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
-
Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair
I'm new to SEO, and am stubbornly trying to educate myself. I have a telescope shop in Canada, it's a small business that we run on the side. We're driving lots of traffic through FB and our outreach programs but I really want to increase our presence on search. We released a new website back in January and it killed some of our rankings. We're working our way back with a very specific set of efforts on regular SEO: Metadata and titles, although it seems that's not super relevant Building high quality backlinks and eliminating any spammy backlinks Rewriting product listings so that they are original content though I'm not sure how important this is in e-commerce Writing high quality articles and blog posts Working relevant keywords into our product pages and titles I understand that good SEO is about pushing on all the levers, and trying to make sure that your site is as valuable to the end user as possible. We're making some good progress, but I'm puzzled by the #1 shop in Canada. They don't put any apparent effort into SEO and they still rank #1 on every key product we compete with them on. I've worked with two separate, highly ranked and regarded SEO firms on this and neither has been able to tell my why this other site ranks so highly. Here's a specific example on a popular product that we both sell, the Celestron NexStar 8SE. Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE: https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069 Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website: https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page. Here is our page: https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the Telescopes Canada page. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page. But they keep ranking ahead of us, and right at the top of google search. Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). Our text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. According to Moz's page ranker it's 20 points higher than Telescope Canada's page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here. Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product: Celestron NexStar 8SE
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nkennett
NexStar 8SE
Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
NexStar 8SE Canada I have a feeling it's something technical that I'm missing, but I'm not sure how obvious it is with two 'professional' firms not finding it. I'd really appreciate any help or insight that you can offer.0 -
Is it helpful for seo to have helpful links at the footer?
HI, suppose my homepage has good content but no external links to other sites for more info. and no helpful internal links in the footer to learn more. and my competition has 9 internal links in the footer which links to other pages on the site who has more SEO boost? I know the answer , does it really makes a difference or its minute?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL1 -
Website Re-Launch - New URLS / Old URL WMT
Hello... We recently re-launched website with a new CMS (Magento). We kept the same domain name, however most of the structure changed. We were diligent about inputting the 301 redirects. The domain is over 15 years old and has tons of link equity and history. Today marks 27 days since launch...And Google Webmaster Tools showed me a recently detected (dated two days ago) URL from the old structure. Our natural search traffic has take a slow dive since launch...Any thoughts? Some background info: The old site did not have a sitemap.xml. The relaunched site does. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 19prince0 -
Can URLs blocked with robots.txt hurt your site?
We have about 20 testing environments blocked by robots.txt, and these environments contain duplicates of our indexed content. These environments are all blocked by robots.txt, and appearing in google's index as blocked by robots.txt--can they still count against us or hurt us? I know the best practice to permanently remove these would be to use the noindex tag, but I'm wondering if we leave them they way they are if they can still hurt us.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Previously ranking #1 in google, web page has 301 / url rewrite, indexed but now showing for keyword search?
Two web pages on my website, previously ranked well in google, consistent top 3 places for 6months+, but when the site was modified, these two pages previously ending .php had the page names changed to the keyword to further improve (or so I thought). Since then the page doesn't rank at all for that search term in google. I used google webmaster tools to remove the previous page from Cache and search results, re submitted a sitemap, and where possible fixed links to the new page from other sites. On previous advice to fix I purchased links, web directories, social and articles etc to the new page but so far nothing... Its been almost 5 months and its very frustrating as these two pages previously ranked well and as a landing page ended in conversions. This problem is only appearing in google. The pages still rank well in Bing and Yahoo. Google has got the page indexed if I do a search by the url, but the page never shows under any search term it should, despite being heavily optimised for certain terms. I've spoke to my developers and they are stumped also, they've now added this text to the effected page(s) to see if this helps. Header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanclc
$newurl=SITE_URL.$seo;
Header("Location:$newurl"); Can Google still index a web page but refuse to show it in search results? All other pages on my site rank well, just these two that were once called something different has caused issues? Any advice? Any ideas, Have I missed something? Im at a loss...0 -
Dynamic URLs Appearing on Google Page 1\. Convert to Static URLs or not?
Hi, I have a client who uses dynamic URLs thoughout his site. For SEO purposes, I've advised him to convert dynamic URLs to static URLs whenever possible. However, the client has a few dynamic URLs that are appearing on Google Page 1 for strategically valuable keywords. For these URLs, is it still worth it to 301 them to static URLs? In this case, what are the potential benefits and/or pitfalls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0 -
301 redirect help
Hey guys, I normally work in WordPress and just use a 301 redirect plugin. I bought a site and rather than maintain two similar ones have decided to redirect one to the other. I am having trouble with the .htaccess file. Here is an example. These are two redirects: redirect 301 /category/models/next/2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster
redirect 301 /category/models I want both of these URLs to redirect to the same URL of the new site. However, the /category/models is the only one working. It redirects to the new page just fine. The /category/models/next/2 is redirecting to nearly the same URL on the new site, only it is adding /next/2 to the end and that is bringing up a 404. Why is it adding /next/2 to the new URL? How can I fix this? There are several doing this. Help appreciated!0 -
My ranking spiked then died in the butt? why? Please help!
Hi guys, I have been persevering with this ranking for some time now and thought you might be able to help. Or direct me to where I can get help. I am learning a lot through SEOmoz but I am still very green. Basically on the 20th of the 12th we jumped up to a 2nd place listing and then dropped back down on the 17th of the 1st 2011. The site is http://mlb.broomeaccommodation.com.au and the search term is 'Broome Accommodation' as you can see it is a considerable drop and really affecting our bookings and sales figures. I have attached a link to a screen capture of the problem - http://exitforward.com/kimberleyaccomm/seomoz.png Interested to hear your thoughts and get some help on this frustrating matter Kind regards Bodie Czeladka
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bodie0