Site Migration and Traffic Help!
-
Hi Moz,
I recently migrated my website with the help of an SEO company using 301 redirects. The reason for the move was to change our CMS from .aspx to Drupal/Wordpress. The homepage (www.shiftins.com) and the blog (www.shiftins.com/blog) were the only two pages that kept the same url. Everything else was redirected. It's been about two months since the redirects were completed and traffic has dropped off about 90%. I'm starting to worry that something was not done properly and my traffic may never return.
The process for the redirects seem correct when I checked the work the SEO company did. All pages were duplicated, redirected to individual pages, then the old pages were de-indexed. Are there any insights the community can provide? Please help!
-
-
_Just curious what section of the Analytics data are you looking at to make this determination? _
(1) I looked at GA reports, Audience > GEO > Location > United States > California.
(2) I looked at a download of GWMT impression data comparing 9/28 - 10/30 to 10/31 - 12/1 data, sorted by the calculated difference in impressions data.
(3) Then went back to GA, looked at landing pages and searched for "car".
All of the pages I used to have were supposedly moved over to the blog then 301'ed. Was this really not done or were the pages not optimized properly?
I don't know if all pages were moved and properly 301'd. I did see at least one error though. /automobile/car-insurance-program.aspx redirects to /drive_to_learn_scholarship, which obviously is not the correct URL.
Are all of these duplicate pages coming from the blog? How can I identify these?
The screaming frog scan that Thomas sent should help you identify them.
_If you want the list of queries that were driving impressions before the conversion (and now aren't), email me (so I get your email) and I'll pass them along. _
I've emailed you the file.
-
Hi Donna,
Thank you.
The report is something you can customize to be completely white labeled very easily in less than 10 minutes. The tool is https://www.deepcrawl.com it starts at a very reasonable rate $80 and is capable of so much.
I would recommend Deep Crawl to anyone there fantastic.
All the best,
Tom
-
Thanks for clarifying the point about duplicate hits.
-
Excellent summary Thomas. Is that custom or are you using a paid tool to generate that?
-
All done use the URL provided to go through every issue on your site. remember you can click on anything to see more there are thousands of problems you can look directly at and see a fix for.
IN the URL
You will see green arrows to click on you can also click on anything highlighted in red or if there is a word for a number member you can click on it and see a lot more than what you see in the very beginning.
You have a lot of broken links it also appears your canonical URL is non-www but you 301 redirect to www.
USE THIS URL TO SEE EVERYTHING:
UES THIS FOR A summary http://d.pr/f/bvxB
Sorry it took me so long
Tom
-
so far if you look at the Google analytics indexed URLs and site map URLs compared to the URis downloaded you should upload the site map I gave you in the last post screaming frog XML sitemap with a XML image sitemap will be a step in the right direction.
It is a larger photo
http://i.imgur.com/IIhIx7q.png
Tom
-
Here is a photo showing that deep crawl is hard at work.
I've also added this URL which has a zip file that contains all your URLs your screaming frog crawl review and the pages that contain Google analytics the pages that do not and what UA number is attached to the page. http://d.pr/f/1f1AL
I want to clear one thing up you cannot get duplicate hit's using Google analytics twice on one page as long as the UA numbers are different the only thing that will happen is your bounce rate will go down dramatically. ( I am talking about full JavaScript snippets) can have two UA's in the same snippet and be okay.
I started to crawl here is a bigger photo I will post it to you when I'm done I will look at the information I've sent you so far I think you will find it very valuable.
http://i.imgur.com/i0F739b.png
All the best,
Tom
-
"The vast majority of the lost traffic is from local (LA, San Fran & San Diego) locations. People searching for "car insurance", "cheapest car insurance", "cheapest car insurance California" and other similar keyword phrases. You no longer have a page on your site optimized for those terms so you're not showing up in search results. "
Just curious what section of the Analytics data are you looking at to make this determination? All of the pages I used to have were supposedly moved over to the blog then 301'ed. Was this really not done or were the pages not optimized properly?
