New URL structure caused a HUGE drop?
-
I have started working with a client who did an upgrade on their e-commerce sive in May of last year. It totally changed the URL structure and they didn't redirect old URLs or do any of the things they should have. Not unexpectedly they they went from about 300 visitors a day to 0 for then rose up to maybe 50 and have remained there ever since.
There were some major onsite issues including about 15000 internal links that 302 back to the site. In any case I have fixed most of the onsite problems and worked on a little better categorization + content optimization, etc.
We have only been working on this for about 30 days and organic traffic is up and they are ranking for much better keywords, but I expected a little quicker rise.
Here is a screenshot out of GA of their descent. Its pretty rapid.
I dont think it makes sense to redirect their old URLs at this point since most of them have been deindexed for 10+ months. Anyone have any suggestions on how to get back to their previous level. The domain actually has decent authority and link profile, etc.
Is this just going to be a slow climb back? Any thoughts?
-
And along the same lines, there wasn't a rogue line of code that set the canonical URL for all of your products to the home page or added a noindex to your pages, right?
-
Roger, here's a new post about the changes in the Q&A system http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pro-qa-forum-upgrades-changes.
-
Interesting point. The old URL structure isn't entirely clear to me is though, so it would take some real digging to apply all the old urls.
I guess its worth a shot.
Whats up with the new having to remember to thumbs up your own posts by the way????
-
Adding to Seth's response - not only do I agree with him completely, the other factor is how many potential visitors still, to this day, click on those old links only to get 404'd?
-
I would disagree with you on the redirection of the old site URLs. I have worked on and consulted with several eCommerce websites and from 2004-2008 ran my own successful eCommerce site called thesprintstore.net. I changed the URL structure and had the same thing happen to my site. At the time I chalked the issue up to moving everything around and believed that the site would eventually bounce back. Due to the economy it never did.
I later discovered that the old URL structure had some seriously powerful backlinks from sites like techcrunch, engaget, engagetmobile and other awesome forums. If I had only redirected all of the old urls to the new urls all of that link juice would have continued onto my site and I would not have experienced such a significant drop in domain and page authority.
Regardless of indexation or how long ago the urls were changed its never a good strategy to play hide and seek with Google so simply apply 301 redirects from the old to the new and see what transpires over the coming months. After all, it cant hurt right?
-
Hmm, that is an interesting thought. It is automatically added by X-Cart, but I will do some spot checking to make sure.
-
A quick question first -- you've verified that Google Analytics code is on all of their current pages, right? Discovering way later there was a glitch in code implementation and half of their URLs don't have GA code would be a major headache, as would finding that a good part of the dip was because they finally pulled the code off of the development server. I've seen both happen.
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
-
After you remove a 301 redirect that Google has processed, will the new URL retain any of the link equity from the old URL?
Lets say you 301 redirect URL A to URL B, and URL A has some backlinks from other sites. Say you left the 301 redirect in place for a year, and Google had already replaced the old URL with the new URL in the SERPs, would the new URL (B) retain some of the link equity from URL A after the 301 redirect was removed, or does the redirect have to remain in place forever?
Technical SEO | | johnwalkersmith0 -
URL / sitemap structure for support pages
I am creating a site that has four categories housed in folders off of the TLD. Example: example.com/category-1
Technical SEO | | InterCall
example.com/category-2
example.com/category-3
example.com/category-4 Those category folders contain sub-folders that house the products inside each category. Example: example.com/category-1/product-1
example.com/category-2/product-1
etc. Each of the products have a corresponding support page with technical information, FAQs, etc. I have three options as to how to structure the support pages' URLs. Option 1 - Add new sub-folder with "support" added to string: example.com/category-1/product-1-support Option 2 - Add a second sub-folder off of the product sub-folder for support: example.com/category-1/product-1/support Option 3 - Create a "support" folder with product sub-folders: example.com/support/product-1 Which of these three options would you choose? I don't like having one large /support folder that houses all products. It seems like this would create a strange crawling and UX situation. The sitemap would have a huge /support folder with all of my products in it and the keywords in my category folders would be replaced with the word "support." Because I would rather have the main product pages ranking over any of the support pages (outside of searches containing the word "support"), I am leaning toward Option 2: example.com/category-1/product-1/support. I think this structure indicates to crawlers that the more important page is the product page, while the support page is secondary to that. It also makes it clear to users that this is the support page for that particular product. Does anyone have any experience or perspective on this? I'm open to suggestions and if I'm overthinking it, tell me that too. Thanks, team.0 -
Flat vs Hierarchical URL Structure
Hi, We are redoing our site structure and I was wondering what are the benefits of having a flat url structure. For example store.com/product instead of doing store.com/category/product. I noticed sites doing it both ways, even moz.com has both structures ex: moz.com/learn/seo and when you clck on something it brings you to moz.com/seo-expert-quiz (even though following the previous logic it should be moz.com/learn/seo/seo-expert-quiz) Please advise, Thanks!
Technical SEO | | WSteven0 -
What would cause a huge decrease in total links?
After the latest crawl of one of my client campaigns in Moz, I noticed that their domain authority dropped by 3 since the last crawl just one week ago. That seems pretty drastic. I took a look around to see what might have been the cause, and in looking at the Links > Competitive Metrics > History section of Moz, I found that the site had a decrease of total links from 5,339 to 1,072 (see image) - also a drastic decrease. My question is, what would cause such a huge, sudden decrease in links over just the course of one month? I haven't changed anything up with the approach to their online strategy, in fact we have put increased emphasis on the creation of natural links so this huge decrease comes as a real surprise. I should also mention that Total External Links also decreased, but only from 243 to 205. Any insight into these numbers and what could have possibly caused such a drastic decrease would be very much appreciated! Screen-Shot-2014-07-23-at-10.00.28-AM.png
Technical SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Changing URL of posts
HI, I need to change the urls and permalink structure of my blogposts. How I have to deal all this with google? Do I have to re-submit the pages to google with fetch as google? Will google display duplicate content of the same article ( having changed the url) or will it automatically replace the old url with the new ones? Tx for your support guys!
Technical SEO | | tourtravel0 -
What do you think about my new site?
Hi everyone, I'm looking for a review for my new site www.interlive.it Could you please let me know what do you think about the work that I did for my site. I'll be very happy to receive your suggestions. Regards, Mike
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
URL Structure "-" vs "/"? Are there any advantages to one over the other?
An example would be domain.com/keyword/keyword2 vs domain.com/keyword-keyword2 Are there any advantages / disadvantages to one over the other?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
New Sub-domains or New Directories for 10+ Year Domain?
We've got a one-page, 10+ year old domain that has a 65/100 domain authority that gets about 10k page views a day (I'm happy to share the URL but didn't know if that's permitted). The content changes daily (it's a daily bible verse) so most of this question is focused on domain authority, not the content. We're getting ready to provide translations of that daily content in 4 languages. Would it be better to create sub-domains for those translations (same content, different language) or sub-folders? Example: http://cn.example.com
Technical SEO | | ipllc
http://es.example.com
http://ru.example.com or http://example.com/cn
http://example.com/es
http://example.com/ru We're able to do either but want to pick the one that would give the translated version the most authority both now and moving forward. (We definitely don't want to penalize the root domain.) Thanks in advance for your input.0