Why did I drop ranking after setting up perm redirect, sitemap, and Google places??
-
I have a site that was ranking in the top two for my search terms. We had a funky url (it contained hyphens) and was advised to change it for SEO, so I setup a perm redirect through my web host (before it was a temporary one I think) At the same time I installed a sitemap plugin for Wordpress and also registered for a Google Places account. I can't remember the exact order I did this -- does it matter? Anyway, within a couple days of doing the above, my ranking dropped to the bottom of the second page. I would like to fix this, but I'm not sure. I need help please!
-
The site is three months old and I did the 301 about two weeks ago.
We can rule out the EMD problem since the old domain was just the name of the business. Plus everything was fine until two weeks ago when I messed it up, and that would be too coincidental.
Is there any issue with redirecting an html site to a php site?
-
I am not totally sure if it is a big difference. However, my Dr. House side to my brain still wants to focus on the 301s.
The only exception I can think of is if your previous domain violated the EMD Algorithm; exact keywords domain name for a website. I am wondering if Google devalued it and whatever backlinks that were helping your website?!? I am so paranoid about Google's filters...I swear it's like they have rat traps everywhere and when they go out to look at one caught in a specific trap, they audit it for field testing. You could be just unlucky?! Also the keywords you are competing with also would have a big factor if Google randomly sampled your site and audited it??? Any thoughts?
Also do you have a Webmaster Tools account? Google would report any directories that are not found. If they are there this would definitely prove my point of 301s not properly written. If so then click all of them and mark them as fixed and let Google recrawl.
*New websites with no much authority tend to do a Google dance. So if you're site is less than 12 months old or even 2 years old without a huge domain authority it could take a while to rebound.
-
Hi Chad,
I have an htaccess file that is in there already and it said that with the exception of the "Options+FollowSymLinks", so I added that line in. Could that be it? Is there something I could try next?
Thanks so much!
-
Looking at this I would definitely say or question the actual .htaccess rewite. It's a little clearer to me that your site lost back-links or page flow. Also the domain rank is an important metric of "authority". This is the stuff related to your website's actual content. Backlinks "deep or inner links" to various pages helps bolster the home page and "domain authority score". So I believe the actual 301 redirect technique is in question.
I know you said you did a redirect in the html files direct. I have never learned or heard of that technique (an example would be great aka markup/code); however, if your website is on an Apache Server, you would need to create .htaccess file and use this code:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^newdomain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]Redirect /yourdirectory http://www.newdomain.com/newdirectory // for any other unquie content you want to redirect manually
*this is the way to do it, you can always Google or YouTube a video to show how to setup a .htaccess file on your server or on your cpu and then some special settings in filezilla (or whatever ftp software you use) so you can see the file. In FTP software .htaccess files are hidden, so you would create it and go nuts trying to locate the actual file. Filezillia I know has a feature or setting to unhide it so you can transfer it to the route of your server.
Let me know if this works!
-
Hi, thanks for your response. Yes, I did a 301 from the old domain to the new domain and the redesigned website. I had initially redirected the site using code in each of the html files, and that was fine, and my rank was climbing with the new site for awhile, before I did the 301 through the host. I went to ahrefs and copied and pasted the results below. I'm an SEO newb, so I'm not sure how to analyze the results.
Old Site:
URL Rank: 0Ahrefs Domain Rank: 0.17Backlinks: 58
Referring domains: 1New Site:
URL Rank: 7.9Ahrefs Domain Rank: 0Backlinks: 3Referring domains: 1
-
Hi Quick question, did you redirect 301 to new domain? I tried to read this, but I am just a tad unclear.
In theory a 301 to all or the exact anchor structure should pass all your page juice; however, sometimes doing this will enact a filter that spot checks for a link building footprint that violates Penguin Algorithm.
I know this sounds like a stretch, you might want to audit the link building you did initially. You can use Ahrefs (they have a free version) or if you want to take it to the next level use Authority Labs. They have great tools and reporting to help you look at your back-links.
If you have a ton of exact anchor matches and the same type of links on the same sites (site-wide-links), this can serve as a signal that could of had some of the links devalued.
The last option is if your previous url had exact anchors for keywords your ranked for. I am assuming you were able to obtain a branded url and this could affect to.
Reach back out to me, I can chat a little to help you hone in on the real issue.
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
-
Recently rankings for "Tree Service" dropped
Hi, we've had a page which was ranking top 1 on the Google rankings but has complete dropped out to 5. We don't have any duplicate errors from that page on here. Do you have any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | FIT0 -
What changes to subdomains - geo targeting - redirects - to boost our global ranking?