**"(1) You've got a lot of duplicate pages on the site, e.g. **
http://www.shiftins.com/blog/7-sins-car-insurance-buyers-make/
http://www.shiftins.com/blog/7-sins-car-insurance-buyers-make/www.shiftins.com(See how the domain name is appended at the end of the second URL?) The later is redirected to the former, but it means you’ve got crawlers wasting a lot of time trying to index duplicate content and you're diluting your SEO equity. Of 269 pages, 267 are redirected duplicates. "
Are all of these duplicate pages coming from the blog? How can I identify these?
**Your bounce rates, time on site, page views and conversions all appear to have improved since the new site was deployed. That's great! **
Thank you that was the idea behind the redesign. Now I just need the traffic back!
**If you want the list of queries that were driving impressions before the conversion (and now aren't), email me (so I get your email) and I'll pass them along. **
I would greatly appreciate the list. Please email me at "greasy(at)gmail.com"
-
Okay. I see a few things.
The vast majority of the lost traffic is from local (LA, San Fran & San Diego) locations. People searching for "car insurance", "cheapest car insurance", "cheapest car insurance California" and other similar keyword phrases. You no longer have a page on your site optimized for those terms so you're not showing up in search results.
It looks like you might have auto as a menu choice under "insurance items", but...
(1) It's hidden behind your site logo when the drop-down menu appears so visitors and search engine spiders can't get to it. It IS indexed. (I see it in your sitemap and when I do a site command.)
(2) On your old site, the home page was optimized for "Cheap Car Insurance in California". Now you're tending to use the term "auto" more than "car" and you're also not using the word "cheap" and "cheapest".
Two other observations: duplicate content and drive-to-learn 404.
(1) You've got a lot of duplicate pages on the site, e.g.
http://www.shiftins.com/blog/7-sins-car-insurance-buyers-make/
http://www.shiftins.com/blog/7-sins-car-insurance-buyers-make/www.shiftins.com(See how the domain name is appended at the end of the second URL?) The later is redirected to the former, but it means you’ve got crawlers wasting a lot of time trying to index duplicate content and you're diluting your SEO equity. Of 269 pages, 267 are redirected duplicates.
(2) The drive-to-learn scholarship page is driving a lot of good traffic. But there appears to be a missing page (below). Visits to the 404 page stopped around the 19th, so you may have fixed this already.
/404.html?page=/content/insurance-program-application.aspx&from=http://www.shiftins.com/drive_to_learn_scholarship
I suggest trying to fix these things to see if it makes a difference. I also highly recommend the other item we talked about - indexing and optimizing the blog.
Your bounce rates, time on site, page views and conversions all appear to have improved since the new site was deployed. That's great!
If you want the list of queries that were driving impressions before the conversion (and now aren't), email me (so I get your email) and I'll pass them along.
-
I've identified it as only affecting organic search traffic, direct and referral were largely unaffected. I do not mind giving you read only access. What email should I grant access too?
-
You're right. It wouldn't. Just the analytics.
Updating the title tags isn't the issue cause it looks like they didn't have unique title tags before the transition. But it should help boost organic traffic.
You may be right (it's a lot of small things). Have you looked at your traffic sources before and after to see if anything stands out? Is the drop evenly spread across direct, organic, PPC and referred traffic? Is it primarily in one area?
I'd be happy to take a look if you want to give me temporary access to your analytics and WMT. Sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of eyes.
-
If don't have the analytics code set up on the blog pages, why would that affect my GWMT data?
Both GWMT and Analytics show a decline on the relaunch date. Would updating the title tags be the issue? Even without unique tags would it justify the huge drop?
I have a feeling it's a bunch of small things contributing to the drop in traffic and need help identifying the underlying cause of the decline. Thanks for your input.
-
No. That's not the sole cause b/c I can still see blog content indexed on Google. It looks like you currently don't have Google Analytics tracking codes setup on the blog content, so any visits you are getting aren't getting captured in reports.
