What causes rankings to drop while moving a site.
-
Hi, we recently moved a PHP based site from one web developer to another (switched hosting providers as well). Amidst the move our rankings drastically dropped and our citation and trust flow were literally cut in half as per Majestic SEO. What could have caused this sudden drop?
-
Thanks Don! I'll look into that
-
Switching host you are then switching DNS which would force the spiders / crawlers to re-find and re-index the new location.
This should be of little concern unless you notice a traffic decreases as well. Your page rank and domain authority will drop but that is just temporary and indicative of the fact that re-indexing based on new DNS is not instant.
Other things that could effect rank in cases like this are:
New Urls -> were old urls kept? if not were they at least canonicalized?
New IP, did your domain have a static IP before? If so, then you must have got new IP which if the previous site using it had bad mojo ie somebody used it for malware or other nefarious activities you may inherit that bad juju.Hope this helps
Don
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
-
Move To a full new Website
Hey everyone, I'm going to change my website's Domain, Server, CMS and Theme I can't find any full & detailed answer to how to do that without losing anything, is anybody here has a full resource or could tell me a how-to checklist for doing that. Thanks in advance,
Web Design | | Mahmoud.ahmad.taha0 -
Google Translate with "no-follow" just for users' use, no ranking
Hello, I tried to search but here is a little unique situation. I would like to translate my website in 2-3 different languages not for ranking purpose, but only for some minority users within Italy to understand the content in their native language. Using "no-follow" with a Google Translate link would damage SEO? if not I would like to use it. Here are few points: Give users the ability to switch the content to their language with a link Tell Google not to follow the translated pages, because I don't want them to be used for ranking or searches I would start simply with Google Translate to see if people actually are interested, then later translate by human but still don't want google to follow I could also start with human translation instead of Google Translate if really needed, I know it is a no no. What I'm very interested is to make sure that those pages under "no-follow" won't affect my SEO in good or bad right now, because we would like to keep as it is. Thanks a lot
Web Design | | angelowei0 -
Site as one page - SEO implications
We may be inheriting a site and will be asked to do SEO for it. We will have control over the development of the site, so this structure is what it is. My question is - how significant of an impact do you think this is going to have and can you think of any workarounds that may help? Basically, the user experience of the site will feel similar to multiple pages. However, this site will, in essence be one page and pull various content through javascript from different locations. I have not seen the site yet (and believe it is still in development), but this is how it has been explained to me. Any thoughts? My first thought was to add a blog to add page depth to the site and expand the content. Any other thoughts are welcome and appreciated. Thanks. (I know this is limited information, I'm sorry. It's just about all I have to work with right now, and I was a little concerned and was hoping for a second opinion)
Web Design | | AdamWormann0 -
What's the point of an EU site?
Buongiorno from 18 degrees C Wetherby UK 🙂 On this site http://www.milwaukeetool.eu/ the client wants to hold on to the EU site despite there being multiple standalone country sittes e.g. http://www.milwaukeetool.fr & http://www.milwaukeetool.co.uk Why would you ever need an EU site? I mean who ever searches for an EU site? If the client holds on to the eu site despite my position it's a waiste of time from a search perspective is the folowing the best appeasment? When a user enters the eu url or redirects to country the detected, eg I'm in Paris I enter www.milwaukeetool.eu it redirects to http://www.milwaukeetool.fr. My felling this would be the most pragmatic thing to do? Any ideas please,
Web Design | | Nightwing
Cioa,
David0 -
Two Different IP Addresses For Different Parts Of One Site Okay?
I have a client who has a site in Drupal and, for reasons too complicated to go iinto, wants to host part of the site in Wordpress from a different server. So it would be like oldsiteexample.com being in Drupal and the new oldsiteexample.com/marketing and everything below /marketing being in wordpress on a different server, obviously with a different IP address. Are there SEO considerations in this? The existing oldsiteexample.com has a lot of authority/rank/traffic and don't want to inadvertently risk that. Thanks... Darcy
Web Design | | 945010 -
Considering site navigation options
I am working on a site redesign and re evaluating concepts I haven't thought about for a few years. I generally see site navigation that is either "top-down" or "left bar". Top down navigation normally uses the left nav. for search refinements. The benefit of top nav. is that it clears up the center of the page for non navigation content. The drawback is that you can't fit as many categories in a top nav. Left side nav. can hold a long list of categories, but subcategories are often in the center of the page. In the past, I have preferred to use left nav. with a multi level scroll over search refinement. I believe this allowed users to get to their destination page with fewer clicks. (I have always believed that every required additional click causes lost customers). I also believe that this has caused me to get more juice flowing to deeper pages on sites and better long-tail conversion. This means I have had pages with a LOT of links. With this method, I have tightly controlled my categories. What on other sites are often dynamic search refinements, are on my sites additional categories. I am considering making a site with a top down navigation system. I like the additional screen space in the center I get to work with. Is my assumption about pages created by search refinement wrong? Is it ok for SEO to have a left nav that has a bunch of search refinements that are dynamically created?
Web Design | | EugeneF0 -
Does on page links have an effect on SERP rankings with PANDA
I have been doing some competitive analysis basing my company on others and have noticed a pattern. Very high ranking sites seem to have limited the internal and external on page links on their subdomains to under 100. my site has a lot of links but all are relevant and lead to unique content. I am interested to know if anyone else has noticed this pattern in changes in the SERP results. bIs google now penalizing pages with to many on site nav links? And if a full site restructure is needed to allow google to index and rank these pages or if a it is a non issue and does not need to be addressed. Panda confuses me!!!!! HELP!
Web Design | | Brother220 -
Switched From Wordpress, Traffic Dropped In Half
Hello, Thank you for taking a look at my issue. My site: http://www.getrightmusic.com A month ago, I switched from Wordpress to ExpressionEngine. The reason being I wanted a more powerful membership functionality with media uploading. After I switched, my traffic basically dropped in half. I was averaging around 4-6,000 unique visitors per day and now I am at about 2,000 per day. I resubmitted a new sitemap to Google webmasters. I also set up 301 redirects on my top 80 urls that were ranking well and driving traffic in Google. Not only did Google kick me off of my top spots in the SERP's, but I no longer get indexed as quickly as I used to. With the old Wordpress site I would get url's indexed within minutes. Now they aren't even getting indexed really at all. Is this a normal occurrence when switching site designs and systems? Do you think Google will just take a little time before they give me back some respect? Is there anything I should be doing to get back to ranking and getting indexed faster? Thanks for any help or any insight you may have. Jesse
Web Design | | getrightmusic0