Understand how site redesign impacts SEO
-
Hi everyone,
I have, what I think, is kind of a specific question, but hoping you guys can help me figure out what to do.
I have a client that recently changed their entire website (I started working with them after it happened, so I can't comment on what the site was like as far as content was before). I know they were using a service that I see a lot of in the service industry that aim to capitalize on local business (i.e. "leads nearby" or "nearby now") by creating pages for each targeted city and I believe collecting reviews for each city directly on the website.
When they redesigned their website, they dropped that service and now all those pages that were ranking in SERPs are coming back as 404s because they are not included in the new site (I apologize if this is getting confusing!)
The site that they moved to is a template site that they purchased the rights to from an already successful company in their same industry, so I do think the link structure probably changed, especially with all of the local pages that are no longer available on the site. Note: I want to use discretion in using company names, but happy to share more info in a private message if you'd like to see the sites I am talking about as I have a feeling that this is getting confusing
Has anyone had experience with something like this? I am concerned because even though I am targeting the keywords being used previously to direct content to the local pages to new existing pages, traffic to the website has dropped by nearly 60% and I know my clients are going to want answers-- and right now, I only have guesses.
I am really looking forward to and so greatly appreciate any advice you might be able to share, I'm at a bit of a loss right now.
-
Those pages will need to be recreated and then have a 301 redirect placed on them directing all existing authority to be passed onto the newly created city targeted pages.
I suggest pulling the data before the redesign that shows how much traffic was being sent to those pages that were killed and showing this to your client. Doing this should help them see that whoever suggested killing those pages in the redesign shouldn't be making decisions.
Once you've 301'd the old pages, that are showing 404's, to the new city targeted pages go into Webmaster Tools and submit them to be indexed/crawled right away.
-
A couple options come to mind: either create those pages and build them similar to when they had the plugin (assuming it was a plugin) or 301 those 404 links to the new pages. When doing the 301s I suggest you create a spreadsheet that outlines all of the 404 to 301 mappings and show that to the client so that they are aware of the issue(s), which can help explain why their traffic is taking a hit. I hope that helps!
-
The domain name stayed the same, I believe. And the pages that existed beforehand were killed-- not just content. They come back as 404 errors.
-
Quick question: Did the domain name or url's change with this redesign?
When you say:
"When they redesigned their website, they dropped that service and now all those pages that were ranking in SERPs are coming back as 404s because they are not included in the new site"
Does that refer to just content (what's on the page) or did they kill certain pages that existed before hand?
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
-
Best SEO practice for project galley (image gallery) ? I need SEO Professionals advice.
Hi, i Have a website that is powerful and i dont want to hurt it. http://dreamgaragedoor.com/ right now i need a projects gallery page that people goes there to find out the models and products and services images. i have created the page and it would be 6 slider in the page and each slider has at least 10 images inside. first question is having this much images would or wouldnt hurt my webiste. second what ALT should i use for this many pictures in 1 page. for example i think having ALT like below in one page would be bad SEO wise. Sliding-gate-1, Sliding-gate-2, Sliding-gate-3, Sliding-gate-4,... please take a look at the gallery page and let me have your pro ideas. http://dreamgaragedoor.com/galleries/ thanks
Local Website Optimization | | Mishel2980 -
Schema markup for a local directory listing and Web Site name
Howdy there! Two schema related questions here Schema markup for local directory We have a page that lists multiple location information on a single page as a directory type listing. Each listing has a link to another page that contains more in depth information about that location. We have seen markups using Schema Local Business markup for each location listed on the directory page. Examples: http://www.yellowpages.com/metairie-la/gold-buyers http://yellowpages.superpages.com/listings.jsp?CS=L&MCBP=true&C=plumber%2C+dallas+tx Both of these validate using the Google testing tool, but what is strange is that the yellowpages.com example puts the URL to the profile page for a given location as the "name" in the schema for the local business, superpages.com uses the actual name of the location. Other sites such as Yelp etc have no markup for a location at all on a directory type page. We want to stay with schema and leaning towards the superpages option. Any opinions on the best route to go with this? Schema markup for logo and social profiles vs website name. If you read the article for schema markup for your logo and social profiles, it recommends/shows using the @type of Organization in the schema markup https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/social-profiles If you then click down the left column on that page to "Show your name in search results" it recommends/shows using the @type of WebSite in the schema markup. https://developers.google.com/structured-data/site-name We want to have the markup for the logo, social profiles and website name. Do we just need to repeat the schema for the @website name in addition to what we have for @organization (two sets of markup?). Our concern is that in both we are referencing the same home page and in one case on the page we are saying we are an organization and in another a website. Does this matter? Will Google be ok with the logo and social profile markup if we use the @website designation? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | HeaHea0 -