Also on the old site, you had two separate sets of Google Analytics tracking codes set up on the blog content (UA-743349-4 and UA-30229507-1). It's possible the code was firing twice causing double counting.
-
Donna,
THE SITEMAP.... What great analysis! This could definitely be the problem. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The company I'm currently working with created a separate sitemap for the blog than the main site but it does not look like they submitted it to WMT...
Would having two sitemaps but only submitting one to WMT cause the traffic to drop like this and not return?
-
Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. I would be more than happy to do that. In order to at the very most out of a crawl I would need access to Google Analytics. Just for the time of crawl.
What I'm going to do this combined wit what I'm going to do his combined SEM rush with deepcrawl.
I obviously will not charge you for this. let me look up how many pages your website days prior to confirming I will send you a private message and emailed or you can Google analytics once this is done you can delete it right away.
Would you do me a favor and use marketing.grader.com in order to show me approximately the size of your site.
I will and use SEM rush in addition because I think he may be ranking higher for keywords and use SEM rush in addition because I think you may be ranking higher for keywords that contain less traffic.
Another big thing that you have to think about did you use a link tool at your disposal Moz OSE, Ahrefs, Majestic & Google Webmaster tools so I can have deep crawl match up the back links with the new URLs? & tools/search console
in order to save yourself money and take it advantage of the Moz OSE, Ahrefs & Google Webmaster tools I strongly suggest that you sign up for a free trial using monitorbacklinks.com it comes with Ahrefs built in. You can add Moz , Majestic & GWT's via there API I can also upload any CSV file from any company like SEMRush exc.
I want to have the ability to she is much of the back link profile we will know so we're not missing something important.
Last but not least could you give me a rough idea of your web hosting set up? Would you mind running your website through. tools.pingdom.com
check your 301's using feedthebot.com (it redirects to a new domain but it is still the same tool set)
For Google Analytics tzickell (at) blueprintmarketing.com
-
I noticed a few problems. They might not be the answer you're looking for, but they could be a start.
- Do you have the same tracking code as before and on every page?
- Looks like your XML sitemap is missing some entries. It lists only 95 pages (none of the blog pages).
- None of the title tags on your blog are populated with unique entries.
- This has more to do with after people visit the site, but I noticed your main menu toolbar doesn't seem to be working correctly. It doesn't allow me to navigate from the home page to any of the insurance quote or customer service pages because the drop-down disappears when you navigate over it.
-
Are the new pages being indexed?
-
Thomas,
Thank you for your time! I seriously appreciate it. I've taken a quick look at the resources you provided and will be digging deeper into them soon. While the current company I'm working with looks like they did everything right by my standards, I'm starting to become worried because of all the online articles stating that I shouldn't lose more than 40% of traffic and that I should only have been affected for 3-4 weeks.
The first image I've attached is the organic search traffic data from my GA account showing the huge drop in traffic over the last two months.
The second image I've attached is the WMT data showing the drop in overall impressions and clicks on October 18th.
The third image is where it gets weird. It shows that the average overall ranking position has actually decreased showing that I'm actually ranking higher but getting less impressions and less clicks.
I'm having a hard time identifying where the issue is coming from. I've kept a pretty good record of data but can't seem to pinpoint what exactly the issue is. Is there anything that you can think of that I should look into? I would also appreciate any analysis, insights, or analytic tools you can provide.
traffic_zpsevs8mdcb.jpg impressions_zps0s1igziy.jpg position_zpsh6ipsvpx.jpg
-
Whenever your are Preparing for a Website Relaunch that involves change your URL structure abruptly you will have a dip however 90% seems extremely drastic
However this is very common in this photograph http://i.imgur.com/UtYUyCX.jpg
use this free tool from kapost to inventory your content https://app.kapost.com/auditor
I you not know what you did to prepare print for this side from 301 redirect which should be page for page using redirect match then slowly over time make sure everything is done properly http://i.imgur.com/lutF4aj.png
Read: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos
- See: http://www.stateofdigital.com/40-deepcrawl-tweaks/
- https://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2158206/-checklist-website-redesign-migration
- http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/9-seo-tips-successful-site-migration/
I like to move slowly and I always use Deep Crawl screaming frog is great too but in my opinion the DeepCrawl is the way to go.
