URL no longer ranks after redesign, everything was done by the book. Can someone plz help?
-
Hey Mozzers,
After a redesign of our site we have a huge problem with 1 particular URL. We can't understand what is wrong with it. Our site was redesigned about 3 weeks ago everything was done to make sure the process was smooth. Content on the new url was exactly the same as before, title tags and meta descriptions were copy pasted, 301 redirects were set up. Our site has 47 pages and all other pages are still ranking the same way as they used to before the update but this one url has just dropped from serps or once a while is appearing on 2nd, 3rd pages.
URL in question is: https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service/
We are a MOZ pro client and have the data on where this url was ranking prior to the update. Keywords it ranked for #1position on page one- some examples ( car service to dulles, car service to iad, dulles airport limo service) and many more. The only thing that has changed was the url the old url was https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html
After the new design we got rid of the ".html" on all our urls, the funny thing is that all our 46 urls were updated the same way but only this url is experiencing this problem. Google search console shows that url is indexed and on Google but sometimes it does not show up on serps.
Can anyone please help? 20% of our business comes from this url and we are loosing real money everyday and I can't figure out was is wrong with it.
Thanks all,
Davit
-
This echoes what Thomas said but I'll weigh in anyway. This is your old URL: https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html. You say it has been redirected to the new page with a 301, which is only partially accurate. You need to install this Chrome extension which will allow you to inspect redirects and chains: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-path/aomidfkchockcldhbkggjokdkkebmdll?hl=en. Visit the old URL (http://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html) and you will see that it redirects no less than four times (instead of just once). Google probably didn't follow your redirect all the way through. This is your page's redirect path: https://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html/ (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service (301) -> https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service/ (200) . Redirects should be A to B, simple. They shouldn't chain up like this
-
Hi Thomas, we are working on fixing the issues you mentioned right now. I will update you if it works. Thanks for your detailed analysis. It means the world to us.
-
You are facing problem due to redirection rule. You are saying you are redirecting as 301 but actually status code is 302. So you need to solve this issue first. http://prntscr.com/q9fbah
-
Hi Davit, I found the problem fix your servers redirect chains
Google recommends to not have more than 5 hops in a redirect chain. We found 6 hops. This could mean slower or delayed crawling as well as potential SEO problems caused by this.
Look https://i.imgur.com/w40qS3b.jpg
-
Your .html page
-
Fix your nginx config file.
-
https://cobwwweb.com/remove-html-extension-and-trailing-slash-in-nginx-config
Then this hits a 302 (will not pass Link equity)https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html/
| 302 | 302 redirect to:https://dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service |
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5730092/how-to-remove-html-from-url
Might be faster to use https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/224509547-Recommended-Page-Rules-to-Consider
<code>RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-f RewriteCond%{REQUEST_FILENAME}!-d</code>
checks that if the specified file or directory respectively doesn't exist, then the rewrite rule proceeds:
`RewriteRule^(.*)\.html$ /$1 [L,R=301]` [https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/page-with-to-without-extension/](https://www.aleydasolis.com/htaccess-redirects-generator/page-with-to-without-extension/)
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/?(.*).(html)$ /$1 [R=301,L]</ifmodule><ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]</ifmodule>Remove HTML Extension
There are a few different ways to go about removing the
.html
extension. I've found the following to work just fine:<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; }</code>
Then we have to make sure Nginx knows what files to look for, and for that we use the
try_files
directive. We'll look for a file with the current$uri
and an.html
extension, and if no file exists, we check for a directory with that name and serve the index. Otherwise, we render a404
error.<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; index index.html; try_files $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; }</code>
Remove Trailing Slashes
After that first step, we have a URL without a
.html
extension. However, if the file of interest was anindex.html
file, it could still be accessed via the name of the parent directory with a trailing slash.For me, for example, I was getting a URL at http://cobwwweb.com/page/2/, but I didn't want the trailing slash.
We have to remove the trailing slash after we have removed the
.html
extension.The gotcha here is that we have to alter the
try_files
directive to look for anindex.html
file first.<code>server { rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; index index.html; try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; }</code>
Pulling It Together
To pull it all together, I'll share a slightly-altered version of my config for this site.
<code>server { listen 80; server_name cobwwweb.com *.cobwwweb.com; rewrite ^(/.*)\.html(\?.*)?$ $1$2 permanent; rewrite ^/(.*)/$ /$1 permanent; root /path/to/project/root; index index.html; try_files $uri/index.html $uri.html $uri/ $uri =404; error_page 404 /404.html; error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;</code>
Hey, regular site audit we'll find out more these problems. do you want one?
Hope this helps,
Let me know if not,
Tom
-
-
Hi Davit,You need to link internally from your current site
-
The page is an orphan according to Moz and only has when the mean pointing to it according to link research tools
-
You are #5 in the SERPS as on now I searched from New England
-
Google is not indexing the full page.
-
You change from Wordpress to?
