Changed permalinks setting = site drop?

[wolfez]

2 weeks ago I did some minor changes to a website with good rankings. I changed my permalinks from

"http://websiteDOTcom/blablabla/"

to

"http://websiteDOTcom/blablabla.html"


Could it be the reason why I dropped out of the top 200+ for ALL keywords and pages the next day? I dropped from google searches but also I dropped from Bing and Yahoo, all at the same time and im having a very hard time getting back up.. some keywords did come back very slowly in the top 100 however it dropped back out a day later..

Any ideas if this could have played a major part in my SERP drops ?

[natethegreat7037]

Originally Posted by wolfez

2 weeks ago I did some minor changes to a website with good rankings. I changed my permalinks from

"http://websiteDOTcom/blablabla/"

to

"http://websiteDOTcom/blablabla.html"


Could it be the reason why I dropped out of the top 200+ for ALL keywords and pages the next day? I dropped from google searches but also I dropped from Bing and Yahoo, all at the same time and im having a very hard time getting back up.. some keywords did come back very slowly in the top 100 however it dropped back out a day later..

Any ideas if this could have played a major part in my SERP drops ?

Don't worry my friend, I highly doubt it. My sites have taken a hit in traffic as well (as well as plenty of others it seems) probably due to Google doing another algorithm update. I'm not worried though, as my pages have great content. So I would say not to worry yet, let's ride out the next few days and see what happens. I view this as Google doing some house cleaning...after all, they have a business to maintain as well (quality searches.)

[James-]

Since you are changing the location of where all your backlinks are pointing i imagine this is why you have dropped. You want to setup a 301 re-direct from your old link to your new structure.

[lutherlars]

Maybe learn a lesson and leave things alone if you are ranking well...

[yukon]

Are you kidding?

That is not some minor change, that's a major change.

Do a search in your browser for "http://websiteDOTcom/blablabla/" & I bet you get a 404-page.

Google is still looking for the old URL, because it existed the last time when they crawled those old URLs before. Now Google crawls those pages & can't find the exact URLs again. Google will assume those old URLs no longer exist.

You just created a huge problem for yourself, for no reason.

Redirect all the old pages/URLs to the new URLs otherwise your old backlinks pointing at the old URLs are wasted.

Some things you don't mess with once your ranking in the SERPs, a URL is one of those things. Get your site structure correct before you try to rank your sites pages.

Originally Posted by wolfez

2 weeks ago I did some minor changes to a website with good rankings. I changed my permalinks from

"http://websiteDOTcom/blablabla/"

to

"http://websiteDOTcom/blablabla.html"


Could it be the reason why I dropped out of the top 200+ for ALL keywords and pages the next day? I dropped from google searches but also I dropped from Bing and Yahoo, all at the same time and im having a very hard time getting back up.. some keywords did come back very slowly in the top 100 however it dropped back out a day later..

Any ideas if this could have played a major part in my SERP drops ?

[yukon]

One of two things (no offense intended).

1) You didn't read the OP.

2) Or, you don't understand how on-page/off-page seo works.

If you change the site structure (URLs), you will also change the external + internal backlinks. When you do that, your starting over as far as links go.

Click on both of these links, they are not the same, one link has a .html (broken link) at the end.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile.html

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile

Originally Posted by natethegreat7037

Don't worry my friend, I highly doubt it. My sites have taken a hit in traffic as well (as well as plenty of others it seems) probably due to Google doing another algorithm update. I'm not worried though, as my pages have great content. So I would say not to worry yet, let's ride out the next few days and see what happens. I view this as Google doing some house cleaning...after all, they have a business to maintain as well (quality searches.)

[wolfez]

Many thanks yukon. I will take your advices and get this fixed asap. I thought by updating the sitemap google would have gotten my point and not slap me in the face with that rusty two-handed crowbar.

One thing, I did not have any backlink built to my pages yet other than the mainpage. Could this change still affect everything like it did?

So I guess the only thing that I have to do is revert back to what it was before? Or should I redirect?

[blueorca17]

Originally Posted by wolfez

Many thanks yukon. I will take your advices and get this fixed asap. I thought by updating the sitemap google would have gotten my point and not slap me in the face with that rusty two-handed crowbar.

One thing, I did not have any backlink built to my pages yet other than the mainpage. Could this change still affect everything like it did?

So I guess the only thing that I have to do is revert back to what it was before? Or should I redirect?

Yukon is so right when he says "Get your site structure correct before you try to rank your sites pages." This is SO important when it comes to SEO because then you run into messes like what you're experiencing right now and you lose all of your traffic.

Whether or not you change them back -that's up to you. What was your reasoning for changing the permalinks in the first place?

If I were you I'd change them back ASAP though, because redirecting can be kind of a pain in the butt if you have a lot of urls to cover or if you don't have a lot of experience with redirecting it can be a pain too.

Changing back your urls NOW will allow you to get all of your traffic back RIGHT AWAY. If you redirect you get the traffic back too, but again it can be a pain because you have to wait for the new urls with the .html to get indexed and then go take off the redirect from the old urls.... it's a hassle. You're making it harder for yourself than it has to be.

[wolfez]

^ Yes blueorca, thats what I did a couple hours ago. I switched back to original state. Now I just cross my fingers