Why the rapid drop in Domain Authority?
-
I couple weeks ago I switched my website from Drupal to a Wordpress CMS: Martial Arts Austin My rankings have remained the same, but the Domain Authority has plummeted from like 29 to 21. I know this is small fry, but I don't want my business to drop in ranking.
The URL's were kept exactly the same, with the internal links and copy also kept the same with few additions.
Also, according to Open Site Explorer, the site's stronger pages have now averaged out with the weaker and unused pages so they all now share the same Page Authority - that doesn't seem right. Is there reason for concern?
Did I screw something up, or am I making too much of this?
Thanks
-
There is one other possibility and that would be the "canonical redirect." If your site is PMA (only one I saw with PA 21 in serps), when you put www.yourdomain.com in you get a page auth of 33 to go with your DA 21. But, when you put in the root without the www, ( yourdomain.com ) you get a PA of 18 and your linking root domains drop a bit.... from 42 to 1.
In WordPress, with any of the SEO plugins we have used (All in one, Genesis, etc), the canonical redirect does not happen. You have to do it in the .htaccess file. There are plenty of good directions for how to: query .htaccess redirects. Or, there are several gurus around moz who can post directions here.....
(I'm not one)
My guess is that when you do this, you will see a change in short time (few weeks at most).
-
Hi Steve.
The most likely cause of your DA drop is some URLs from the old site no longer exist on the new site. Something was missed.
The easiest way to test this theory is to compare a list of your backlink profile from the old site with the backlink profile of the new site. If you didn't track your backlinks in the past, then I suggest you start now as it is a good tool to help troubleshooting this type of issue. A few other items to check out:
-
Did you use any 302 redirects? If so, that is an issue as the link value does not flow when a 302 is used.
-
Did you remove ANY pages from your site during the CMS migration? If so, those pages may have had links which contributed to your site's overall DA.
-
It's also possible a site which linked to you previously decided to remove the link at the same time as the CMS change.
I tried to look at your site and noticed it is redirected to http://www.meetup.com/pmaustin/. Your site is a martial arts site where this is a project management site. Something seems wrong.
-
-
There was an update to Open Site Explorer on September 13th that might account for the change in domain authority, and it may well be that your DA would have had the same change even if you hadn't touched your site. Here's a blog post from Rand about the latest OSE update: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/linkscape-september-update-feedback.
Having the same PA across all of the pages doesn't sound right. For that, I'd send an email to the help desk at [email protected] and let them know about it.
I'd say don't panic just yet!
Keri
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
-
New domain wipes out domain authority
A client wanted to change their domain name, which we have now done. The site content itself is exactly the same. We put 301 redirect links in so that Google searchers would redirect from the old site to the new one. However Moz then said that it couldn't crawl the old domain because of the redirects and advised creating a brand new campaign for the new domain. We have done this but now Moz says that the domain authority of the new site is 2 (it was 14 on the old domain). Specifics are:
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti
old domain: https://ryemeadcleaning.co.uk
new domain: https://ryemeadgroup.co.uk So basically it seems like we're starting again from scratch with the new domain and all the SEO from the old domain has been lost? Have we done it wrong?0 -
Supdomain from high Domain Autorithy
hi i want undrestand my domain is domiciliationacasablanca.blogspot.com and i have 92 of DA can that realy help me to etablish trust with google if i work hardly SEO under google guidelines please help me to undrestand
Technical SEO | | seomastering0 -
Mutiple domains with similar SEO
ok we have one main domain about our company which is about renting luxury and exotic cars. (PrestigeLuxuryRentals.com). We own other domains with similar keywords,meta,etc on the URL and SEO For example, we own domains like exoticcarrentalorlando/exoticcarrentaltampa, with same background and design as main site but, we have different content than main site to avoid duplicate. Keep in mind, all the other domain we own, all have same template with our companies name on it but, it doesnt have any content or link that pertains to main site. is this a problem?
Technical SEO | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
How About Moving My Site to Another Domain?
My website has been hit by a Google Penguin penalty. At this point, it seems very few websites have recovered from this penalty even after it was lifted. That said, I'm still wondering if I should start a new website or my current one to another domain. When I started my website, I registered the domain name http://www.thewebhostinghero.com A few years later, I bought webhostinghero.com as it became available. Actually, webhostinghero.com redirects traffic to thewebhostinghero.com at the registrar level. There are barely any links pointing to webhostinghero.com. TheWebHostingHero.com is quite a big website with over 1400 pages and some very useful tools (http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/free-tools) that took me so long to develop, I just can't believe I'd have to throw it all out the window. So that said, do you think it would be possible to move all or some of the content from thewebhostinghero.com to webhostinghero.com? Would that make sense? Would webhostinghero.com come out as a copy of thewebhostinghero.com since the domain is similar, etc.? Of course, moving the content from thewebhostinghero.com to webhostinghero.com would have to be done without any 301/302 redirects to avoid passing bad link juice. At the same time, I don't want to end up with duplicate content on both domains.
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
Links to Website Author
I'm a website developer, and in the past I have usually added a tiny backlink to the footer of my clients' websites like this: Website Design by MyCompanyName I understand that Google sees this as a low-quality backlink. However, I was wondering if such links can hurt my rankings. Does Penguin sees these links as spam? If so, should I add a rel="nofollow" to the links? Is there anything else I should change? I do not want to remove these links completely because they are good for marketing my business. I just want to minimize any negative SEO impact of the links. I appreciate your input. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SiteWizard_LLC0 -
Redirect link from a particular domain
Hi guys/gals, I have a few domains and blogs which I use really for a bit of fun and experimenting. One of the domains (abc.com) wasn't doing much but has a few decent links built to it. I redirected this domain to an active blog (123.com). Here's the problem: There's a particular external link to the homepage of abc.com which drives a lot of traffic but isn't relevant to the content of 123.com which it redirects to, causing a huge bounce rate from this link. Is there a way (maybe using using htaccess) that I can redirect traffic from this one link to another domain completely? I've contacted the owner of the external site but they are unable (or unwilling) to change the link. I hope I haven't lost you all but shout if you need any clarification. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
Keyword rich domains
Hi, Our site is beingthere.com.au We are in the business of video conferencing in Australia. I was wondering if there would be any benefit of purchasing keyword rich domains such as www.videoconferencing.net.au www.video streaming.net.au What would be the benefit(s)? And How would I go about using these domains to maximise SEO benefit? Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | dantmurphy0 -
Domain Forwarding and SEO
I have looked around and only saw older and contradicting responses to this question but what effect does having a domain with VALUABLE-KEYWORD.com forward to MAINSITE.com or COMMON-MISSPELLING.com forward to MAINSITE.com in terms of SEO and is it considered spammy or looked down upon
Technical SEO | | treytt0