SEO Client not rankings in Google
Hello, I have a client that has continued to be problematic for my team and I. They have fair to middling rankings in Yahoo and Bing, but none in Google. I realize that they are three separate search engines each with their own criteria, but this client is the only one experiencing this problem. There is no significant duplicate content that can find, same with restrictions in the robots.txt file. These seems to be no reason why all my tools say that this client has no presence at all in google, especially when the client gains most of their traffic through Google. Can anyone assist me in finding out what is going wrong? Client website for reference: http://www.volvethosp.com/ Best, BeyondIndigo
Local Website Optimization | | BeyondIndigo0 -
Map Files for Branches and SEO
Dear All, We have an xml and image site map but we currently don't have a separate GEO Site Map / map files for our branches. I am wondering if such a thing exists and if so , if this something that we should be doing to help our branches rank locally on google maps etc. We have google local listings for our branches and we already do schema.org for our branches. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. thanks Peter
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Need advice on direction to go with site
I am taking over this site and redoing it all over. I believe that google may have penalized the site because the site doesn't show up in the SERPS, but will show under a google search (site:prosplumbingsanjoseca.com). I am just asking for your opinions on what I should do to correct the issues with this site and get back into the SERPS.
Local Website Optimization | | mikezaiss0 -
Yoast Local SEO Reviews/Would it work for me?
Hi everyone, I'm looking for some feedback on Yoast Local SEO, and if you think it'd work for our site. www.kempruge.com. Our site is a wordpress site, and there's nothing about it, off the top of my head, that makes me think it wouldn't work, but I've been wrong before. We do use All-In-One SEO, not the Yoast plugin, so I'm not sure if that's compatible.or would cause a problem? (The reason we use All-In-One and not Yoast is because that's what we had when I got here, and I'm worried what would happen if we switched). Also, we have three offices, and I need to be able to do local seo for all three. I know Yoast says it supports multiple offices, but I'd feel more comfortable if someone on here let me know from his/her experience that it did. Anything else you want to add about Yoast Local, I'm all ears! Thanks, Ruben
Local Website Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
One location performing worse than the rest despite no major difference in SEO strategy
Hi all, I'm flummoxed. I'm dealing with a business that has 15 or so offices in three cities, and one city is performing horribly (this includes every office therein). The other two cities have shown consistently stellar results with massive traffic increases month over month for the past year; the city in question dropped unexpectedly in June and hasn't ever recovered. We didn't perform any major website changes during or immediately prior to that time period, and the website in general hasn't been negatively affected by Hummingbird. All locations for the business are optimized in the exact same way and according to best practices; there's no significant difference in the number of local listings, reviews, G+ fans, social signals, etc across locations. All meta data and content is optimized, NAPs are all consistent, we've built links wherever we can: the SEO for every location has been by-the-books. We've run a competitor audit in this particular city that included pulling our top competitors and exploring their domain authority, meta data, on-page keyword grade for the term we're trying to rank for, number and type of inbound links, social signals, and more; and we didn't spot any patterns or any websites that were significantly outperforming us in any area (besides actual rankings). It's frustrating because the client is expecting a fix for this city and I can't find anything that needs to be fixed! Have any multi-local SEOs out there run into a similar problem? What did you do about it?
Local Website Optimization | | ApogeeResults0 -
Sites Verification Issues
We have a group of automotive dealerships by a website provider that causes issues when trying to verify our sites. Because they use Analytics for their data program, they install a code into our websites-stopping us from doing so properly in our back end. We also cannot verify ourselves in webmasters or adwords. We can't actually "own" any of our sites since they run a java query script from within the website. They also do not allow the use of iframes or scripts, so we can't even use the container to verify these sites. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated as I am sure there is some way to break this to get our data and be verified.
Local Website Optimization | | spentland0