Hi, This is a complex question and I will really appreciate your help as this decision is essential to our business! We are taking a decision about what to do with our website in the terms of redirecting visitors based on their location. At the moment we have the following structure of the website: .com version practically only hosts our blog. The US traffic get presented with .com/us version automatically and the rest of the world gets presented with .com/uk. We are thinking to make .com version global (so no more .com/uk for all countries) in order to improve our ranking globally. At the moment we have good ranks in the UK, but not in the US and other countries. Our company is a global company now and we would like to get more exposure in other countries. We are also thinking to allow the option of geo redirects possible via a small pop-up window - visitors will be able to select their preferred country so next time they will be presented with their default option. To make it short: we would like to boost our domain without dropping ranks in the UK which we are now achieving through .com/uk version. Any ideas, recommendations or experience, I will appreciate! Thanks! Kat
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
These days on Google results, it also shows the site map. I submitted my company's sitemap and it still does not show?What am I doing wrong?
Look at the image in the link. I want my company to look like the "pluralsight" website in Google. I want it to show the sitemap. I have already submitted the sitemap to Google few days back, what am I doing wrong? search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&q=pluralsight&oq=pluralsight&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.11024j0j8
Technical SEO | | Deein0 -
Why does my Google Web Cache Redirects to My Homepage?
Why does my Google Webcache appears in a short period of time and then automatically redirects to my homepage? Is there something wrong with my robots.txt? The only files that I have blocked is below: User-agent: * Disallow: /bin/ Disallow: /common/ Disallow: /css/ Disallow: /download/ Disallow: /images/ Disallow: /medias/ Disallow: /ClientInfo.aspx Disallow: /*affiliateId* Disallow: /*referral*
Technical SEO | | Francis.Magos0 -
301 Redirects Relating to Your XML Sitemap
Lets say you've got a website and it had quite a few pages that for lack of a better term were like an infomercial, 6-8 pages of slightly different topics all essentially saying the same thing. You could all but call it spam. www.site.com/page-1 www.site.com/page-2 www.site.com/page-3 www.site.com/page-4 www.site.com/page-5 www.site.com/page-6 Now you decided to consolidate all of that information into one well written page, and while the previous pages may have been a bit spammy they did indeed have SOME juice to pass through. Your new page is: www.site.com/not-spammy-page You then 301 redirect the previous 'spammy' pages to the new page. Now the question, do I immediately re-submit an updated xml sitemap to Google, which would NOT contain all of the old URL's, thus making me assume Google would miss the 301 redirect/seo juice. Or do I wait a week or two, allow Google to re-crawl the site and see the existing 301's and once they've taken notice of the changes submit an updated sitemap? Probably a stupid question I understand, but I want to ensure I'm following the best practices given the situation, thanks guys and girls!
Technical SEO | | Emory_Peterson0 -
Are the duplicate content and 302 redirects errors negatively affecting ranking in my client's OS Commerce site?
I am working on an OS Commerce site and struggling to get it to rank even for the domain name. Moz is showing a huge number of 302 redirects and duplicate content issues but the web developer claims they can not fix those because ‘that is how the software in which your website is created works’. Have you any experience of OS Commerce? Is it the 302 redirects and duplicate content errors negatively affecting the ranking?
Technical SEO | | Web-Incite0 -
Should I delete Google Places and start over?
My Google Places page is stagnant. It never changes its rank, doesn't find corresponding reviews on directory sites, disappears altogether after a few days for certain keywords and ranks poorly overall. We have had a horrible time getting our web presence to be uniform...name, address, phone, etc. Our business was previously a different name so all those listings were still active, we have had different doctors over the years...those were associated with the business name in different listings, we used a referral service that sponsored listings using a diffferent phone number, change web url in the past year so some sites indicated the wrong address. HUGE HEADACHE Are there any positives/negatives to deleting the Places page and starting over? Here is the page: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&georestrict=input_srcid%3Ab1706925095a8afa Thank you for your help!
Technical SEO | | PMC-3120871 -
Redirect Flash Site for Google Only - Is this against TOS?
A photographer client has a flash website, purchased as from a (well respected) template company. The main site is at the root domain, and the HTML version is at www.example.com/?load=html If I visit the site on a browser without Flash installed, I am re-directed automatically to the HTML version. I'm concerned as the site has some great links and the HTML version is well optimised, but doesn't appear anywhere in Google for chosen keywords (ranks perfectly for brand related searches). Google is indexing the Flash version of the site, but I would rather it didn't (there's no real content (just Javascript to load the SWF) and all of the pages load under one URL). How can I block the Flash version from Google but still make the incoming links count towards the HTMl version of the site? If I re-direct Google to the HTML version, is this cloaking, and is it frowned upon? Thanks for any advice you can offer.
Technical SEO | | cmaddison0