11 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
11 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Big SERP drop after 301 redirect. Suggestions & thoughts please.

by Kskyring
9 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello All

It would be greatly appreciated if you can provide your thoughts or suggestions on how we can improve our situation below.

We recently updated our business name. With that, came a change in website and URL. Our business service remained exactly the same (drama and public speaking classes for kids) just an updated name, domain name & web design. Our web developer implemented a 301 Redirect in mid September 2012 to point our old URL to the new URL. We spent many hours ensuring all title tags matched the old site to maximise the success of the 301 redirect.

By early October 2012, our new site superspeak. com.au was ranking as well as the old site did (chatterboxclub. com.au) on most keywords so we were happy to see the smooth transition with the 301 redirect. We also spent a lot of time building great content on our blog to ensure we got good links sharing. We were expecting our SERP to increase versus our old SERP result if anything.

However, in mid November 2012 we noticed our rankings dropped significantly for the same keywords we have always ranked on the first page for. Many keywords went from ranking in top 8 (for over 3 years) to not ranking in top 50 in the space of a few days. For example:
- Public speaking for kids - was ranked 4 now not ranking in top 50 (or anywhere to be found)
- drama classes for kids - was ranked 5, now not in top 50 (or anywhere to be found)
- drama classes melbourne - was ranked 6 now 33
- drama school melbourne - was 12 now 21
(all based on local search Melbourne Australia).

Supporting info:
- We were worried it could be due to some poor back-links so we sent google a reconsideration report as we were not sure what was going on. They responded and said there were no penalties or anything applied to our site.
- Our old site was Wordpress CMS or new site is Joomla CMS (from what i read Joomla should not put us at a disadvantage if seo strategies are implemented correctly).
- our old site had a page rank of 3. the new site now only appears to have page rank 2.

That makes us think that the 301 redirect effect must have worn off after a month and the SERP dropped as a result. We have since updated title tags and content to feature keywords more (about 4 days ago) and hope this will help reverse the situation.

Given we have dropped from first page on most keywords our business is taking a big hit and we are trying to do whatever it takes to sort the situation ASAP.

As we are not gurus in SEO, we would appreciate any thoughts / suggestions on our situation and how we can improve it.

Thanks in advance!
#301 #big #drop #redirect #serp #suggestions #thoughts
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    The message from Google only means there was no manual action against the site. Your site could still have issues with its backlinks. What made you think the backlinks might be a problem in the first place?
    Signature

    For SEO news, discussions, tactics, and more.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7417072].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author SuzanneH
    I did a quick check of a random URL on your site to compare the old vs new and it does seem to be redirecting properly. Sometimes you can loose a little link juice when redirecting.

    But your problem may have nothing to do with the redirect; it could be related to one of the many algorithm changes that Google makes (announced and unannounced). Sometimes it's not even that you're doing anything wrong but that your competitors are doing better.

    Having said that, there was a Panda update on the 21st of November -- but you said this happened mid-November, correct?

    Suzanne
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7417114].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by SuzanneH View Post

      Sometimes it's not even that you're doing anything wrong but that your competitors are doing better.
      I would agree with that, but competitors do got cause a site to drop 50 spots. A few spots, absolutely. Not 50 all at once.

      I was looking at your 301's, and the 301 could actually be the problem. You 301'd a lot of the individual pages to the homepage, instead of a corresponding similar page.

      That could cause something like this to happen. Initially you will see the ranking remain pretty much unchanged. It is really the old site page that is indexed and holding the ranking. As Google spiders and indexes the new site, those rankings could disappear because the content is not really the same. The ranking could come back as Google reassesses the site, but it is probably ranking where it is going to rank without additional work.

      There is also a bit of linking power loss associated with 301 redirects. Most tests that have been done show something in the 10-15% range. That could account for some of it.
      Signature

      For SEO news, discussions, tactics, and more.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7417142].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author Kskyring
        Hi Suzanne - Thanks for adding your comments.
        We noticed the drop around 10 days ago. It could have happened any time before that.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7419081].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Kskyring
    [DELETED]
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7419138].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Kskyring
      Hi Mike,

      Thanks for your thoughts & questions I really appreciate it. I have added some more details below to help your understanding of background.