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/what-you-need-to-prepare-for-a-website-relaunch/
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/test-development-changes/
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/guides/comparing-a-test-website-to-a-live-website/
- https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/tag/migration/
- https://builtvisible.com/deepcrawl-co-uk-crawler-choice-large-websites/
- http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2013/04/29/big-content-site-migration-tips/
Because you mentioned WordPress and Drupal I would recommend reading these lunch checks prior to major modifications
- https://pantheon.io/docs/articles/wordpress/launch-check-wordpress-performance-and-configuration-analysis/
- https://pantheon.io/docs/articles/drupal/launch-check-drupal-performance-and-configuration-analysis/
remember Google is going to play it safe make sure you know why the traffic has disappeared. If you want I will write your site through one of my tools for you?
all the best,
Tom
sorry for all the references I can tell you that they have helped me a lot.
Preparing for a Website Relaunch
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
-
Looking for someone to help with a delisted site after a malicious hack
Hello, My website - www.musillawfirm.com was recently hacked and has been de-listed by google. It had some sort of a crypto mining script on it that I was able to remove. It shows up if you type in the domain but even a generic search for "musil law firm" does not show the site - it used to rank # 1 for that term and #1 or 2 for immigration lawyer in my local area. If anyone can assist me in getting it re-indexed please let me know and let me know how much it would cost. I tried getting it re-indexed through the search console, but no luck. Thank you kindly
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | musillawfirm0 -
Content Help for Dealers
What type of content would anyone recommend writing for power sports dealers (ATV dealers, Motorcycle Dealers, Jet Ski Dealers, etc) or outdoor power equipment dealers (tractors, lawn mowers, etc) when they're website consists mainly of inventory pages? These dealers are trying to improve brand awareness, but creating content that answers searchers' questions/intent is tough and I want to make sure I am on the right track. I'm trying to create unique content. I am optimizing existing pages and then so far I've been writing brand pages, describing the brands, advertising that they carry this brand, creating links and call-to-actions to the inventory pages,etc. I want to first create authority and crawlable content for this brand. From there, I have been trying to create product category pages, describing the top products under that brand and working to creating product comparison content instead of simply describing it. Why Buy type of stuff, but that gets tricky to make unique. Any suggestions on unique content or better strategies versus just brand descriptions, product descriptions/comparisons, etc? I also want to make sure that creating multiple pages focused on one brand and an overall category isn't cannibalization of a topic. Obviously each page is slightly different and gradually going into more detail, but I want to make sure. Any recommendations on types of content or different strategies would be helpful! Also - I should mention that I am limited by the platform. I cannot create/utilize a blog page or anything like that. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Crichardson19900 -
Linking to one of my own sites, from my site
Hi experts, I own a site for castingjobs (Site1) and a site for selling paintings (Site2). In a long time, I've had a link at the bottom of Site1, linking to Site 2. (Basicaly: Partnerlink: Link site 2). Site1 is for me the the only important site, since it's where Im making my monthly revenue. I added the link like 5 years ago or so, to try to boost site 2. My question is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KasperGJ
1. Is it somehow bad for SEO for site 1, since the two sites have nothing to do with each other, they are basically just owned by me.
