My site penalized after 301 Redirect or redesign?
-
Hi,
I have a question regarding my site (http://www.pokeronlineitalia.com) that has, all of a sudden, lost rankings on several keywords; plus, Google Analytics and the plug-in Clicky installed on my site (the site is built on WordPress) claim that my site has no visitors/visits anymore.
I would like to provide a little background of what has happened. Three weeks ago I asked my web hosting company to do a 301 redirect from http://pokeronlineitalia.com to http://www.pokeronlineitalia.com. At the same time I asked a web hosting company to to a redesign of the site. Strangely, the day after the new redesigned site went online Google Analytics and the Clicky plug-in showed that my site, from one day to the other, had no visitors/visits anymore (I had installed Google Analytics and Clicky before the 301 redirect). In addition, I noticed that I had lost positions on many keywords for which I used to rank on the second page.
However, the PR of the site has remained intact and Google is indexing it without problems. Plus, I still rank high for a keyword. I tend to believe that because of this, my site was not penalized by mighty Google...but I'd like an SEO expert to tell me what he thinks about it. In particular, please answer this: has my site lost rankings because of the 301 redirect? Has my site been penalized because of the redesign? Is this only a temporary situation?
Thank you very much for your help.
- Sal
-
salvyy
My suggestion, given your location is to first look at those on SEOmoz who are available in Europe or Italy. As to cost, I am not sure what they charge there. I do know there are some brilliant SEO people in Europe and Italy. (Yes, I know Italy is in Europe and am making a distinction ) If you choose a company from the US, I would look for someone on SEOmoz as well.
I would suggest finding at least three no matter where they are from, PM them, and give them all the same list of what you need. Then, ask each to provide a proposal and quote. You choose based on what you come up with that best fits your needs.
Best
-
Hi JourneyMan,
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. No, apparently the web designer did not include the GA code in all the pages. I'll ask the web hosting company to put it back ASAP.
You say that my site has a lot of SEO related issues. I wish I knew what you are talking about. I'll try to find a reliable/trustworthy company that can work on the site and solve the issues you are referring to. Hopefully, she will not forget about the GA code...:-)
Thank you and have a great day.
- Sal
-
Hi Robert,
Thank you so much for your feedback. I am learning so much from people like you!
The problem with me is that I study a lot of SEO but I am really bad at taking care of the technical issues (coding, web design, etc...). I have to ask other people to do it for me. As you know, sometimes you hire people who do not care about your site and problems emerge. I would have never found out about the fact that the web designer forgot to include the GA code in the site, for instance.
Thank you for your recommendations on how to make the site more SEO-friendly. I'll follow them. Finally, I'd like to know if it is possibile to find a reliable (and not too expensive :-)) company I can hire to do just that: analyze my site and get rid of all the those technical problems (bad coding, missing WordPress plug-ins that are good for SEO, et similia) that I cannot detect, as I am incredibly ignorant in this field. I feel that it's the technical issues that prevent my sites from performing a little better.
Thank you again and all the best to you!
- Sal
P.S.: I love and miss the wise US sayings
-
Sal, Eyepaq is correct. It does appear that the redirect worked and was likely done correctly. I would also suggest setting the www. subdomain of the site as the preferred in GWMT.
I have to say this as well, to quote the kind eyepaq, "You do have a lot of SEO related issues...."
I always wonder with poker sites, betting sites, vitamin, etc. that the questions are "I did something correct, did I get penalized." One thing that I have learned through the Q&A is that Google is not nearly as strict with some of these issues as one might think. If they were, I am a bit unsure how some sites would rank on page 100.
Here is something to consider: What if you reduced the number of links on the page to your best 10 or 20? What if you had a poker site that did not try to capitalize on every affiliate offer on the planet and instead focused on providing the best clients to the top 10 or 20 sites and that provided content so compelling that novice or pro would want to read it.
There is a saying regarding real estate often heard hear in the US: You want to be the cheapest or most expensive house in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, with so many gambling sites, it is all about being like the rest of them. If you want to truly succeed, find a way to differentiate yourself from the pack.
Good luck. Good move on the 301.
-
Your site is still in the index, ranking for several terms - so no heavy penalization in place.
You do have a lot of SEO related issues on the site that can and will harm you in the future but it doesn't look it's that heavy to go from x to 0.
Did you check if with the new redesign has all things in place ?
The team that did the redesign didn't place / implemented the Google Analytic code in the new design.
I don't see it in your source code in any of the pages I've checked.
