Drop in SERPS and little movement after redesign
-
I took over a project in mid-March 2015. Rankings went from 5th page to roughly #11 - #13 (but never into first page).
Launched a redesign on August 15, 2015. Rankings dropped from #11 - #13 down to #20.
Weird part: On 3 different Mondays since Mid-August, I have noticed that the rankings shoot back up to about #11 in the morning, then drop back down to #20 by the evening.
Three questions:
1. Has anyone seen a drop like this after redesign? (Assuming you kept the same content, just different layout).
2. Did it seem like the redesign resulted in some sort sandbox effect, where the rankings wouldn't move for a period of time?
3. Any advice on how to get it moving again? Or is this just a function of time?
Ps. The interior pages are moving well.
domain: getinjuryanswers.com
KW: San Diego Personal Injury Lawyer, Personal Injury Lawyer San Diego
I understand these are hyper-competitive terms. What puzzles me is how calcified the rankings appear to be.
-
Hi,
Thank you for your response. I did make some slight changes, and that may have been enough to trigger a drop.
For tracking I use Moz, AHREFs, SEMRush, and also Google Incognito using a VPN (I'm overly thorough).
I like your idea about maximizing the areas I'm ranking well for. In fact, that's what I started doing this past weekend. Really focused on getting every interior page on the first page.
Thank you again for your detailed response. I really appreciate it.
-
Hi There
A redesign can definitely impact rankings. I also notice some slight architectural changes? The removal of "Cases" from the main navigation, among other things.
The trick is, there's tons of moving parts in any ranking situation like this.
Also, what rank tracker are you using? There's going to be a lot of localization/personalization/fluctuation in effect. Google is likely greatly varying rankings by location, user metrics, search history etc. Are you using a de-personalized rank checker? I like Authority Labs or Advanced Web Ranking for daily rank checking.
FYI, I just ran it through the Firefox Rank plugin and got #19 and #18 for your two keywords (I'm in Massachusetts).
Also, for all sites I track I tend to see way more ranking fluctuation for page 2 and beyond in general.
I would really focus on best practices - like great UX, local SEO efforts, CTR optimization - all the "known" things you can really control.
Something you can do - go to Search Console - and make sure all the queries you are ranking well for have the best title/descriptions and snippets for those SERPs to improve your user metrics for the site overall.
-
Hi,
Thank you for your feedback. Yes, we debated a lot about whether that pic would be a good choice. I think I'll try something else.
I appreciate your feedback on the Pagespeed. I used Autoptimize. PM me and I can send you some great info about how to get the PageSpeed in the 90's for both mobile and desktop.
Thanks again.
-
I looked at the current site and the previous one in the wayback machine.
Just my opinion but the image of the two attorneys would put me off. I liked the one of the happy couple on the old site. I'm sure they are wonderful guys but they look pissed.
Site is very nice and fastest WP I've seen in Pagespeed.
Nice job. I'd change that pic... Respectfully!
-
Hi, thanks for the response. That could be it. This new design is a lot nicer than the old one, but maybe something about it doesn't sit right with people.
Thanks for the feedback.
-
Visitor engagement has become a very important ranking signal. If the design of the pages has changed, is it possible that visitors don't engage the site as strongly as they did in the past?
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
-
Short description about our search results drop + forum moving to subdomain question.
Hello, here is our story. Our niche is mental health (psychology, psychotherapy e.t.c). Our portal has thousand of genuine articles, news section about mental health, researches, job findings for specialists, a specialized bookstore only with psychology books, the best forum in country, we thousands of active members and selfhelp topics etc. In our country (non english), our portal has been established in 2003. Since then, for more than 15 years, we were no 1 in our country, meaning that we had the best brand name, hundreds of external authors writing unique content for our portal and hundreds of no1 keywords in google search results. Actually, we had according to webmaster tools, more than 1.000 keywords, in 1 and 2 position. (we were ranking no1 in all the best keywords). Before 2 years, we purchased the best domain in our niche. I ll use the below example (of course, domains are not the real ones):
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dodoni
We had: e-pizza.com and now we have: pizza.com
We did the appropriate redirects but from day one, we had around 20-30% drop in search engines. After 6 months -which is something that google officialy mentions, we lost all "credits from the old domain.. .and at that point, we had another 20-30% drop in search results. Further more, in any google core update, we were keep dropping. Especially in last May (coronovirus update), we had another huge drop. We do follow seo guides, we have a dedicated server, good load speed, well structured data, amp, a great presence in social media, with more than 130.000 followers, etc. According to our investigation, we came to one only conclusion: that our forum, kills our seo (of course, noone in our team can guarantee that this is the actual reason of the uge drop in may-in coronovirus google core update). We believe that the forum kills our seo, because it produces low quality posts by members. For example, psychopharmacology in a very active sections and we believe, google is very "sensitive" in these kind of posts and information. So here is the question: although the forum is very very active, with thousands of new topics and posts every month, we are thinking of moving it to a subdomain, from the subfolder that now is.
