Fun and games -- not -- after website relaunch (Rails to Wordpress)
-
I'm after some advice. I've dropped 1 million pageviews in the last 30 days after a website relaunch a few weeks ago, and my revenue is a quarter of what it was, which is a massive worry. After 12 years of hard work and a much anticipated upgrade, it's been a nightmare.
There were so many problems with the changeover that should have been done, but I have been fixing the aftermath up like crazy since then and nothing seems to be improving.
I just want to know if there are any glaring issues I have missed that I can focus on. I have been working on ridiculous stuff like duplicate content from multiple imports (301 redirects and removing the dupes from google) and so much more. Feels like a bomb and I am stuck underneath it.
Website is BellyBelly.com.au.
Thanks in advance.
-
Yes, Wordpress SEO is the Yoast plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/
-
Thanks again Plugin details in admin:
| WordPress SEOFAQ | Premium Support | Settings | Deactivate | Edit |
The first true all-in-one SEO solution for WordPress, including on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps and much more.
Version 2.0 | By Team Yoast | View details |
-
Thanks for the reply Richard.
I was worried about the redirects. I have that server issue where there are some URL chars in uppercase. So there is a redirect for that. There is also one to remove /articles/ which is what my site started with (a htaccess rule stopped it years ago), but it reappeared after the relaunch.
Something new from the redesign is the addition of the / at the end of URLs. I don't know why that happened. But I was very unhappy with my designer's job, hence why I have hired a new one to help clean it up.
CDN's shouldn't have changed with the move, but I had a suspicion something different had gone on.
Yes, links have been lost. I don't know why. With the conversion from rails to WP, three database syncs occurred, and I ended up with three copies of some articles. So I have been redirecting them as google is listing them all as 404's.
The site was much faster, but something has happened since launch that has slowed it down.
So much mess...
-
Everett,
Thanks for your reply! WP SEO is the Yoast plug-in, is it not?
Appreciate the list, will take a look.
Kelly
-
A lot of things happened here in combination. The new site launched. You say a disavow file was updated, was there a penalty or was this pre-emptive? You might have killed a lot of links that were helping you with this. Looks like you changed CDNs. The site was switched to secure, except for the forum, and a lot of the secure pages are displaying non-secure content? It looks like you added more ads to the site. You removed some urls in Google? You should really wait for the pages to switch naturally through the 301s to the new structure. What you may have done is deleted pages that would be showing right now while the new pages haven't been crawled and added yet. There are a ton of broken and redirected internal links after the new launch. Some old pages were never redirected and I would be willing to bet there were some links lost. Looking at a quick speed test on pingdom compared to the history, it looks like the site is taking twice as long to load now as it was before. There are some ridiculous redirect chains happening that need to be cleaned up. A lot of pages are redirected 2-5 times before reaching their current destinations.
One example:
http://bellybelly.com.au/articles/Breastfeeding/breastfeeding-a-confidence-game
http://bellybelly.com.au/articles/Breastfeeding/breastfeeding-a-confidence-game/
http://bellybelly.com.au/Breastfeeding/breastfeeding-a-confidence-game/
https://www.bellybelly.com.au/Breastfeeding/breastfeeding-a-confidence-game/
https://www.bellybelly.com.au/breastfeeding/breastfeeding-a-confidence-game/
I would start by just getting your site back in order. It looks like this was not a great launch and there is a ton of cleanup that needs to be done.
-
Hello Kelly,
If you feel like you need a professional SEO to come help you recover from a site migration / redesign then I'd say you're probably right. Moz keeps a recommended list of professionals here if you need help choosing one.
I agree with Chris that you should probably switch your SEO plug-in. I wouldn't use anything but Yoast for that, and it could solve a lot of your problems. Don't let that stop you from getting a professional audit though. You should make sure the contract also states that they will provide implementation if you're not comfortable implementing all of their recommendations yourself.
Good luck.
-
Oh, I know the feeling! I'd say, try to make an audit for the site, then make a priority list and take it step-by-step.
Let me know, if you need help.
-
Thanks Keszi,
The site has already launched, so it's all firefighting mode at the moment, lol!
-
Hey Chris!
Thanks for the reply. Yes I have WP SEO Premium installed After sleeping on it, I think I just need some professional SEO help here, I am at a loss. There are quite a few issues, I need to sort out a disavow file (amongst other things) and it seems too complicated and time consuming!
-
Hi Kelly,
I didn't see Yoast on your site and not sure if you are using another plugin to help manage SEO issues. Yoast is pretty well respected and the plugin can help manage some of the duplicate content issues in Word Press. (tags, categories)
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/Also some good reads on the Yoast site on optimizing a Word Press site. HTML5 and Schema should also be considered. There are some Word Press Gurus around here and hopefully they will chime in.
Best!