It must look something link this in the head section of the source code.
var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxxxxx-1']); _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.yoursite.com']); _gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]); _gaq.push(['_setAllowAnchor', true]); _gaq.push(['_setCustomVar', 5,'User-Type','free', 2]); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);
**Ask your developers to put the code back on ever page and **
**everything will go back.**
**Redesign can cause some issues so is the 301 redirect but in **
**this case it's not the issue !**
Hope it helps.
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
-
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 -
Removing 301 redirect from 2.5 yr old domain
Hello, Need Advise. We are in Automobiles We have an Automotive site - build 3 yrs back - which is our main site (Site A) We built a separate niche site on Used cars 2.5 yrs back (Site B - url http://www.usedcarindelhi.com) - did seo - promote it for a year and later on in feb 2013 - did 301 domain redirection to Site A Now - we thinking to rebuild Site Site B again and remove redirection Will there be any harm on Site A, as we have now removed the redirection or shall we pass on link from home page of Site B to Site A i.e say Powered by Site A (on Top) or at all no direct linking is actually needed. PS :- Also - can anyone let know the backlink quality of www.usedcarindelhi.com. Its PR 3, DA - 18, Majestic Citation Flow - 18, Trust Flow - 11 . Pl advise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
301 Redirect To Another 301 Redirect
Hi, We have a client with an old domain that they want to redirect to their primary domain. They also have a few older domains pointing to the old domain. Do you recommend leaving them as redirects that point to the old domain? This will create a redirect to a redirect situation. Or, is it better to go ahead and redirect those older domains to the primary one's, removing one layer of redirect? Thank you! Jessie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessieT0 -
Splitting one Website into 2 Different New Websites with 301 redirects, help?
Here's the deal. My website stbands.com does fairly well. The only issue it is facing a long term branding crisis. It sells custom products and sporting goods. We decided that we want to make a sporting goods website for the retail stuff and then a custom site only focusing on the custom stuff. One website transformed and broken into 2 new ones, with two new brand names. The way we are thinking about doing this is doing a lot of 301 redirects, but what do we do with the homepage (stbands.com) and what is the best practice to make sure we don't lose traffic to the categories, etc.? Which new website do we 301 the homepage to? It's rough because for some keywords we rank 3 or 4 times on the first page. Scary times, but something must be done for the long term. Any advise is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance. We are set for a busy next few months 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hyrule0 -
Redirecting, then redirecting back
Hey, mozzers! My first question ever... I have a client who has (fictitionally) WickerPatioHomeStore.com, which features wicker home decor. Not too long ago, they wanted a shorter, easier URL, so they redirected to another domain they own, WickerPatio.com (again, fictional). They saw somewhat of a drop in traffic, and wonder if there's a correlation with the words "home store" not being in their domain any more. When considering the two, I figure that relevant factors would be age of domains, history of content of the domains, and inbound links to each domain. Any thoughts on other things to consider? Thanks very much!! ~ Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GRIP-SEO0 -
Our site has been penalized and it's proving to be very hard to get our rankings back...
So I have a question. We have used nearly every trick in the book to rank our site, including a ton of white hat stuff.... but then also a lot of black hat practices that resulted in us dropping in the rankings by about 30-40 positions. And getting back to where we were (top 10 for most keywords) is proving to be nearly impossible. We have a ton of great content coming off of the site and we actually offer a quality product. We follow most of the guidelines advocated here on SEOmoz. But the black hat stuff we did has really taken a toll. And it's gonna be pretty much impossible to go back in time and erase all of the Black Hat stuff we did. So what should we do? Should we design a completely new website with a new domain? What can be done to help?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LilyRay0 -
Multiple retail sites redirected to one
Recently our company has acquired several high ranking retail websites which sell only our brand of products. We are now considering consolidating all our online sales from these different retail sites to be direct to our main website. The question we have is how do we do this without negatively affecting SEO for these high ranking retail sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DennyGan0 -
Any way to find which domains are 301 redirected to competitors' websites?
By looking at the work from an SEO collegue it became clear that his weak linkbuilding graph probably is not the cause for his good rankings for a pretty competitive keyword. (also no social mentions where found) I was wondering what it could be, site structure and other on page optimization factors seems to be ok and I don't think there will be exceptionally good or bad user behavior... Finally I looked at the competitors and found that they have more links, better content en better design, so I got a little stuck. The only reason I can think of is that he is doing 301 redirects (or is rel=canonical tags). Is there a way to trace these redirects back to the source in order to include this important variable in your competitor research? thnx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djingel10