Site is losing traffic after relaunch
-
Hello,
We've just relaunched this site in the last several days, and we're seeing some small (but stead) traffic decreases, as well as engagement decreases. We're aware that page speed (about 4 seconds from a non-cached browser) and some 404s are an issue, our team is currently working on both. But we're really looking for some constructive criticism here as to what we need to improve.
Other issues to be aware of: lots of our social counts went back to 0s, as lots of URLs changed, and it wasn't possible to migrate comments from the old system, so those have gone back to 0 as well. We wonder if this might be affecting both users and search engines perception of the site.
Your input would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul -
Paul,
I would also add, as kevbudmonroe says, big site changes can create flux which can soon be recoverable, or better, on its own.
Im sure your scouring the analytics for clues but if you havent already look at your intelligence reports in Google Analytics - they might throw up something you didnt think of.
Good luck,
Andy
-
Hi Healther,
Thanks for your response.
1. There was no downtime whatsoever.
2. Yep, the comparison shows us that:
-
Direct traffic is down, just slightly, though there is a trend. The downward trend is still within normal bounds. I believe it will soon a be beyond these bounds, however, as there appears to be a user experience issue. Site speed being one, but would appreciate input on any others you might be able to identify.
-
Referral traffic is within normal bounds, some ups, some downs.
-
Organic traffic is where the site is taking the hit. The trend is downward, though not drastically so. Might site speed be the crux of search / engagement issues? Or do you see anything else in the site that might cause a downward trend in search traffic?
-
-
No problem Paul, hope it helps, let me know if you have anything to add the list, ill credit it back to you.
-
Other issues to be aware of: lots of our social counts went back to 0s, as lots of URLs changed, and it wasn't possible to migrate comments from the old system, so those have gone back to 0 as well. We wonder if this might be affecting both users and search engines perception of the site.
Yes, anytime content changes and it gets crawled it will influence rankings/perception. However, it does not mean you will necessary lose any positions.
Also, any site migration you will typically drop in traffic (unless it's a small site with all the correct redirects). It happens, but as long as the traffic doesn't drop significantly--you did your job. Just keep monitoring it.
-
Hi Andy, thanks for the checklist. Going through it now to make sure we've got all these bases covered.
-
Hi LoudNoise.
1. was there any site downtime during the migration?
2. Have you compared traffic sources before and after the migration to isolate the source of the problem?
H
-
Heres a relaunching a site SEO checklist I did a while back which may help.
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
-
Competitor's new site ranking with out much keywords - How?
Hi all, One of our competitors have recently redesigned their website with new content. Now I can see much less keywords in the content. And page title also changed away from keywords. Still this is ranking at good position. How? Previously they used to have much landing pages with related keywords which some of them are missing now. Still I wonder why this website is ranking high? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Does having too many wordpress portfolio pages with little content hurt a site's SEO?
I have a site that is for a service company, not image based like a photographer or artist. We utilize the Portfolio feature to create a gallery of floor coating finishes (images of all the flooring finish options available) but this solution has created /portfolio/file-name pages for each image. These pages have no other content besides the image. I've run SEMrush audits on this site which shows a high percentage of pages with low text/code ratio and duplicate content (a lot of the finishes have very similar names). This site has been extremely slow to improve any visibility online (more than 9 months) and I'm wondering if this is a factor by possibly having a negative effect on our site. We initially chose the portfolio option because it was the best-looking solution for our users but we can certainly change it to another format if that is better. Thanks!
Web Design | | WillGMG0 -
Changing top level navigation between site sections
We've got an internal proposal to change our top level nav depending on the section of the site. For example, on our homepage it might read: Products, Library, About with relevant links dropping down below. As we have varied products, the drop down underneath it would include the various families. When arriving on the product family page the top-level nav would change to represent more specific offerings. For example: xxx.com 1. Products; 2. Library; 3. About xxx.com/xxx 1. Product family 1; 2. Product family 2; 3. Product family 3; 4. Library; 5. About What are the SEO/UX implications of this? It seems confusing but allows more specific navigation via the main nav depending on the section of the site. Also it seems that an alternating TLN might not be too Google-friendly.
Web Design | | gwelch0 -
Footer links on my site... bad for passing page rank?
i've been told that it is possible that google discounts the weight or page rank passed in footer links of websites and my website has the navigation to many of my pages in the footer of each page. My whole website is about 20 pages so each page has links to the 5 most popular pages at the top and the rest of the links are in the footer of each page. Am i losing page rank by having these links in the footer? Should i make my navigation different? I have lots of articles on my site so i thought it might be not only helpful to my readers but give my pages an seo boost if i placed in context links in the body of my articles to other pages of my site. Does this sound like a good idea? Thanks mozzers! Thanks mozzers!
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Site is getting crushed by spam traffic and Google Webmaster Tools giving crawl warnings. Also...
Currently hosting a site I'm planning on moving to a new server ASAP, 301 redirecting and have a domain that has nice authority and very old. On the current site I need to clean up the blog. I have a few questions actually.... 1. I'd like to remove most of the blog articles as I want the new site to be very high quality, but isn't it dangerous to do a 301 redirect to the same page for all these articles? 2. I want to focus on the new site as the current site has too many issues but still managing to hang in their. is highly outdated yet I don't want to spend a ton of time on the site before the 301 redirect. With the Pigeon and Panda 4.0 rumors being released soon, I want to get the new site completed ASAP. Do you think it's better if I fix the 3. Would removing cloudflare make things better or worse with the crashing of my site due to high traffic (mainly spam on the blog.) 4. My best article by far is outdated, but should I waste time updating it before redirecting or should I just get the new site going? I did way too many guest posts thinking content is king, but at least checked the outgoing links Domain Auth, Page Auth, and MozTrust in OSE, but first off I'm going to remove a page that mentions I'm looking for guest bloggers. I tried to keep the posts relevant but at the time you could get away with 5. Anything I can do to slow down these spammers on Wordpress? I noticed most of them are checking for vulnerabilities but I'm keeping it up to date, have caching setup. Thanks!
Web Design | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
Will upgrading my dedicated server improve my site speed
hi, at the moment i am concerned about my site speed for www.in2town.co.uk My hosting company is tmd hosting and my package is Intel Atom 330 1MB L2 Cache 1.6GH $159/mo $189/month500GBStorage4GBRAM10TBBandwidthi am looking at increasing this to**$219/mo** $289/month500GBStorage6GBRAM10TBBandwidthcan anyone let me know if this will make a difference to my site speed please
Web Design | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Best Site navigation solution
Hi there, We are getting our website redesigned and would like to know whether to increase the links on our site wide navigation or not. At the moment we have around 30 links from the navigation. We want to use exploding navigation menu and increase the links to our most important categories. Say if we increase to 60-70 would that be alright. (what will be the highest we can go for) At the moment categories that get links from navigation are ranking pretty good. If we increase would we loose those rankings. What will be the pros and cons of increasing navigation links? Second question we are also adding fooer links to top 10 categories in the footer. Would this be ok as far as seo and google concerned. Many Thanks
Web Design | | Jvalops0 -
Question about web site structure
Is there an SEO advantage for individual pages to be in sub folders vs not being in a folder? Of course site managemnt is easier with folders if you have 100;s of pages...clearly a shorter URL is easier for humans to naviagte. store.com/gadgets store.com/lasers vs. store.com/gadgets/lasers
Web Design | | johnshearer0