Whats happened to my rankings
-
Hey everyone, I hope someone might be able to help me figure out what has gone wrong here.
I have a website which was slowly growing in rankings. The domain used was a .net
However, It is a UK based business so I shifted this to a .co.uk domain and then followed googles advice in webmaster tools for moving address. ie, copy site, verify in GWMT and then 301 the old site.
Now the .net had 71 indexed pages out of 73. But after 2 months .co.uk only has 41 out of 73 indexed.
At the end of last week I did change the theme on my website although the content / urls have all remained the same. I have gone to check my rankings this morning and the site has totally bombed. Even the own brand name does not ranking in top 10 pages.
I have not done an major link building at all yet for the site and any links that are there are all high quality from industry related authority sites.
Looking at GWMT the latest links all look ok, nothing spammy but one thing I did notice is that it shows the .net domain providing 193 links via 301and also individually a great deal of the links that point to .net but have shown in .co.uk
What I would like to know if have I actually done something wrong? Should I just kill the 301 (i am loathed to do this as a few of the links to this took me a long time to get), after spending a great deal of money developing my site and just starting to see some nice progress in the natural rankings and google has gone and pulled the carpet from under me. I would understand if I was doing something wrong but I have made strenuous efforts to ensure the linking on this site is whiter that white.
Oh, I have had no warnings in my messages at all.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
-
After spending a great deal of time on the webmaster tools forums I have seen that a fair few people have exactly the same type of problem as me. I cant afford to take risks etc with it so just easier to delete the original domain, put in a reconsideration request and start again.
-
When you are redirecting a website, there will be some kind of loss and gain kinda things. But losing ranking completely is a bit unnerving. However, we need to check your website first, we can provide any feedback.
-
Your rankings MAY come back, but it is a big change in googles eyes, even though it's not. The age of your new domain will keep your rankings down, as will the non direct links to your new site.
Google can and most probably will pull the carpet from under you not matter what you do, so your best bet is to NOT rely on google.
I hope your rankings return quickly, but don't get your hopes up.
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
-
Blog not ranking for my name
Hi everyone. I'm new here so apologies if I'm not asking an appropriate question - just let me know! Can anyone help me figure out why my blog (https://www.jamescrowley.net/) isn't ranking at all for my name? I've run it through the standard Moz audit tools and it hasn't picked up any major issues. It ranks fine for my name plus " CTO", but doesn't appear anywhere in the top 50 without that qualifier. I realise there are many other 'James Crowley's to compete with but weirdly even my GitHub profile page appears to rank higher (https://github.com/jamescrowley) I moved the domain a while back (18 months+) and I used to rank highly, but it never seems to have recovered (all the standard redirects are in place, and told Google at the time about the move). Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | james.crowley0 -
How to write blogs around a page you want to rank
Hey Moz Crew! So I'm not necessarily looking for the answer here but more of a where do I begin to learn more. If you guys could point me in the right direction or even just help me ask the question in a better way, I would be so thankful. Ok so there is page on my website that lives on the second page of Google. The page could be modified and I could add content to it if I wanted to, but let's just assume that this page is perfectly optimized with absolutely wonderful content and a great user experience. Now of course I would like to get a bunch of links to that page, but If I can't write anymore content on that page or update it, It will be harder to convince people to link to it (does that even make sense?). But if I can write blogs about really good subjects around that page, and those blogs do very well, how can I make sure that the actually page is getting all the juice that it can. And will it even get juice? Is this just a simple internal linking question? Am I tapping on the door of micro sites or landing pages? Oy vey where do I start!? ❤ Much love guys 🙂
Technical SEO | | Meier0 -
How do we build rank on a domain with an offsite blog?
We have a site (domain y) that we'd like to integrate a blog into but our team doesn't have the bandwidth to do this. So, we've been exploring the option of building the blog in WP and hosting on a separate domain (domain x) and redirecting from domain y to it. My concern is how this affects or undermines rank value on domain y (effectively all the value from the blog resides on the blog domain x). How might we go about integrating an offsite blog into the core domain while maintaining search value? Is there a way? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | J-Me0 -
Ranking not improving
Our site is now 3 months old (although the domain is older) but rankings don't seem to be improving at all. We've got some good quality relevant links coming into the site, and the content is unique and often updated. Is there something holding the site back? Am I being impatient? the site is www.help-my-mobility.org Thanks.
Technical SEO | | jj34340 -
Does server location affect rankings?
Hey guys, I'm just wondering whether you can help me out here. We're considering moving our servers to a new country but are a little hesitant to what - if any - SEO impact it would have on our clients' sites. For instance, if all of our clients are UK-based but their server isn't, would that affect their rank in Google UK? Or is it simply just a case of whether moving a server would affect the site speed or not?
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
My Rankings Keep Going Down - Needs some more ideas on why...
Hi Everyone, I have been working on the website www.PetsSpark.com for a while now. I used to be on the first page for many of my keywords, now I am lucky if i am on the 2nd or 3rd. I stopped my SEO efforts for about 3 months while making changes to the website, its whithin these 3 months that I started dropping from the first page. The biggest thing I notice is the "type" of website now ranking for my main keywords. Mostly Forums, Blogs, or Product Review websites. Take for instance Dog Tear Stain Remover. I used to rank at about #5 for this keyword and now i rank at #20. I'm not sure if my loss of ranking is a combination of things like who Google is letting rank now or if there is something wrong on my website, etc. Can anyone give me a little insight?? Please.... I will also be happy to give more information about what has been going on if needed.
Technical SEO | | DTOSI0 -
Content: How Much and What Kind for top Keyword Rankings?
Aside from well optimized meta tags, alt tags, captions I could use some help figuring out: What's the recommended number of words (original of course) on page? What should be the keyword % ? We've recently engaged an SEO company to provide an audit, and hired another for comparison and guess what ... 2 different viewpoints. I consider this to be the worst $3 grand we've ever spent! I look forward to your opinions
Technical SEO | | HMCOE0 -
Why do I rank so differently in Bing and Yahoo?
Howdy SEOmozers, I've noticed that I rank very differently in Bing and Yahoo compared to Google (and it’s the bad kind of different) for many of the terms that I'm targeting. Can anyone give some advice on how I can put this right or link me to some good resources about the differences in their ranking algorithms? Thanks Paul
Technical SEO | | pauldoffman1