-
https://web.archive.org/web/20170928065156/http://www.dcacar.com/dulles-limo-service.html
-
LRT Power3
-
3
-
LRT Trust1
-
Backlinks 2M
-
Ref Domains 510
-
PAGE
-
LRT Power3
-
6
-
LRT Trust2
-
Backlinks 2
-
Ref Domains 1
-
Links
-
I will run a test and post if that's ok?
-
Have you checked Google search console will you try to make sure that it crawls it again. It appears that it's not very high priority page considering the last time crawled by Google was November 20
Hope this helps,Tom
-
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
-
'?q=:new&sort=new' URL parameters help...
Hey guys, I have these types of URLs being crawled and picked up on by MOZ but they are not visible to my users. The URLs are all 'hidden' from users as they are basically category pages that have no stock, however MOZ is crawling them and I dont understand how they are getting picked up as 'duplicate content'. Anyone have any info on this? http://www.example.ch/de/example/marken/brand/make-up/c/Cat_Perso_Brand_3?q=:new&sort=new Even if I understood the technicality behind it then I could try and fix it if need be. Thanks Guys Kay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eLab_London0 -
Can some one help me find this Matt Cutts article on disavows?
Hey everyone. A while ago, I remember reading that Matt Cutts said that you can just disavow domains, and that the Google Webmaster Tools team doesn't read for comments (like if webmasters had been reached out to). Is this ringing any bells? I'm trying to find this tidbit again. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charles_Murdock
Charles0 -
Discrepancy in keyword ranking from webmasters and actual ranking.
I have been tracking ranks of some keywords important to my business since the last 2 months. Recently I have observed that, for one of my keywords, google webmasters is giving the avg position as 8 but when i search in google it comes in the 6th page. I know that webmasters tools gives the average position but i do not think there will be such big difference in the ranks. Please help.Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomoz12320 -
Can anyone help me clean up my link profile?
Hi, I've been struggling with my rankings for some 18 months or so. It seems like the plan is to review my back links and remove or disavow the ones that could be causing my site problems. Unfortunately I neither have the time or expertise to perform this task and wonder if there are any freelancers who could work on this project? I look forward to hearing from anyone.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
Rankings dropped - Why?
At the end of November a client site dropped significantly in the rankings. The drop effected almost all the keyphrases we monitor. Historically the homepage has always ranked higher than the sub-pages - however now it seems Google is no longer ranking the home page, and instead ranking the sub-pages, just far far lower down. Any ideas what could cause this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg0 -
Are we being Penalized? Can someone Assess Please!
We have two eCommerce sites. Both the sites can broadly be divided into 3 pages 1. Home Page. 2. Detail Page. 3 Category Pages (Altogether our site has approx 3 Million pages each) These are the site URLs http://bit.ly/9tRZIi - This is targeted for USA Audience http://bit.ly/P8MxPR - This is targeted for UK audience The .com domain which was launched earlier in 2011 is doing okay with decent organic traffic Precautions Taken: To avoid content being duplicate on both the sites we are using: a. Geo-targeting through Google webmaster tools b. rel=alternate tag on printsasia.co.uk Problem 1. The .co.uk domain which was launched in May 2012 started gaining organic traffic slowly but then suddenly dropped to almost 0 after September 18. 2. When we use operator site:printsasia.co.uk and apply a filter on past week/month we don't see any result. While when same operator used for "any time" we see some results. 3. According to webmaster tool, Google has indexed 95% of our URLs in the sitemap Our concern: Is our UK site penalized for some reasons? If yes, what could be the possible reason(s) for this penalty and possible steps to get out of it? Would request if experts here can review our site and help us.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
Overly-Dynamic URLs & Changing URL Structure w Web Redesign
I have a client that has multiple apartment complexes in different states and metro areas. They get good traffic and pretty good conversions but the site needs a lot of updating, including the architecture, to implement SEO standards. Right now they rank for " <brand_name>apartments" on every place but not " <city_name>apartments".</city_name></brand_name> There current architecture displays their URLs like: http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=overview</client_apartments> http://www.<client_apartments>.com/index.php?mainLevelCurrent=communities&communityID=28&secLevelCurrent=floorplans&floorPlanID=121</client_apartments> I know it is said to never change the URL structure but what about this site? I see this URL structure being bad for SEO, bad for users, and basically forces us to keep the current architecture. They don't have many links built to their community pages so will creating a new URL structure and doing 301 redirects to the new URLs drastically drop rankings? Is this something that we should bite the bullet on now for future rankings, traffic, and a better architecture?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredDetroit0 -
Why are our sites top landing pages URL's that no longer exist and retrun 404 errors?
Digging through analytics today an noticed that our sites top landing pages are for pages that were part of the old www.towelsrus.co.uk website taken down almost 12 months ago. All these pages had the 301 re-directs which were removed a few months back but still have not dropped out of Googles crawl error logs. I can't understand why this is happening but almost certainly the bounce rate on these pages (100%) mean we are loosing potential conversions. How can I identify what keywords and links people are using to land on these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0