After site redesign, lost all rankings

The company that I am working has a website that was well established in the serps and had a number of very high ranking keywords.

The domain is more than 10 years old.

It was built using a cms called "plone"

they wanted a complete redesign and seo without comprising their rankings and possible better seo.

One or 2 problems I initially picked up :

1. they had multiple domains pointed to the same site
2. http://domain.com was not 301'd to http://www.domain.com
3. markup was horrid
4. sitemaps were not updated

we decided to go for a static website and not a cms db driven website

the first thing I did was to take a note of all pages and images, I renamed the images for better identification and also changed all underscores to hyphens in images and pages then 301'd all the urls to pages and images to the new ones via .htaccess
(hundreds of entries into the .htaccess file)

hand built each page with all onpage best practises and updated the sitemap

301'd domain.com to www.domain.com and all the other domain urls too.

Now we have lost all our rankings, its been 4 months and we not getting the traffic we used to or the keyword rankings.

any idea why something like this would happen?

Double check the 301s - make sure they are in fact 301s and are not returning a 302.
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/check-server-headers/

Next, log into Google Webmaster Tools and check for 404 errors and other problems that would prevent the site from being indexed properly.

From there you have a number of options, it just depends on what you find.

I do have to ask, though, did you use the same domain that was ranking initially, or did you 301 to one of the others?

Just a side note - you're always going to lose some value through a 301. For that reason, when redesigning a site, it is always best to use the same URLs as before whenever possible (provided the URLs did not have any problems (hash tags, flash pages, etc.)).

I built a plug in that allows you to keep any url when changing to wordpress.

Only wordpress site I know with .aspx pages

PM me if you could use this.

Hi Rush,

Have you used "The Fetch as Googlebot tool" in your google webmaster tools account to ensure the pages can be crawled by the google bot?

Or use a HTTP header checker tool that allows you to choose a user agent and choose the google bot. Click here

Have you checked your server logs to see if the google bot has been crawling the pages OK?

Have you moved server?

Whats the website so we can take a look at it? Are all the backlinks pointing to page current on the redesigned site?

Did you add canonical tags?

you 301 redirected the image locations but how about the page URLs?

hi guys

thanks for all the offers of help.

the website is http://www.pyramidvisuals.co.uk

Seothomas, what do you mean by "Did you add canonical tags?"

I did 301 urls AND images.

Jim1 googlebot is crawling fine, the pages look good too according to web-sniffer.

yes I did move servers.

Josh, I just double checked the 301 vs 302 and they are all proper 301

formatted like this in my htaccess

redirect 301 /old/path http://new.url

I used the same domain that was ranking initially and checked the webmaster tools for crawl errors and everything seems to be fine except for a few pages with duplicate title tags but thats nothing major, the content is different

Thanks Guys

Hi Rush,


Way back machine shows the old title for the home page being


New title for the home page


What keywords have your ranking dropped for? the keyword in your old tile if its been changed maybe?

What ancor text in used in your back link profile? does this ancor text match the old title?

Where was your .co.uk site hosted before, in the UK? as its hosted in the US I take it as your target market is the UK have you set this in your google webmaster tools account?

This might be your problems who knows?

p.s server is very slow...

Hi Rush,

Jim1 pretty-much captured my initial thoughts on the subject...

Your site is indexed and has some top 10 rankings for some of your KW combinations, so it seems it's more a question of losing rankings for specific keywords than a general loss of rankings.
You will - of course - have lost many of your previous longtail rankings.

The site set-up seems good; robots.txt, redirects, server headers etc all looks good and there are no obvious errors, but Google are taking a while to de-index some of your old sites (still indexing 45 pages from your .com website even though they're now rediecting correctly to the new url); this isn't the first time I've seen this recently, in fact since January this year Google seem awful slow to de-index old sites and catch up with 301's etc.
The server isn't great though (froze my browser in one session and seems generally slow to me), so that won't have helped.

I guess the problem requires in-depth analysis of the KW's you have lost that were generating your earlier traffic and perhaps re-focussing on those.

Hi Rush,

I'm not an SEO specialist nor am I a web designer, I just run a small business and gain my work thought my sites and have taken an interest in SEO and web design as a hobby.

