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
-
Changing URL structure of site, including AMP - redirect AMP too?
So, I'm changing all the URLs of a site, including all its AMP URLs, I'll be redirecting all the normal URLs, but do I need to also redirect all the AMP pages?
Technical SEO | | alksfjasldfu934341 -
New Magento store, is better to place it in a new url or it can work fine in a subdomain?
Hi friends, We are working on a new Magento store for one of our websites. Our strategy is for organic positioning of the products, so we need to understand if the Magento products will position better if the system is hosted in a subdomain of the main company domain or if it is better to host it under its own domain. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | FWC_SEO0 -
Adding a parameter to the URL / URL Stracture
Dear Community, I would like to ask a question regarding url structure. We are struggling with shorting urls and we thought to add a "parameter" to the url. Example: domain.com/product**/a/** or domain.com**/a/**product/ Current url structure: domain.com/product/ So we go after and short url contains "/a/" and find the category we want. Is this going to harm our SEO strategies? Any idea is welcome.
Technical SEO | | geofil0 -
Our homepage url has been 301'd to the new https version - as our MD wanted us to have the secure protocol
Hello Mozers I'm just checking whether it is good practice to 301 the main homepage url to its https version. Will this have any detrimental effect on ranking and DA?
Technical SEO | | Catherine_Selectaglaze0 -
Massive drop in sales - how do I find out why?
I am working with my client managing/maintaining their online store.We have been making big improvements to onsite SEO, improved URL structures (complete with re-directs) etc, we use Yoast Premium to optimise pages for search and Yoast Local. We have a bounce rate of around 20%, however, suddenly in mid August, our revenues virtually vanished overnight. Moz is reporting a search visibility drop of 51%, while visitor levels remain fairly average, certainly no drops that can be compared with the sudden loss of conversions. I am at a loss and cannot fathom why our sales have dropped. Can anyone suggest where I might look? Many thanks Bob
Technical SEO | | SushiUK0 -
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
URL Parameters
On our webshop we've added some URL-parameters. We've set URL's like min_price, filter_cat, filter_color etc. on "don't Crawl" in our Google Search console. We see that some parameters have 100.000+ URL's and some have 10.000+ Is it better to add these parameters in the robots.txt file? And if that's better, how can we write it down so the URL's will not be crawled. Our robotos.txt files shows now: # Added by SEO Ultimate's Link Mask Generator module User-agent: * Disallow: /go/ # End Link Mask Generator output User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO1 -
Should I not Change the URL of Ranking Pages
My site currently ranks #1 or #2 for 2 separate pages on web design & SEO for my geographic location. The URLs are currently mysite.com/services/web-design/ and mysite.com/services/seo/ I'm redesigning my site and I'm taking out the "Services" page as I'm focusing on web design and SEO and lumping everything else into my "Internet Marketing" page. Because my pages for web design and SEO rank so well, should I keep the URL structure even though I don't have a "Services" page or should I just remove services and 301 redirect so I have mysite.com/web-design/ and mysite.com/seo/. I know doing a 301 redirect could hurt me in the short term but I'm wondering if I should just bite the bullet now and change it in favor of a better URL structure. What do you think?
Technical SEO | | JaredDetroit0