Traffic to blog home page is going down after changing my WordPress Theme
-
I recently changed my wordpress theme from a standard free theme to a newer theme. The home page I switched up a bit adding more calls to action to some of our top posts and leading people to popular categories and so on. This greatly improved the usability of our site as it allowed us to highlight new posts. The previous free template simply listed 10 of our most recent posts on a page with small snippets and then you had to move to the next page to keep reading.
Since switching my theme the blog traffic has stayed relatively level. That being said, the specific posts traffic is going up a lot whereas the organic traffic to the blog homepage is now nearly depleted.
Is this a common thing to happen or is there anything I can do to fix this issue?
-
If you don't mind me asking did you run a complete crawl of the site prior to changing the theme?
I only ask because very unlikely that the identical URL structure will remain considering all the different modifications to photographs and pages.
if you have the original version you could run a screaming frog test on both the original and new site?
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
you could do this by taking your backed up version of your old site and uploading it to pantheon.io that would allow you a free staging server allowing you to not have to worry about duplicate content and perform tests like this.
Respectfully,
Tom
-
Thanks for your response Thomas. The redesign was simply the theme and none of my URL's have changed or anything..so what would I need to have 301 redirects for?
-
301 use page to page 301 redirects when Migrating a New Site From Development To Live
- https://moz.com/blog/make-or-break-your-site-migration
- https://moz.com/blog/website-migration-guide
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en
- https://moz.com/ugc/301-redirects-migrating-a-new-site-from-development-to-live
You need to have page to page 301 redirects
bigger photo https://i.imgur.com/PsM0S7N.jpg
I can get very into depth on this if you'd like just let me know if this answers your question if it does not I am more than happy to go farther into detail.
Look for internal redirects that were not made or are still showing a 301 should be searched and replaced the new URL. And of the 301 Redirect Logic in place.
You can use deep crawl, screaming frog SEO spider & Moz to find these 301 or lack of 301
keep a lookout for the 404 status as that will be your old age that carried link equity and is now pointing the abyss you want to redirect that page to your new press rumbling structure.
** Things that will help you with this process**
Make 301's
-
https://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.html
-
Nginx is almost as popular as Apache and in my opinion better here is an htaccess converter to Nginx
-
WordPress site structure
-
** Understanding and finding 404's**
-
**Changing WordPress permalinks **
-
Running a site crawl and checking the current status of your URL's
-
(1&2 Checklists of up to 500 URLs. It's quick, easy and free).
** You can always use Moz**
-
or
-
Checking the current status of any URL any time.
Sincerely,
Tom
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
-
Blog migration
Hi We have 4 websites - 1 for company and 3 for each products. Currently all our blog posts are located on the company website company.com/blog. We will be separating out the blog so that product blogs will be in each product website. i.e. from company.com/blog to: company.com/blog product1.com/blog product2.com/blog product3.com/blog This is with the aim of helping SEO for each of the product websites; and improving user experience so users can easily navigate around the product pages if they are reading a blog post on the product. So now we have to consider migration. We will migrate/copy over all blog posts to each of the relevant product websites, but should we: A. keep the old blog posts on company.com/blog and do a rel=canonical B. only show blog preview on company.com/blog which will link to the new product.com/blog (and using 301 redirect) C. 301 redirect all blog posts from company.com/blog altogether Any suggestions on which of the above options to take would be greatly appreciated in terms of SEO and other considerations
Content Development | | bnulab0 -
Blogging for Clients
Hello, I need some tips I think. I create content for my clients blog through research and I try to understand fully their product or service so that I can write about it and promote it. But is this enough, do you think, to be able to write good quality content? I will obviously never be as knowledgeable as they are about their product or service. Does anyone have any tips or approaches for writing content in areas they are unfamiliar with? What do others do to create blog posts for clients? Thanks
Content Development | | AL123al0 -
How much do you pay for a 300+ word blog article?
I am considering outsourcing some of the blog writing and would like to get some idea of what is a reasonable amount to pay someone for writing say a 300-350 word article? Also any recommendations on where to find good writers? Thanks!
Content Development | | Clicksjim0 -
Promoting blog content
I've created a pinterest board, which kind of serves as a blog also as it tells people how they can save money on their heating bills this winter. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to promote it as a backlinking opportunity? Would it be good to also feature the content on our website? Guest blogging? Any suggestions would be welcomed. Thank you.
Content Development | | AAttias0 -
FAQ page to target "long tail keywords".
I'm wondering if there is any benefit to creating a FAQ section on a website for the purpose of ranking for long tail keywords. If so, are there best practices in the way that the page is structured? Also, would doing this just help me rank the FAQ page for these terms or would it also help more critical pages on my website, such as homepage, contact, about, etc... which do not contain these keywords.
Content Development | | pharcydeabc0 -
Duplicate content problems, so why does WordPress post onto Tumblr?
Hi Everyone, Basically I know that if you have duplicate content your ranking is effected! This I understand, so why is it that WordPress has the option to post your blog entry straight onto your paired Tumblr account? Surely if this can be done, I can have the same content on the company website but also on WP and Tumblr? Or is there some sort of method to how it works specifically for those 2 websites? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | MariusFermi0 -
Short blog post or Long Blog post, Which works better?
I was thinking, that SEOmoz or other technical SEO blog writes long blog post which cracks my interest when i start reading few lines of the blog post. My mind speak, Wooo! so boring.In SEO what will be best post long or Short? Thanks
Content Development | | tapankumar0 -
What is the best practice for using the same content on two pages?
I have two websites in a very similar niche(s)...I have good unique content article that I would like to use on both sites because it adds value to the visitor experience.. Example: Science of Colors would be very useful for my seattle house painting paint colors page. I want to have content so they do not need to leave the site to navigate to second site. Would the identical content trigger a penalty or would it be crawled, ignored, and not indexed. Does having a rel=authorship on one site trump the site..Or is it a pile of BAD.
Content Development | | johnshearer0