301 Redirects - Can I have your opinion please

by fprint
4 replies
Hi Everyone,

I have just completely rebuilt my site, had no option or I never would have done it, anyway I did the 301 redirects, which failed twice, in the end the software/hosting company had to do them through the shopping cart, (not technically minded so don't know why) but during this period of about 2 - 3 weeks google wiped me from the search rankings. Previously we ranked 1 -3 for every keyword that I would check here in Australia (organic). I actually came accross a site the other day, keywordspy which had us as having 2583 keywords which we were ranked for organically, but that info was old, it had our old site picture, so .... Now we only show up for the main keywords which all relate to our homepage. Just about every other category doesn't show anymore. Anyway, I have tried everything I can think of, but I was just thinking maybe I should have re-directed the product pages themselves? I only did all of the category/sub category pages in the redirects. Should I have done every product? Would this make a difference. What is the rule here? Does anyone know.

I know google has also done an algorithm change while this has been going on, so I don't know whether this has also impacted on my rankings. I'm just at a loss as to what to do now.

I don't even know what type of experienced person I should be looking for to check things out and see what I am missing. I don't spam, I don't do black hat. I've always done everything as best I can. Anybody who has any ideas about any of this, feel free to discuss.

I did have about 160 hidden pages with the rebuild, these were new season products and I thought I would have them ready and when they arrived I would show them. Then it dawned on me that google doesn't like invisible pages so I have made them visible. I don't know if this impacted or not to cause my complete drop in the search results.

Has anybody else had anything like this?

Thanks for you time, I appreciate being able to vent.
My site is Adult Costume Shop.com.au
#301 #opinion #redirects
  • Profile picture of the author dou9las
    Not sure what hosting platform your site is built on, but if it was on an Apache server, you could have done the 301 redirects via .htaccess. In any case, if you had lots of rankings for urls that were going to change, you certainly should have prioritized the 301 redirects and engaged someone that is completely familiar with the process to be responsible for that.

    Maybe you still can. If you have Google Webmaster tools you can log in and see what urls Google has indexed for you currently to determine whether it would help you to get the 301s done at this point (i.e. if the new urls have not yet been fully spidered and indexed.)

    Here is one of many, many free tutorials on how to use .htaccess for 301 redirects: htaccess 301 redirect tutorial

    In any case, with or without the 301's in place or an algo change, a complete re-build of your site would naturally result in the bots needing to re-crawl and re-index your site with the new url structures. It is very reasonable to expect that for a period of days and/or weeks, your site would be bouncing all over the place in terms of rankings.

    If the scenario you described has all happened within a space of 2 to 3 weeks, I would guess you will see many of your rankings return soon - assuming your on-page SEO and content is equal to or greater than it was with the previous version of your site.

    You may want to post a similar inquiry over at SEO Chat Forums: SEO Chat Forums - Search Engine Optimization

    SEOChat is all about the very technical details of SEO, whereas WarriorForum is much more about the broader topic of internet marketing (and of course SEO plays a role but is just one piece of the IM game.)

    Like your site BTW
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    • Profile picture of the author fprint
      Thankyou for your reply, I really appreciate it. I will certainly check out the SEO forum and have a good look in my webmaster tools. My site is bouncing around a fair bit at the moment but it is getting better. The funny thing is we haven't lost much in the way of revenue, so I am being extremely positive and just working through one problem at a time. Your input was great, thanks guys so much.

      I also hadn't heard of Xenu's Link Sleuth so I'm going to check that out.
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  • Profile picture of the author AndyBeard
    For humans you really need to 301 redirect all pages in some way, otherwise they get an error page.
    For Google you need to redirect all pages that have received links from other sites, and ensure all internal links point to the correct new pages.
    It can take up to 3 months for Google to drop old pages from their index

    Whoever handled your redirects didn't know what they were doing - even something basic such as handling www or no www isn't handled to be consistent.

    Have you checked what happens when you type in (or paste) an old URL in your browser? Not just what a human sees but also the server headers with Live HTTP Toolbar. You need to be doing a 301 Permanent redirect.

    Any errors/problems reported in Google Webmaster Tools?

    Point Xenu's Link Sleuth at the site and see if there are any broken links

    Whilst it isn't normally required, you might try adding an xml sitemap - your shopping cart should have support for this.
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  • Profile picture of the author CliveG
    You can also set up Apache to direct all 'Page not found' errors to your home page or to an error hadling page. Also, take a look at your error logs from time to time - the log can identify problems and traffic to old pages that have not been redirected.
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