared by many people but our page was not indexed by Google.6. Checked and modified content if any our articles are having more keywords than what SEO experts recommend. 7. We are working on researching more and figuring our what else can might have gone wrong with our traffic.8. Working on improving EAT I attached our traffic drop graph. I believe this drop is not natural it happened because of some issue at our end and we are not able to figure out the exact reasons.Surprisingly another site with not so high quality content started ranking now in the top.I am here to get community members/experts help on this. I could provide you if you need any further details. Thanks a lot for your time. We really appreciate any tips that you can share with us.Q2S1tlK Q2S1tlK
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | swamyallamraju0 -
Redirect chains from switch to HTTPS
Hi, We have a client who recently switched their site to https:// The rule to force redirect non-secure URLs to https is in their .htaccess file: RewriteEngine on if non-SSL and one of these, redirect to SSL RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roundabout
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.clientdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] However, they also have simple redirects below this rule that redirect one page to another, such as: Redirect 301 /old.php https://www.clientdomain.com/new.php This is causing redirect chains like this: (A) http://www.clientdomain.com/old.php > (B) https://www.clientdomain.com/old.php > (C) https://www.clientdomain.com/new.php Is there any way to rewrite the rules in .htaccess to get rid of these redirect chains? So that URL A goes directly to URL C? Thank you!1 -
Still Seeing GSC Traffic in HTTP Property Post-Migration
We migrated to HTTPS in June 2017, so why would I still be seeing a bit of traffic in our HTTP property in Google Search Console? QyqQ2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | catbur0 -
Https Verus http
We recently changed our eCommerce site to a https from a http and we have seen a slight drop in rankings. Should we have not changed the who site over or was it the right call? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | the-gate-films0 -
Site experiencing drop in Google rankings and organic traffic after redesign.
Hello, The company that I work for recently implemented a complete redesign for our company website. The former site was old, cumbersome and in desperate need of an update. We streamlined the site structure and made sure to redirect as many pages as we could find to new thematically related pages with 301 redirects. After the launch of our new site we saw a large upswing in "soft" 404 errors despite the fact that most of these pages do redirect upon inspection. So in relation to the soft 404s, for example, is it merely a matter of labeling them as fixed if they redirect properly, or could their be an underling issue with the site itself? Also, a majority or the urls labeled "not found" in webmaster tools are properly redirected. Do these merely need to be marked as fixed, or is there something else that needs to be fixed like the sitemap structure? I appreciate any and all input. Beyond Indigo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeyondIndigo1 -
Is a rebranding that calls for a domain change a good time to sneak in a change to HTTPS?
Assumed: The material around good migration/redesign practices recommend, logically enough, to change as few things as possible in any given step, thus giving search engines as little trouble as possible identifying and reindexing changes. So if someone is doing significant changes to content, including uri changes, and a rebranding that requires a domain migration, they are generally better off doing one, than the other. 1) Beyond immediate testing and checking for correct crawl health being reestablished after one change, any thoughts on rules of thumb for when to do the second change? Do you do it as soon as you see your rankings/traffic turn the corner and confirm an upward trend after the drop, or wait till you have it all back (or at least hit a plateau)? In the absence of data or best practice I'm thinking of just letting 1/3rd to 2/3rds come back. Is a change to HTTPS small enough/similar enough from the search engine's perspective that it makes more sense to do that at the same time as the rebrand driven domain change? Does this create any special risks or considerations beyond those that arise from the individual components of the change?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JFA0 -
90% Traffic Drop...
Hey Moz Community Our team has been racking our collective brains about a 90% drop in traffic a niche client of ours has seen. The traffic drop occurred September 20th. The site averages 300-400 unique visits a month (very targeted & niche) & dropped to 30-40 uvm. The domain is on an exact match but other then that I can't see anything that would be deserving of such a significant drop in traffic. Our campaign had been performing very well & we were seeing steady gains in traffic & ranking over the long term until September 20th. I'm curious if the exact match update would have such a big impact months after it was released (July/July if I remember correctly). I also didn't think it could be such a big issue because that domain has been used by us for a couple years. Is the Exact Domain Match such a big deal? eJGe3Vw
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hendersondavidp0