SEO traffic had significantly dropped
-
I know this question has been asked before, but I'm hoping someone can address my specific issue.
We recently did a complete redesign of our site and moved it over to a new server. The site was even "down" for about a week, where we had a static splash page. However since relaunching (it's not been over two weeks) we've seen a significant drop in search engine traffic. We are using Yoast for Wordpress.
The site is The Tech Block. Could anyone see if there is something we're doing wrong?
Thanks
-
Dan,
Thanks a lot for your help. I was under the impression that this setting would prevent everything from page2 onwards from indexing. Isn't that a bad thing? Don't I want all my pages indexed? Could you explain why? I actually read your articles many times, and it's great!
Thanks so much for your help!
-
Hi - I think I just answered another one of your questions too Here's one more thing...
You should noindex subpages. There's a lot of them in the index. Here's the settings.
For anyone else reading this, I mentioned in the other answer to also add %%excerpt%% to all the descriptions so there's a default meta description in there as well.
And check out my article on WordPress SEO.
-Dan
-
Thank you so much!
-
Category pages are fine to leave unchecked if they are well organised and you want them to be found in SERPs.
I would tick the tags like Irving suggested so they are hidden from SERPs - otherwise you'll get 1000s of low quality pages being indexed by Google.
Don't worry about using the meta keywords tag anymore, like Irving said, it's dead and isn't a factor in the SEO algorithm anymore.
-
What would you recommend? Sorry, I'm not SEO expert like you are! But I really appreciate the help.
-
if you don't want the page indexed like the tag or category pages check it. confirm in your source code that it is showing up properly too
unchecked on the meta keywords tag, that tag is dead
-
Should noindex, follow be checked or unchecked?
should "Use meta keywords tag" be checked?
Thanks so much for your help
-
Should noindex, follow be checked or unchecked?
-
your tag pages are getting indexed, they should be noindex follow. get the yoast SEO plugin for wordpress and manage your noindex and canonical tags so that you aren't spamming google with pages of low quality and duplicate content
-
I do not believe the new site structure has changed. For instance, if you click on a link prior to the site update, it still brings you to the proper page.
-
Of course it dropped, you deleted your site. The old site should have stayed up until the new one was rolled out.
There are so many factors that could have caused your drop in a site redesign, without seeing the old site and new site it's hard to make a determination just on a URL, but did the URL structure change and if so did you 301 redirect?
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
-
Organic traffic down
My 15 or so clients have all seen a drop in organic traffic by about 20% on GA4 for April. Rankings have not dropped or anything like that - so just wondering if anyone else has had similar?
Reporting & Analytics | | Contentcoms2 -
Universal cookie loss specific traffic
Hi there, A month ago we have installed the Universal Analytics tracking code on our website (www.smartphonehoesjes.nl). Since that time, direct traffic has risen unnaturally and organic traffic dropped unnaturally. I dived into this problem and I discovered there is a cookie loss on when visitors are switching from /cart to the first step checking out. The problem is that not all browsers cause these cookie issues, only Safari and IE older versions (9 and older) and some cases of Chrome. All iPads cause cookie issues (50% of all cases). iPhones cause not a single problem because we are using a separate mobile (m.) site which does not cause cookie problems. We don't have a mobile site for tablets yet, soon it will come. My biggest question is: how can I fix the Safari desktop cookie loss after switching domains from /cart to the first step of the chckout process? Olders versions of IE will slowly fade out and the iPad problem will be fixed when the mobile website is available for tablets. I hope someone can help me.
Reporting & Analytics | | MarcelMoz
Thanks in advance. Marcel0 -
Organic Traffic Spike
I've been chipping away at the SEO for a client's site for about 6 weeks and a few days ago noticed a huge spike in organic traffic for about a dozen keywords. See attached. Previously traffic was around 20-30 unique new visitors a day. On the 17 it went up to 500+ for 1 day, now it's come back down again. This spike was not for 1 keyword but for about a dozen. I've never seen this before and wondered if anyone had experienced similar. The site is about 3 months old. ebix3rl
Reporting & Analytics | | deployseo0 -
Webmaster tools traffic on one keyword dropped through the floor - ideas?
Hi there, We design and sell our own product range in a narrow niche, and we are also stocked by Amazon and a lot of other big retailers in the UK. During the first two weeks of Dec 2012 the position of one of our main keywords, which was in google SERPs on page 1 (8 or 9), dropped to page 4. The keyword describes the niche we're in. The drop is shown in the webmaster tools traffic report for that keyword. But it's the only one of our keywords where this has happened, and furthermore it hasn't happened for variations of the keyword. And in Adwords our quality score for the keyword is 10 For example say we were making and selling shopping trolleys - our keyword "shopping trolleys" has dropped through the floor, but "shopping trolleys (on) wheels" is just fine. Can anyone shed any light on what's going on here? Losing this one keyword has cost us some good organic traffic. i1uxSlB.png
Reporting & Analytics | | w1ll1am0 -
Amazon.com inc.increase in direct traffic
Hi All, I have seen a increase of direct traffic from hostname amazon.com inc. This only happened on one day. Any ideas what/why it is? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Sayers0 -
When i first add my url to seomoz then i had a general report of all the faults my website had in SEO and suggestions where can i find it now , i cant find it ?!
when i first add my url to seomoz then i had a general report of all the faults my website had in SEO and suggestions where can i find it now , i cant find it ?!
Reporting & Analytics | | fireproductsuk0 -
How much direct traffic is really direct?
Does anyone else think that a large chunk of traffic labelled as "Direct" in your analytics isn't direct at all. When you analyse traffic trends it seems that a large percentage could just be browsers with their referring URL hidden so it only appears direct. Here's the evidence: When we've been affected by major search algorithm changes, we've seen big changes in direct traffic as well as organic, but not in referral traffic. If direct traffic is just bookmarks, typed-in URLs, and people clicking through from emails why is direct traffic 85% new visitors? We don't do any offline advertising, so you'd expect genuine direct traffic to be returning visitors -- either our brand loyalists or subscribers to our email newsletters. If you segment direct traffic into new and returning visitors and look at a major algo update as discussed in 1), you find all the drop in direct traffic is from New Direct visitors, with no drop at all in Returning Direct visitors. Can anyone explain who these New, Direct visitors are if not simply mislabelled new, search visitors. Cookie deletion can't be the problem (ie: they can't be Returning, Direct really) because the traffic doesn't behave like returning, direct (that is, it varies too much). I'd be really interest to hear theories, and whether anyone has any figures on the extent of HTTP referrer blocking.
Reporting & Analytics | | Dennis-529610 -
Overall site traffic - 3 quick questions
3 things : 1. Does Google factor in overall site traffic in rankings? So for 2 sites, all other things being pretty much equal, the one with higher traffic will be listed higher? 2. Does this logically imply that sites with lower traffic overall face an uphill struggle to be ranked highly??? 3. As an extension to this, would it be true to say that by increasing site traffic, say with Google Adwords or other online or offiline or whatever advertising, that might help get higher SEO rankings??? Thanks so much for your responses. This forum is great!
Reporting & Analytics | | inhouseninja0