But please read through ClickyB post in detail as he is a high caliber SEO specialist, be a good idea to also read some of his old post as I have done, a good learning curve for me.

Wow, seems like a tough one only because in your description, you talk about how you wanted the SEO to be different on the new site different/better.

Same amount of content? The URLs are relatively friendly - not exactly search friendly, not exactly NOT. I'd work on that. Seems many sections of your site are one word, not something someone would rely on as search. You have to put better section names on the site, which will mean better URLs. Match the section names with the keywords that people search - I don't think the site represents anything close to a 7 out of 10 when it comes to strategically named submenu items.

The Meta Tags are horrible. I hope this wasn't the improvement. No offense, but you have to hear this. Go through sections that are totally different from each other - the Title tags are almost all identical. It's boring work to make each page custom, but it pays.

I think on the homepage, secondary and tertiary pages, the metatags should be completely redone. I'd give the metatags a 6 out of 10.

Yes, I know metatags don't matter that much, but I think they matter a heck of a lot more than people give credit for.

I think I could make the 2 improvements I mentioned here, just by themselves and get 50% better rankings. You can too.

Lou

HI Sterile,

Which meta tags once improved will increase ranking, new to me?

A good meta description might help click through but noting in terms of ranking, but apart from that I'm lost?

You sell seo services and work in seo, so I would like to hear your facts on this.

If your saying that improving the meta details will improve ranking I disagree until you prove me wrong.

Can you explain?...

Metatag titles do not have searchable keywords listed as the site is currently listed. single words exist , not double and doesn't seems that they are set up strategically to capture user search words. This matters.

See Jim1 posting on metatag difference between last site and new site.

This should likely be the Title for the homepage:
<h1>Display Graphics, Van livery, Exhibitions graphics, Large Format Digital Printing, Backdrops, Building Wraps, Colour Banners, POS display, Point of Sale & Retail Display. </h1>

Here is the breakdown of metatags, URI and H1 tag

URI for point of purchase section - /services/pos-pop/ No one will search for pos-pop

Here are the H1 tag keywords at the top of the page:

POS, FSDU, Floor stands, POP, Standee's, window graphics, Dumpbins, Posters, Cardboard packaging, Sale Promotions & Hanging Banners

<title>POS - POP - Point oF Sale - Point of Purchase - Print, Exhibit, Brand, Wrap, Display- Pyramid Visuals</title>

<!--meta-->
<meta name="Description" content="Pyramid Visuals is a supplier for Point of Purchase, Point of Sale Displays, Point of Sale material, vehicle and building wraps and Theater and movie backdrops as well as other services" />

<meta name="Keywords" content="Point of sale, Point of purchase, Retail Displays, merchandising, POP, POS, POS display, POP display units, CTU, FSDU" />


Not enough tags in Title and no one, NO ONE will ever search for "Point of Purchase - Print" The keywords for this website are clearly being driven by internal management or simply someone that is not taking the time required for good keyword usage.

There is little to no practical information driving these keywords like "what do our customers enter into Google" or "what are the keyword trends for our products/services."

I think a more practical SEO plan should be put in place. I would do the following:

1. Change the names of almost every menu and submenu item
2. The changed menu and submenu items should "feed" the URL and folder names (use keywords that customers use to search and find your product or services and use 2-3 words with hyphens
3. I would do a better job with all meta tags, just as a good job was done with the H1 tags. Practical/Real World search terms.

without addressing other issues, just these two would send the site soaring again.

And don't forget there are a lot of other issues that can be addressed.

FYI - Site loads slow as xmas and froze my browser. Also drop downs on main nav don't work. As soon as the cursor leaves the top item (services, materials, etc) the drop down menu disappears.

usually people use 402 pages to keep their SEO intact. It's strange why didn't your work.

After reading the above the old saying "take with a pinch of salt" springs to mind and it should really be saying "take with a truck load of salt" without meaning to be rude.

I really would love to see more people post direct answers to questions here on SEO chat, as I think this would help us all a lot more (would help me for sure) but incorrect answers are dangerous for others to read.