URL no longer ranks after redesign, everything was done by the book. Can someone plz help?
-
Hey Mozzers,
After a redesign of our site we have a huge problem with 1 particular URL. We can't understand what is wrong with it. Our site was redesigned about 3 weeks ago everything was done to make sure the process was smooth. Content on the new url was exactly the same as before, title tags and meta descriptions were copy pasted, 301 redirects were set up. Our site has 47 pages and all other pages are still ranking the same way as they used to before the update but this one url has just dropped from serps or once a while is appearing on 2nd, 3rd pages.
URL in question is: https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service/
We are a MOZ pro client and have the data on where this url was ranking prior to the update. Keywords it ranked for #1position on page one- some examples ( car service to dulles, car service to iad, dulles airport limo service) and many more. The only thing that has changed was the url the old url was https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html
After the new design we got rid of the ".html" on all our urls, the funny thing is that all our 46 urls were updated the same way but only this url is experiencing this problem. Google search console shows that url is indexed and on Google but sometimes it does not show up on serps.
Can anyone please help? 20% of our business comes from this url and we are loosing real money everyday and I can't figure out was is wrong with it.
Thanks all,
Davit
-
This echoes what Thomas said but I'll weigh in anyway. This is your old URL: https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html. You say it has been redirected to the new page with a 301, which is only partially accurate. You need to install this Chrome extension which will allow you to inspect redirects and chains: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-path/aomidfkchockcldhbkggjokdkkebmdll?hl=en. Visit the old URL (http://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html) and you will see that it redirects no less than four times (instead of just once). Google probably didn't follow your redirect all the way through. This is your page's redirect path: https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html/ (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service/ (200) . Redirects should be A to B, simple. They shouldn't chain up like this
-
Hi Thomas, we are working on fixing the issues you mentioned right now. I will update you if it works. Thanks for your detailed analysis. It means the world to us.
-
You are facing problem due to redirection rule. You are saying you are redirecting as 301 but actually status code is 302. So you need to solve this issue first. http://prntscr.com/q9fbah
-
Hi Davit, I found the problem fix your servers redirect chains
Google recommends to not have more than 5 hops in a redirect chain. We found 6 hops. This could mean slower or delayed crawling as well as potential SEO problems caused by this.
Look https://i.imgur.com/w40qS3b.jpg
-
Your .html page
-
Fix your nginx config file.
-
https://cobwwweb.com/remove-html-extension-and-trailing-slash-in-nginx-config
Then this hits a 302 (will not pass Link equity)https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html/
| 302 | 302 redirect to:https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service |
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5730092/how-to-remove-html-from-url
Might be faster to use https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/224509547-Recommended-Page-Rules-to-Consider
<code>RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-f RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d</code>
checks that if the specified file or directory respectively doesn't exist, then the rewrite rule proceeds:
`RewriteRule^(.*)\.html$ /$1 [L,R=301]` [https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/page-with-to-without-extension/](https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/page-with-to-without-extension/)
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?(.*).(html)$ /$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule><ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule>Remove HTML Extension
There are a few different ways to go about removing the
.html
extension. I've found the following to work just fine:<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; }</code>
Then we have to make sure Nginx knows what files to look for, and for that we use the
try_files
directive. We'll look for a file with the current$uri
and an.html
extension, and if no file exists, we check for a directory with that name and serve the index. Otherwise, we render a404
error.<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; index index.html; try_files $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; }</code>
Remove Trailing Slashes
After that first step, we have a URL without a
.html
extension. However, if the file of interest was anindex.html
file, it could still be accessed via the name of the parent directory with a trailing slash.For me, for example, I was getting a URL at http://cobwwweb.com/page/2/, but I didn't want the trailing slash.
We have to remove the trailing slash after we have removed the
.html
extension.The gotcha here is that we have to alter the
try_files
directive to look for anindex.html
file first.<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; index index.html; try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; }</code>
Pulling It Together
To pull it all together, I'll share a slightly-altered version of my config for this site.
<code>server { listen 80; server_name cobwwweb.com *.cobwwweb.com; rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; root /path/to/project/root; index index.html; try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; error_page 404 /404.html; error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;</code>
Hey, regular site audit we'll find out more these problems. do you want one?
Hope this helps,
Let me know if not,
Tom
-
-
Hi Davit,You need to link internally from your current site
-
The page is an orphan according to Moz and only has when the mean pointing to it according to link research tools
-
You are #5 in the SERPS as on now I searched from New England
-
Google is not indexing the full page.
-
You change from Wordpress to?
-
https://web.archive.org/web/20170928065156/http://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html
-
LRT Power3
-
3
-
LRT Trust1
-
Backlinks 2M
-
Ref Domains 510
-
PAGE
-
LRT Power3
-
6
-
LRT Trust2
-
Backlinks 2
-
Ref Domains 1
-
Links
-
I will run a test and post if that's ok?
