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Backlinks Losing Traffic (no broken links) After Redesign

by Heather Lumb
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
My company implemented a large site redesign for a museum with NO SEO involved. I was able to at least come in right after the fact and reissue 301 redirects.

I'm looking at my GA report and I'm seeing that great inbound links that were providing about 100 hits a year ago are now providing ZERO clicks. I double-checked those sites, and none of the links the list 404 on our end, and are all actually 200 ok. They all properly 301 redirect to the right place, or they go to the homepage (that never changed domain names).

So why in the world would links on pages just stop producing traffic, even if the links go to correct pages? I've noticed this is trend now with about seven websites who delivered high traffic but does nothing now. I'm gathering that it has something to do with the migration, but if they are all 301 implemented, then why don't I see clicks whatsoever?
#301 redirect #backlinks #broken #links #losing #migration #redesign #seo #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author altonroot
    If you are talking about referral traffic from those website then you need to provide one of example I guess if you can. If it is organic traffic drop then wait for few days and it will pick up for sure.
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  • Profile picture of the author Heather Lumb
    I'm gonna throw out some images here (attachments), to maybe help with this, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of this before I pass out from frustration.

    The redesign happened in August 2016. All those referral links I mention (again, with status 200, not even a 301 in most cases), ended THERE.

    This website is Hagley.org. Again, most of these links are straight to the homepage which NEVER CHANGED NAMES. It's blowing my mind. And as they are referral links, not organic clicks, I have no idea where this impact is originating from.

    Thanks for this help!
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Heather Lumb View Post

      I'm gonna throw out some images here (attachments), to maybe help with this, and hopefully we can get to the bottom of this before I pass out from frustration.

      The redesign happened in August 2016. All those referral links I mention (again, with status 200, not even a 301 in most cases), ended THERE.

      This website is Hagley.org. Again, most of these links are straight to the homepage which NEVER CHANGED NAMES. It's blowing my mind. And as they are referral links, not organic clicks, I have no idea where this impact is originating from.

      Thanks for this help!
      Because the WF engineers are either clueless or too busy giving us something stupid like The Feed and can't be bothered to fix basic forum functionality, nobody can see your images. You need to host them on a 3rd party site and then use the 'insert image' button above to embed them using their URL. It's been broken like that for 18 months or longer.

      Looking in your GA account, what was the traffic doing from those links? Were they actually spending time browsing the site and looking through multiple pages or were they on the site for 1-2 seconds and bouncing?

      It is possible that the traffic was just bot traffic from spiders and scrapers following those links. Those bots may not follow 301 redirects.

      That's why I would take a look at what the traffic was actually doing. You may not have lost anything worthwhile.
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      • Profile picture of the author Heather Lumb
        Oh, whoops! Well thanks for that heads up! In that case, here we go:

        I've compared hostname and crawler spam filters against no filters whatsoever but can't seem to trace that as being the issue. Aside from a few hits disappearing with filters added, we're still looking at the issue of clicks to no clicks, yet all links are Welcome to Hagley Museum & Library.

        http://imgur.com/a/lcToS I'M TRYING THIS INSTEAD. because the image isn't working, it seems.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Are you sure you have Google Analytics setup properly on the new site?

    Maybe I am missing it, but I am not seeing it in the source code.
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    • Profile picture of the author Heather Lumb
      ....I am going to have a conniption. Have you ever just trusted your developers so much that you forget to check the absolute obvious?

      I don't see it either. And I appreciate you pointing this out to me, as much as I want to die a little inside. Could you answer for me off the cuff then, why is it pulling in anything at all if the proper code is not on there? And then can I virtually send you a beer for all your help?
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by Heather Lumb View Post

        ....I am going to have a conniption. Have you ever just trusted your developers so much that you forget to check the absolute obvious?

        I don't see it either. And I appreciate you pointing this out to me, as much as I want to die a little inside. Could you answer for me off the cuff then, why is it pulling in anything at all if the proper code is not on there? And then can I virtually send you a beer for all your help?

        Are any of the old URLs still up? It could be pulling data from those, which is why you see some data. Also for the URLs that are redirected, Analytics could be kicking in sometimes before it triggers the 301 redirect perhaps? Not entirely sure how the timing of that works because it never mattered enough for me to really investigate it.

        Not sure, but that would be my guess.
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        • Profile picture of the author Heather Lumb
          Thanks so much! We're gonna implement that as it should have been, and hopefully in a couple weeks this problem will stay in the past. Thanks so much!
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by Heather Lumb View Post

            Thanks so much! We're gonna implement that as it should have been, and hopefully in a couple weeks this problem will stay in the past. Thanks so much!

            Well, the good news is there wasn't really a problem with the site. Just a tracking issue.

            Good luck.
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