This will help our domain authority to increase from 38 that is stuck 2 years now, to larger scales. We believe that althougth this forum gave a great boost to the portal, in the past 10-15 years, it somehow makes a negative impact now. If I could give more spesific details, I d say this: in all seo tools we run, the best kewwords bringing visitors to us, arent anymore, psychology and psychotherapy and mental health and this kind of top-keywords, but are mostly the ones from the forum, like: I want to proceed with a suicide, I m taking efexor or xanax and they have side effects, why i gain wieght with the antidepressants I get etc. 1. Moving our forum to subdomain, will be some kind of pain, since it is a large community, with thousands of backlinks that we somehow must handle in a proper way, also with a mobile application, things that will have to change and probably have some kind of negative impact. Would that be according to your knowledge a correct move and our E-A-T will benefit for google, or since google will know that the subdomain is still part of the same website/portal, it will handle it somehow, the same way as it does now? I have read hundreds of articles about forum in subdomains or in subfolders, but none of them covers a case stydy like ours, since most articles are talking about new forums and what is the best way to handle them and where is the best place to create them (in subfolder of subdomain) when from scratch. Looking forward to your answers.0 -
Moving site to new domain without access to redirect from old to new. How can I do this with as little loss to SERP results as possible?
I've been hired to build a new site for a customer. They were duped by some shady characters at goglupe.com (If you can reach them, tell them they are rats--phone is disconnected, address is a comedy club on Mission in SF). Glupe owns the domain name and would not transfer or give FTP access prior to dropping off the face of the earth. The customer doesn't want to chase after them with lawyers, so we are moving on. New domain, new site with much of the same content as previous site. All that I have access to is the old wordpress site. I plan to build the new site, then remove all pages/posts from the old site. Is there anything I can do to salvage the current page 1 ranking? Obviously, the new domain will take some time to get back there. Just hoping to avoid any pitfalls or penalties if I can. If I had complete access, I would follow all the standard guidelines. But I don't. Any thoughts? Thanks! Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | c_estep_tcbguy0 -
Drop in Indexed pages
Hope everyone is having an Awesome December! I first noticed a drop in my index in the beginnings of November. My site drop in indexed pages from 1400 to 600 in the past 3-4 weeks. I don't know the cause of it, and would like the community to help me figure out why my indexing has dropped. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to read this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BSC0 -
Website Redesign, 301 Redirects, and Link Juice
I want to change my client’s ecommerce site to Shopify. The only problem is that Shopify doesn’t let you customize domains. I plan to: keep each page’s content exactly the same keep the same domain name 301 redirect all of the pages to their new url The ONLY thing that will change is each page’s url. Again, each page will have the exact same content. The only source of traffic to this site is via Google organic search and sales depend on the traffic. There are about 10 pages that have excellent link juice, 20 pages that have medium link juice, and the rest is small link juice. Many of our links that have significant link juice are on message boards written by people that like our product. I plan to change these urls and 301 redirect them to their new urls. I’ve read tons of pages online about this topic. Some people that say it won’t effect link juice at all, some say it will might effect link juice temporarily, and others are uncertain. Most answers tend to be “You should be good. You might lose some traffic temporarily. You might want to switch some of your urls to the new structure to see how it affects it first.” Here’s my question: 1) Has anyone ever done changed a url structure for an existing website with link juice? What were your results and do you have a definitive answer on the topic? 2) How much link juice (if any) will be lost if I keep all of the exact content the same but only change each page’s url? 3) If link juice is temporarily lost and then regained, how long will it be temporarily lost? 1 week? 1 month? 6 months? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirbyf0 -
Can anyone explain sudden drop in impressions. Webmaster tools screenshot attached.
I posted here recently concerned about a drop in rankings. I'm yet to figure out what happened and thought I'd post a screenshot of the loss of impressions to see if anyone can help? jeZO1r1.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Where do I start? A little overwhelmed - Really appreciate any help.
Hello everyone, I was hoping to be able to get some advice if at all possible. I'm know there's some really skilled people on these forums. I'm not sure of the etiquette of posting links so if it's crossing the line to post the link of the site I'm working on please let me know. I was just hired as the Director of Digital Marketing for a decent sized company. I have a lot of experience with PPC, media buys and digital integration but unfortunately I'm a noob with SEO. I'm trying to learn as quickly as possible, and I'm reading everything I can (including everything I can find from Rand) The issue is that I have to start somewhere but there's so much that needs to be done that I'm getting a bit lost. We used to have 3 separate sites that ranked really well for our main keywords on Google, but with the growth of our company we consolidated the different market sites into one main one and 301'd the older ones. In doing so we lost nearly all of our search rankings. Our current site is: Http://www.GoldMaxUSA.com/ Does anyone have any advice on where to dive in here? I'm currently paying a ton each month for traffic through search PPC and contextual display, along with a bunch of geographically targeted brand awareness display campaigns, and I really need to show some progress on our organic search. Thanks in advance for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JFritton0 -
How to beat Wikipedia article from the top spot on SERPS?
Hi Guys, One of our clients has a good web site with lots of content that is ranked already on #2 for the top keyword (singular and plural) on Google UK. The keyword itself is a competitive one. The top spot is occupied by a wikipedia article that doesn't have much content in general. Can anyone come up with an advice what strategy we have to apply to outplace that article? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | myclicks-1636030 -
Newish site dropped out of rankings - is this normal?
I've got a small, 3 month old site that was ranking for a few low-competition keywords. Then, yesterday, it dropped out of the rankings almost completely. The only way to find it is to google the URL/site name, and then it does come up. There are pages in the index, they're just not ranking like they did two days ago. I'm not doing anything black hat or even slightly shady - just writing articles and clean link building. Is this a normal part of the Google process? I've never seen it happen on any other sites I've been involved with.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | damoncali0