Technical SEO Question: Why is our new platform showing a small decline in traffic?
-
Hi there!
We are in the process of transitioning to a faster platform, and we recently moved a subset of URLs over. The subset that moved over saw a drop. We didn't change the URL pattern, or the content. The only thing that is different is the new platform. Here's a link to one of the URLs that is currently served from the new platform:
And, here is an example of a URL currently served from the older platform:
Any ideas why the newer platform is seeing a decline in organic traffic?
-
I would also look at how you are currently managing the sitemaps between the two platforms to make sure that the new pages have not been left out of the sitemap generation.
-
There are a lot of factors that could be contributing to this, for example, the tracking isn't implemented properly or implemented differently than on the previous platform. Or on the non-technical side maybe the search volume is down overall for that time period that affects that particular page, or your rankings decreased due to competition strengthening even if your site stayed completely the same... It's hard to say exactly without more precise details from Search Console, Analytics and so on.
If the dip isn't major, you know for a fact that your code is implemented properly, and the site loads much faster for your user base, you should likely go ahead and finish the complete transition. A low site speed is a conversion killer and a major factor that should be addressed.
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
-
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
Question About Permalink Showing Up in Search Results
Does Google determine how your permalink shows up in the search results or is that a setting on our end? I noticed most of our competitors have their permalink show up in their snippet results. Ours shows "knowledgebase" instead. I think seeing the keywords in the permalink helps with conversions. https://screencast.com/t/fyFyNaWayajx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE0 -
SEO question regarding rails app on www.site.com hosted on Heroku and www.site.com/blog at another host
Hi, I have a rails app hosted on Heroku (www.site.com) and would much prefer to set up a Wordpress blog using a different host pointing to www.site.com/blog, as opposed to using a gem within the actual app. Whats are peoples thoughts regarding there being any ranking implications for implementing the set up as noted in this post on Stackoverflow: "What I would do is serve your Wordpress blog along side your Rails app (so you've got a PHP and a Rails server running), and just have your /blog route point to a controller that redirects to your Wordpress app. Add something like this to your routes.rb: _`get '/blog', to:'blog#redirect'`_ and then have a redirect method in your BlogController that simply does this: _`classBlogController<applicationcontrollerdef redirect="" redirect_to="" "url_of_wordpress_blog"endend<="" code=""></applicationcontrollerdef>`_ _Now you can point at yourdomain.com/blog and it will take you to the Wordpress site._
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Anward0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Currently, we manage a site that generates content from a database based on user search criteria such as location or type of business. ..Although we currently rank well -- we created the website based on providing value to the visitor with options for viewing the content - we are concerned about duplicate content issues and if they would apply. For example, the listing that is pulled up for the user upon one search could have the same content as another search but in a different order. Similar to hotels who offer room booking by room type or by rate. Would this dynamically generated content count as duplicate content? The site has done well, but don't want to risk a any future Google penalties caused by duplicate content. Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CompucastWeb1 -
Ajax website and SEO
Hi all, A client of mine has a website similar to Pintrest. All in Ajax/. So imagine an ajax-grid based animal lover site called domain.com. The domain has three different Categories Cats, Dogs, Mice. When you click on a category, the site doesn't handle the URL and doesn't change the domain So instead of the domain going from domain.com to domain.com/cats, it uses the Ajax script and just shows all the cat pins. and when you click on each pin/post it opens a page such as domain.com/Pin/123/PostTitle It doesn't reference the category. However a page domain.com/cats does exist and you can go there directly. Is this an SEO issue for not grouping all pins under a category? How does Google handle Ajax these days, it use to be real bad but if Pintrest is going so well i'm assuming times have changed? Any other things to be wary of for a grid based/ajax site? I am happy to pay for an hour or two for a more in depth audit/tips if you can feed back on the above. Fairly urgent. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Profero1 -
Declining Organic Traffic despite PR, links and engagement
I have a client site that launched last June and rebranded this February 2012 as http://49thshelf.com The search traffic since Feb has been steadily declining despite some great campaigns to drive traffic and engagement. April down 40% vs. Mar May down 37% Jun down 51% Jul 16% We have a couple of challenges. The site is the only collection of Canadian-authored titles. It's like an Amazon of only Canadian titles. But it's not ecommerce, we direct traffic to other vendors like Amazon or the publisher to buy. We have 40,000 unique products on the site and the descriptions are primarily supplied by the publishers, which means it's the same content on the publisher site as Goodreads, Amazon and anyone else they share data with. Those big players like Amazon and Goodreads use user generated content to alter the descriptions but we don't have that level of activity on the site. Members create reading lists, the editorial staff curate collections on the homepage and there are interviews, blog posts and guest posts. No black hat SEO, no bad links that I can see. Great organic membership growth and interactions. Good activity from social media sites to the site. Good, trusted links from news sites and legit blogs. I don't know what to do to improve the organic traffic. July is the first month that we haven't seen 40-50% drops. Any advice is welcome, thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SoMisguided0 -
Need bullet points for a new website on what to do for SEO
Hello, My company just launched a new website and its a competitve market it looks like. Its for moving boxes and moving supplies. They want a bullet point list (nothing real specific) of what I will be doing for SEO for the new website. I have been out of the loop for more than a year with SEO so not sure what the best things to do first are. Any help would be great. Thanks John
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maximumrank0 -
Local SEO (Rankings) + UK-wide SEO (national rankings) - achieving both
Hi All, For clients wishing to sell online / generate leads nationally, yet still want to have a local online presence to attract town / county-wide customers, I've often placed Town / County locations within both the Title Tag (or just County if space is limited) and Meta Description, plus within the Hx headings, Alt-text and within the footer of every page. My question is, does adding the location of the client within these fields really infringe their attempts to rank nationally, as some nationally ranked pages have no mention of location while others have their location (Town, County or Both) shown within them? Any help, insight or feedback greatly appreciated 🙂 Happy New Year Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tony-Dimmock0