-
Have you checked Google search console will you try to make sure that it crawls it again. It appears that it's not very high priority page considering the last time crawled by Google was November 20
Hope this helps,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
-
My site is not ranking at all.
Can anybody check it what is the main culprit behind my website's growth?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anshu14320 -
Keyword keeps fluctuating between a high rank and no rank?
I've searched around and I can't seem to find anyone else describing the issue I'm seeing. Basically for a very long time our website (snappages.com) has always ranked in the tens and twenties for "create a website". It's a high volume keyword and we get a lot of traffic from it. Around May 16th it suddenly disappeared completely from search results on Google and now it will sporadically show back up with a SERP in the twenties every 5-10 days for a few hours and then completely disappear again. This pattern has continued to this day. I've checked and there are no manual penalties and nothing has really changed dramatically from a content perspective or anything like that. I would understand if we got penalized and our ranking dropped, or even if it just completely disappeared? This is the only keyword that this is happening for, all the others remain unaffected. Anyone know how I can find out why this is happening or have suggestions on how to fix it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stestone0 -
Rankings drop after https migration [Need urgent help]
hey hi guys, i have lost all my organic traffic and in need of urgent help. Plz i need all your SEO expertise. My website is: makemoneyadultcontent.com (before judging me, let me tell you that i have been in adult industry for almost 7 years now and hence this blog was a way to pass my knowledge to everyone who is looking for it) Recently i saw that moving to HTTPS will benefit my site. I did not knew much about technical details of moving to https. My hosting was on siteground, and they have a button which you can press and your website will then be served through https. So i did that. Nothing else was done. this was done on 13th or 14th of june For the next few weeks here is my analytics (image attached) : As you can see the traffic fluctuated and finally i lost everything on 29th june. When i researched more, i found out that you need to follow many steps in order to move to HTTPS. So i followed this guide and completed all the steps: https://www.keycdn.com/blog/http-to-https/ (also checked many other guides and tried to complete all the steps mentioned) Everyone said that the rankings will recover in one week, but now it has been more than 17 days and still the rankings have not improved. My articles are indexed as i can see it using site:makemoneyadultcontent.com but none of them are ranking for the keywords that i was ranking earlier. i have submitted the sitemap in google webmaster and around 166 (out of 218) pages are indexed. Here are few more images to help my case: plz plz help me what i can do to get my website traffic back. i have spent a lot of time and effort in building this site, cant see it die a slow death like this one. 8Wa8c [http ahref](http ahref) D42xw sAd9E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akki910 -
Website redesign, some urls are no longer available. How do I mitigate ranking drops?
I am currently refreshing my WordPress business website. I used a theme that had a built in portfolio option. I wanted to strip down the bloat and move to something more simple to better articulate my message. Upon switching themes I will loose my urls for my portfolio projects. I should have never used this built in function but it did exactly what I needed and wanted here is an example. http://silvernailwebdesign.com/portfolio-view/central-jersey-claims-association-wordpress-consulting/ Now on my staging site these portfolio pieces have vanished and the urls are indexed with google. I could create posts and recreate the portfolio pieces however the problem with the url is the /portfolio-view/ portion. I cannot recreate the part of the url. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I receive some traffic through the portfolio pages but not much, however, I do not want to loose any traffic. I am looking for a strategy that will solve this url issue with WordPress. I have about 10 separate portfolio pages with this url issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
My website has dropped in the rankings drastically. How can I get it back up the SERPs?
I manage a website that I took over 6 months ago - the site was sitting happily on page one of google so I haven't had to do much to keep it there - other than a few onsite improvements. However, last week the site dropped off the SERPs. The site is http://www.pro-techairconditioning.co.uk/content/home.html Could someone please suggest reasons for this and ways to solve the problem? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SWD.Advertising0 -
Rankings gone, no WMT errors, help!
Hi, Client Google rankings have been seriously hit. We have done everything we know of to see why this is the case, and there is no obvious explanation. The client dominated search terms, and are no down on page 7/8 for these search terms. There are no errors in WMT, so we can not resubmit for reconsideration. This is a genuine client and their business has been seriously affected. Can anybody offer help? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roadjan0 -
Drop in rankings
Our keyword rankings have dropped greatly since July'12. Our site used to be in the top 8 rankings for the most competitive keywords on our industry and now rank 30+. Being new to this industry any help would be greatly appreciated. www.fragileremovals.com.au
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Deep Page is Ranking for Main Keyword, But I Want the Home Page to Rank
A deep page is ranking for a competitive and essential keyword, I'd like the home page to rank. The main reasons are probably: This specific page is optimized for just that keyword. Contains keyword in URL I've optimized the home page for this keyword as much as possible without sacrificing the integrity of the home page and the other keywords I need to maintain. My main question is: If I use a 301 redirect on this deep page to the home page, am I risking my current ranking, or will my home page replace it on the SERPs? Thanks so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClarityVentures0