Question about SERP change after a website is redesigned.
- SEO |
Hey Warriors, I've got a question for anyone who might have a guess.
I've been following Flippa for a while, keeping tabs on sites that sell and how they end up doing in the months after they sell and I've found one interesting case study that I don't quite understand. (I'm pretty new at website development, please be gentle.)
About 6 months ago, a website sold and I've been following it pretty closely. It was making something like $2,000 per month pretty consistently for several years with seasonal peaks and it ended up selling for $40-45k, something like that.
As I recall, I looked at what it's rankings were and it was ranking #1 for several keywords on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Most of the rankings were really high up on Google, several top 5 keywords and it was getting quite a bit of traffic.
The site has since been redesigned, but the content is all the same. It looks like they just threw a new template on it.
Now, the site ranks in the top 10 for 1 keyword that I can find on Google, down from at least 10-15 in the top 10 5-6 months ago. The Bing and Yahoo rankings, according to Ranktracker at least, have remained solid. But Compete shows a huge drop in ranking. Alexa shows the same. Their traffic has completely dwindled. I guess I'd get the drop-off if they had done a really significant re-design, but it's basically just a new skin on the old website.
The vast majority of the backlinks that they had, which was several hundred silid, not spammy, links in Alexa and SEO Spyglass, are pointing to the main site, so it's not like they broke a bunch of links, but the rankings have just completely plummeted. And this site was well established with 5-6 years of steady income, not just some fresh new site with no history of traffic and income.
My question is, why does this happen? I find it hard to believe that you can't redesign your site without losing that much ranking in Google SERP's. Is it the fact that it changed hosts? Is it the redesign? Is it something else?
What am I missing? Any guesses?
I've been following Flippa for a while, keeping tabs on sites that sell and how they end up doing in the months after they sell and I've found one interesting case study that I don't quite understand. (I'm pretty new at website development, please be gentle.)
About 6 months ago, a website sold and I've been following it pretty closely. It was making something like $2,000 per month pretty consistently for several years with seasonal peaks and it ended up selling for $40-45k, something like that.
As I recall, I looked at what it's rankings were and it was ranking #1 for several keywords on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Most of the rankings were really high up on Google, several top 5 keywords and it was getting quite a bit of traffic.
The site has since been redesigned, but the content is all the same. It looks like they just threw a new template on it.
Now, the site ranks in the top 10 for 1 keyword that I can find on Google, down from at least 10-15 in the top 10 5-6 months ago. The Bing and Yahoo rankings, according to Ranktracker at least, have remained solid. But Compete shows a huge drop in ranking. Alexa shows the same. Their traffic has completely dwindled. I guess I'd get the drop-off if they had done a really significant re-design, but it's basically just a new skin on the old website.
The vast majority of the backlinks that they had, which was several hundred silid, not spammy, links in Alexa and SEO Spyglass, are pointing to the main site, so it's not like they broke a bunch of links, but the rankings have just completely plummeted. And this site was well established with 5-6 years of steady income, not just some fresh new site with no history of traffic and income.
My question is, why does this happen? I find it hard to believe that you can't redesign your site without losing that much ranking in Google SERP's. Is it the fact that it changed hosts? Is it the redesign? Is it something else?
What am I missing? Any guesses?
Sr. Internet Marketer