Can unreliable server hurt your serps?
-
Hi
I have a small personal blog about food and wine that I recently moved from blogger to wordpress and it is currently being hosted by the company who moved the blog over from one system to the other.
This week I've noticed an 80% drop in organic traffic thanks to losing pretty much every first page SERP, there's no messages in WMT, i dont pay for links, all that's on the site is original content about food and wine that I enjoy. I've never had a previous drop in ranking/traffic like it.
The one thing I can say, is that the guy who took over the hosting is hosting it himself on his own server and the website has been down more times than I would consider reasonable, often for hours at a time (this is when I catch it and I don't check often).
-
Would the site be penalised for this?
-
If I move servers to a reliable co i normally use, how long will it take to recover?
-
-
I can watch soft 404 errors increase and know there will be a week to two week period with lower SERP scores.
They absolutely can affect your campaign.
-
Hi agree with both Andy and Michael.
If you are going to ditch which seems an unreliable server, make sure your new platform delivers speed. This article by KISSmetrics highlights it's importance http://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/
Good luck
Gary
-
If the server keeps going down I would also look at and consider page load speed - http://www.webpagetest.org/ because if it is that flaky I would guess performance is poor all round.
I would get to a stable server as quick as possible.
-
Google has said in the past that the odd outage shouldn't be a problem, but if it is like you are saying, then yes, this could be very harmful. Matt Cutts said that if every time someone comes to your site it is down, then it will have a negative impact.
Recovery is a very open-ended question though. It could be a week, a month or 3 months - there is no way to determine this sadly and anything here is going to be guesswork.
I would say to move the site as soon as you can.
-Andy
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
-
Can Google+ help you to rank?
I'm thinking about uploading photos to my Google+ and then embedding them in my post. Will adding photo from Google+ help me rank better.
Content Development | | WilCross1 -
Can anyone recommend a good reliable blogging platform for a small to medium sized manufacturing and services company?
I've been asked by my manager to investigate the best blogging platform for our company website. On a recent CIM course it ways suggested that Wordpress is not necessarily reliable. Could anyone advise? The blog is required to provide a space for current industry news, casestudies etc. It is also envisaged that the blog will allow comments. I've only got good things to say about Wordpress, but have only used the platform for my own small SEO company.
Content Development | | Catherine_Selectaglaze1 -
Can I post my MailChimp articles on my blog without getting hit for duplicate content?
I would like to post my newsletters on my blog, but am afraid of duplicate content since you can click a link on the MailChimp email blast to view the Newsletter online. Is this considered dup content?
Content Development | | RoxBrock0 -
Authorship showing in SERPs for non-blog pages
Hi, A few months ago we set up authorship for on our blog articles for multiple authors, which has helped driving extra traffic to our blog posts. Today, I did a search for one of most important search terms and one of our non-blog pages is showing in the first page of the results with one of our authors headshot next to it. Technically we have not not set it up to do this, the page is on a different CMS to our blog (which is wordpress). I'm not complaining because I think this is a positive outcome, but does anyone have an idea why it has done this? I was under the impression that only blog article pages could have authorship set up. Thanks, Stu
Content Development | | Stuart260 -
Can I delete an old blog post and be ok?
I wrote some blog posts on my wordpress blog a few years ago that I no longer want on my site. I have them "no index" and "no follow" but everytime I run a report on my site they still seem to pop up. If I just delete the posts will it result in a broken link for my site? Or is there another way I can go about it? Thanks guys
Content Development | | Caseman0 -
Can I tap into everyone's creativity for a meme?
About a week ago there was an awesome YouMoz post entitled How To Use Memes to Build EASY Backlinks & Traffic. I was so inspired by this post to come up with something awesome. I have been thinking long and hard about it ever since then, even browsing meme sites, and I'm coming up with NOTHING. Our company, stadriemblems.com designs and supplies custom embroidered patches for uniforms, events, and things of that nature. I know that I know the niche the best, but I'm not good at funny. So maybe someone who's good at funny can come up with something without having to know all the ins and outs of the niche. I'd so greatly appreciate some suggestions. I'll give everyone who tries a thumps-up, even if it's not good!
Content Development | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Title case or lower can URL folders
Is it best to have lower case URLs e.g mydomain.com/hotels-in-london/ or title case like mydomain.com/Hotels-In-London/ I noticed in the seomoz tools that it would report the above two URLs as duplicate if the site had two links using pointing to each URL
Content Development | | NeilTompkins0