2. Would it make sense to link from Site 2 to Site 1 indstead?0 -
International Site Migration
Hi guys, In the process of launching internationally ecommerce site (Magento CMS) for two different countries (Australia and US). Then later on expand to other countries like the UK, Canada, etc. The plan is for each country will have its own sub-folder e.g. www.domain.com/us, www.domain.com.au/au, www.domain.com.au/uk A lot of the content between these English based countries are the same. E.g. same product descriptions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright
So in order to prevent duplication, from what I’ve read we will need to add Hreflang tags to every single page on the site? So for: Australian pages: United States pages: Just wanted to make sure this is the correct strategy (will hreflang prevent duplicate content issues?) and anything else i should be considering? Thankyou, Chris0 -
Transferring Domain and redirecting old site to new site and Having Issues - Please help
I have just completed a site redesign under a different domain and new wordpress woo commerce platform. The typical protocol is to just submit all the redirects via the .htaccess file on the current site and thereby tell google the new home of all your current pages on the new site so you maintain your link juice. This problem is my current site is hosted with network solutions and they do not allow access to the .htaccess file and there is no way to redirect the pages they say other than a script they can employ to push all pages of the old site to the new home page of the new site. This is of course bad for seo so not a solution. They did mention they could also write a script for the home page to redirect just it to the new home page then place a script of every individual page redirecting each of those. Does this sound like something plausible? Noone at network solutions has really been able to give me a straight answer. That being said i have discussed with a few developers and they mentioned a workaround process to avoid the above: “The only thing I can think of is.. point both domains (www.islesurfboards.com & www.islesurfandsup.com) to the new store, and 301 there? If you kept WooCommerce, Wordpress has plugins to 301 pages. So maybe use A record or CName for the old URL to the new URL/IP, then use htaccess to redirect the old domain to the new domain, then when that comes through to the new store, setup 301's there for pages? Example ... http://www.islesurfboards.com points to http://www.islesurfandsup.com ... then when the site sees http://www.islesurfboards.com, htaccess 301's to http://www.islesurfandsup.com.. then wordpress uses 301 plugin for the pages? Not 100% sure if this is the best way... but might work." Can anyone confirm this process will work or suggest anything else to redirect my current site on network solutions to my new site withe new domain and maintain the redirects and seo power. My domain www.islesurfboards.com has been around for 10 years so dont just want to flush the link juice down the toilet and want to redirect everything correctly.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isle_surf0 -
How to measure traffic for a keyword
Sitting in Country A I want to see how much traffic a particular keyword receives in Country B. Whats the best way to do it? Also, will the search results differ if I am analyzing the above sitting in Country A viz-a-viz Country B. In other words, will the IP of the country I am making the search from play a role in the results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__0 -
Not ranking well after site was hacked
My site was hacked and that seemed to have a pretty big effect on search rankings. I'm pretty sure I've gotten the hack completely removed (as of 10/16.) During the hack and even now, all of my posts created after Aug 1 don't rank in regular Google searches at all even if I search for the titles in quotes. But I can tell they are indexed because I see them when I do a site search in Google. And I see that they are cached. Posts from before Aug 1 rank well in Google searches. The issue with August and after posts no longer appearing started in mid September. Prior to that the some of the August posts were actually performing very well. The September date corresponds to when we first started working on removing the hack. It looks like the August and after posts all have a pagerank of 0, whereas the mozrank is much higher. I've request reconsideration from Google and was told that no manual action was taken against my site. I know that's a lot of background, but I'm wondering how long do I need to wait before the August and after posts start ranking? Is there anything I can do in the mean time to address this pagerank issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris-at-Magoosh0 -
Need help identifying why my content rich site was hurt by the Panda Update.
Hi - I run a hobby related niche new / article / resource site (http://tinyurl.com/4eavaj4) which has been heavily impacted by the Panda update. Honestly I have no idea why my Google rankings dropped off. I've hired 2 different SEO experts to look into it and no one has been able to figure it out. My link profile is totally white hat and stronger then the majority of my competitors, I have 4000+ or so pages of unique, high quality content, am a Google News source, and publish about 5 new unique articles every day. I ended up deleting a 100 or so thin video pages on my site, did some url reorganization (using 301s), and fixed all the broken links. That appeared to be helping as my traffic was returning to normal. Then the bottom dropped out again. Since Saturday my daily traffic has dropped by 50%. I am really baffled at this point as to what to do so any help would be sincerely appreciated. Thanks, Mike [email protected]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeATL0