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
-
Our Web Site Is candere.com. Its PA and back link status are different for https://www.candere.com, http://www.candere.com, https://candere.com, and http://candere.com. Recently, we have completely move from http to https.
How can we fix it, so that we may mot lose ranking and authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dhananjayukumar0 -
Recovering old disallow file?
Hi guys, We had aN SEO agency do a disallow request on one of our sites a while back. They have no trace of the disallow txt file and all the links they disallowed. Does anyone know if there is a way to recover this file in google webmaster tools or anyway to find which links were disallowed? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Faulty title, meta description and version (https instead of http) on homepage
Hi there, I am working on a client (http://minibusshuttle.com/) whose homepage is not indexed correctly by Google. In details, the title & meta description are taken from another website (http://planet55.co.uk/). In addition, homepage is indexed as https instead of http. The rest of the URIs are correctly indexed (titles, meta descriptions, http etc). planet55.co.uk used to be hosted on the same server as minibusshuttle.com and an SSL certificate was activated for that domain. I have tried several times to manually "fetch by Google" the homepage, to no avail. The rest of the pages are indexed/refreshed normally and Google responds very fast when I perform any kind of changes there. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. Kind regards, George
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gpapatheodorou0 -
Https Loss of Search traffic
Hey guys, We moved our site to from http to https. We subsequently lost 25% in our search traffic in 1 Month. We changed a few other pieces such as images, added new content etc. Has anyone got any suggestions on how we start to understand what happened? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
Multiple 301 redirects for a HTTPS URL. Good or bad?
I'm working on an ecommerce website that has a few snags and issues with it's coding. They're using https, and when you access the website through domain.com, theres a 301 redirect to http://www.domain.com and then this, in turn, redirected to https://www.domain.com. Would this have a deterimental effect or is that considered the best way to do it. Have the website redirect to http and then all http access is redirected to the https URL? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasondexter0 -
Can't seem to get traffic back post Panda / Penguin. WHY?
I have done and am doing everything I can think of to bring back lost traffic after the late 2012 updates from google hit us. I just is not working. We had some issues with our out of house web developers which screwed up our site in 2012 and after taking it in house we have Eden doing damage control form months now. We think we have fixed pretty much everything. URL structure filling up with good unique content(under way. Lots still to do) making better category descriptions redesigned homepage. Updated product pages (CMS is holding things back on that part otherwise they would be better. New CMS under construction) started more link building(its a real weak spot on our SEO as far as I can see) audited bad links from dodgy irelavent sites. hired writers to create content and link bait articles. Begun making high quality video's for both YouTube (brand awareness and viral) and on site hosting (link building and conversions) (in the pipeline not online yet). Flattened out site architecture. optimise internal link flow (got this wrong by using nofollows. In the process of thinking of a better way by reducing nun wanted Nav links on page.) i realise its not all done but I have been working ever since the drop in traffic and I'm just seeing no increase at all. I have been asking a few questions on here for the past few days but still can't put my finger on the issue. Am I just impatient and need to wait on the traffic as I am doing all the correct things? Or have I missed something and need to fix it. you anyone would like to have a quick look at my site and see if there is an obvious issue I have missed It would be great as I have been tearing my hair out trying to find the issues with my site. It's www.centralsaddlery.co.uk Criticism would me much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
Traffic down after site migration
Hi! I've been working on a campaign for http://www.alwayshobbies.com/, which has seen a 35% in drop in traffic since changing ecommerce platforms. It's now been two months, but there is no sign of recovery. We are in the middle of cleaning up the link profile as part of a resubmission request, but that has been ongoing since before the migration. A lot of redirects were needed after 10k 404s appeared in Webmaster Tools after the new launch, but these have been reduced to around 500. We've been pretty thorough here, but I thought it would be worth checking in case there's something we've missed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Should I 301 Poorly Worded URL's which are indexed and driving traffic
Hi, I'm working on our sites structure and SEO at present and wondering when the benefit I may get from a well written URL, i.e ourDomain / keyword or keyphrase .html would be preferable to the downturn in traffic i may witness by 301 redirecting an existing, not as well structured, but indexed URL. We have a number of odd looking URL's i.e ourDomain / ourDomain_keyword_92.html alongside some others that will have a keyword followed by 20 underscores in a long line... My concern is although i would like to have a keyword or key phrase sitting on its own in a well targeted URL string I don't want to mess to much with pages that are driving say 2% or 3% of our traffic just because my OCD has kicked in.... Some further advice on strategies i could utilise would be great. My current thinking is that if a page is performing well then i should leave the URL alone. Then if I'm not 100% happy with the keyword or phrase it is targeting I could build another page to handle the new keyword / phrase with the aim of that moving up the rankings and eventually taking over from where the other page left off. Any advice is much appreciated, Guy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guycampbell0