      - RE Backlinks: We outsourced a small amount of SEO in October / November to help build the SERP. We noticed some backlinks set up around Nov 1 - they all pointed to 2 of our blog posts (not the home page). The blog posts now appear to be in 1st or 2nd page which is good but the homepage has dropped. Not sure if the two are related but I assume the backlinks are not the main reason. Because if the homepage dropped due to the blog post backlinks, then the blog posts would have also not shown up in SERP. Thoughts?

      Not sure if these backlinks were good or bad as they seemed to have positive effect on blog post. We asked if the SEO service could remove the backlinks (just in case) but they said it was not possible. I am not sure this is the main reason but still maybe something for me to try to sort out in case negative impact in future. Is there any easy way of removing links? I thought maybe I could just delete the blog post URL and set up on a new one, that way the backlinks would point to a non-existing URL. Thoughts? I also tried contacting the forums that were linking to the blog to ask them to remove the links but no response (not surprises).

      - RE Multiple pages 301 directing to home page: this is interesting. Thanks for pointing it out. How do i find out what specific pages are pointing to the homepage? Do you suggest it only be the old hompeage pointing to the new homepage? My website developer set this up so I will need to investigate. Is this possible to fix??

      - I dont think it competitor related as too big a drop for us.

      Your thoughts here would be really appreciated.


      Thanks a heap.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7419159].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by Kskyring View Post

        Hi Mike,

        Thanks for your thoughts & questions I really appreciate it. I have added some more details below to help your understanding of background.

        - RE Backlinks: We outsourced a small amount of SEO in October / November to help build the SERP. We noticed some backlinks set up around Nov 1 - they all pointed to 2 of our blog posts (not the home page). The blog posts now appear to be in 1st or 2nd page which is good but the homepage has dropped. Not sure if the two are related but I assume the backlinks are not the main reason. Because if the homepage dropped due to the blog post backlinks, then the blog posts would have also not shown up in SERP. Thoughts?

        Not sure if these backlinks were good or bad as they seemed to have positive effect on blog post. We asked if the SEO service could remove the backlinks (just in case) but they said it was not possible. I am not sure this is the main reason but still maybe something for me to try to sort out in case negative impact in future. Is there any easy way of removing links? I thought maybe I could just delete the blog post URL and set up on a new one, that way the backlinks would point to a non-existing URL. Thoughts? I also tried contacting the forums that were linking to the blog to ask them to remove the links but no response (not surprises).

        - RE Multiple pages 301 directing to home page: this is interesting. Thanks for pointing it out. How do i find out what specific pages are pointing to the homepage? Do you suggest it only be the old hompeage pointing to the new homepage? My website developer set this up so I will need to investigate. Is this possible to fix??
        I don't want to step on your web developer's toes as I do not know what the scope of the redesign was, nor what instructions were given.

        Generally when a company moves their website they do the redirect page by page. Each page redirects to its corresponding page on the new site. That seems to have been done for some pages, but many other pages are just going to the homepage. Now that might be because a similar page was not created on the new site, in which case it makes perfect sense.

        I was just pulling up the links in Open Site Explorer and clicking on the URLs. Some went to a new page. Others just went to the new homepage. I by now means dug in extensively to this.

        I bet you will find though that the places where you lost rankings, there was an individual internal page ranking in the past (not the old homepage). That page was redirected to the new homepage instead of a new internal page. I could be wrong, but it would be worth investigating.

        As for your links, without understanding what kind of links were created and really taking a look at them it is tough to say if they are a problem or not.
        Signature

        For SEO news, discussions, tactics, and more.
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7419355].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author DizenSounds
    Well if you think that the backlinks may be the problem then they likely are the problem. I'd recommend removing those low quality links that are poitning to your old domain that's being 301'd.

    Can you contact the previous SEO company to remove them?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7429600].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    I think Mike is bang on the money with his finding that you have 301 redirects to the home page.

    The video below explains this from Google's perspective.

    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[7429748].message }}

Trending Topics