-
Hi Kelly,
There are a few nice articles about this topic. I will point out a few, maybe these checklists will help you determine what could have gone wrong with the redesign:
- http://searchengineland.com/8-necessary-seo-steps-during-a-website-redesign-65470
- http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seo-website-redesign-checklist/
- http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/file-13220778-pdf/docs/ebooks/10-step-checklist-website-redesign.pdf
- http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2400414/checklist-launching-a-site-redesign
I hope it helps! Keszi
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
-
Links via Commenting on Popular website. Does it work?
Getting links from popular website using real name or brand name as comment still works? I know that anchor tags in name while commenting on other sites would directly go to spam.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Should I nofollow my Wordpress tags?
I have a website that have a strong root domain (ranking on many terms) but the subpages (articles) doesn't rank well. My feeling is that the linkjuice is not flowing to them (not enough anyway). When I run site:http://mydomain.com I have my root as the first result and the next many results are tagpages on my sites. I have arund 180 index pages, and I need to go to down to result #50 give or take before I see any subpage using the site command. My website theme have the tags on every page possible. The tags are useful for my viewers, but not SEO useful, but I fear that they are dilluting my linkjuice. Should I nofollow and noindex them? Noindex makes sense (the tags are just duplicate content featuring snippets of text from the articles). But Nofollow would make sense too since I wouldn't send any linkjuice through the tags. What would you guys do? Bests regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | claus101 -
Website No Longer Ranking In Google:
My website was on first page google couple of months ago, now nothing. Shows up in Bing page one. Some queries/pages still showing OK, but some not at all. Example "residential elevators illinois" found nowhere. http://www.accesselevator.net is the website. Have found 900 poor quality links and used disavow tool. Any further suggestions? Their Page Rank also went from a 3 to a 2. Implemented nofollow on all outgoing links. Need advice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trailblazerzz90 -
Getting links from spammy websites on the same IP
Hey, I'm getting a ton ( 22k) of spammy links from another website which has the same IP address as mine. I've not received any notification from Webmasters but I think I'm getting massively penalized for the same. 1)Should I just go ahead and disavow these links? 2)Are there are other steps with regards to the technical aspects such as Hosting and Domain configurations I should look into to stop this and get ranked properly. 3)Do I need to submit a reconsideration request to Google after I've cleaned up this mess or will I need to wait till the next scrawl? Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | suchde0 -
How to find affiliate sites linking to a competitor website?
Hello here, I am trying to understand the best way to find sites that are affiliate of a competitor, through link research. Typically our competitor's affiliates link to our competitor website via any of the following links: http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp?SID=[aff_id]&LID=[link_id] http://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=[aff+id]&offerid=[off_id]&type=2&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.musicnotes.com%2Fsheetmusic%2Fmtd.asp%3Fppn%3D[item_id] The first link looks much easier to find, so I have tried to find the first kind of links with Google by using the "link:" clause as follows: link:http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp Or, similarly, by using Open Site Explorer. But I always get 0 results! It is weird because I know there are thousands of affiliates out there with the same tracking code. How's that possible? Why does it look impossible to find the sites I am looking for? Would you suggest any different approach? Any ideas, suggestions and thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance. Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Duplicate content, website authority and affiliates
We've got a dilemma at the moment with the content we supply to an affiliate. We currently supply the affiliate with our product database which includes everything about a product including the price, title, description and images. The affiliate then lists the products on their website and provides a Commission Junction link back to our ecommerce store which tracks any purchases with the affiliate getting a commission based on any sales via a cookie. This has been very successful for us in terms of sales but we've noticed a significant dip over the past year in ranking whilst the affiliate has achieved a peak...all eyes are pointing towards the Panda update. Whenever I type one of our 'uniquely written' product descriptions into Google, the affiliate website appears higher than ours suggesting Google has ranked them the authority. My question is, without writing unique content for the affiliate and changing the commission junction link. What would be the best option to be recognised as the authority of the content which we wrote in the first place? It always appears on our website first but Google seems to position the affiliate higher than us in the SERPS after a few weeks. The commission junction link is written like this: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1428744-10475505?sid=shopp&url=http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/vango-calisto-600xl-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0 -
Duplicate content from development website
Hi all - I've been trawling for duplicate content and then I stumbled across a development URL, set up by a previous web developer, which nearly mirrors current site (few content and structure changes since then, but otherwise it's all virtually the same). The developer didn't take it down when the site was launched. I'm guessing the best thing to do is tell him to take down the development URL (which is specific to the pizza joint btw, immediately. Is there anything else I should ask him to do? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Google is indexing wordpress attachment pages
Hey, I have a bit of a problem/issue what is freaking me out a bit. I hope you can help me. If i do site:www.somesitename.com search in Google i see that Google is indexing my attachment pages. I want to redirect attachment URL's to parent post and stop google from indexing them. I have used different redirect plugins in hope that i can fix it myself but plugins don't work. I get a error:"too many redirects occurred trying to open www.somesitename.com/?attachment_id=1982 ". Do i need to change something in my attachment.php fail? Any idea what is causing this problem? get_header(); ?> /* Run the loop to output the attachment. * If you want to overload this in a child theme then include a file * called loop-attachment.php and that will be used instead. */ get_template_part( 'loop', 'attachment' ); ?>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TauriU0