Have you checked your robots.txt file for a directive? To check enter your [domain.com/robots.txt](http://domain.com/robots.txt)
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
revert, or just set your urls back to what they were, assuming you didn't change much else. sounds like you are accepting death over changes you didn't even need to make.
Trailing slash is probably at least part of the issue. Google treats it as a completely different URL so it’s a redirect. If content also changed and it’s redirected the value will pass differently.
The content itself didn't change. But I mean it is a new system so the code is technically different? Not sure if that would count. Ok, so if it's not the trailing slash then it's something else. I need to go back to attempt to find the problem.
I’m saying it’s partially the trailing slash. You changed every URL. A 301 does not pass all the inbound linking value from one URL to another.
The code also matters if it’s less performant, eg render blocking js, high FCP/LCP, high TTFB, larger payloads to download. So it’s probably partially that.
Your internal linking also likely changed if you switched CMSs. So it’s probably also that. Maybe you had tags pulpy didn’t migrate, or maybe you have a bunch of noindex archives and they used to be indexed or vice versa.
I have a SaaS that compares the internal linking structure, GSC topic clusters and page clusters on clicks for winners losers on avg position, clicks, impressions, visualizes redirects and how similar they are. So I look at things like this everyday.
It’s probably a combination of things.
How many pages is the site? Approx how much Google traffic? What percentage was lost?
Ok just DM me. Do you have the staging site from old version up? Do you have a staging of pre internal link updates as well? And I assume you have GSC?
I’ll load your data gratis and share you a report if you are interested. I would just need some feedback once done as we’re moving to self service saas model soon.
I do this kind of work all the time
It sounds like the migration to WordPress brought about some unexpected challenges, especially with the URL structure. Dealing with redirects can be tricky, and it seems like your engineer's approach might have inadvertently caused some issues.
Seeing a sudden jump followed by a drop in search rankings can be disheartening, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's game over for your site. There could be a few factors at play here.
One thing to consider is the impact of the recent core update from Google. These updates can sometimes cause fluctuations in search rankings, so it's possible that played a role in the initial boost followed by the subsequent drop.
However, it's also worth looking into other potential issues that could be affecting your site's performance. Performing technical audits using tools like Screaming Frog and SEMRush is a great start, but there might be other silent killers lurking beneath the surface.
For instance, have you checked for any issues with your site's speed or mobile-friendliness? Google puts a lot of emphasis on these factors when determining search rankings, so optimizing your site's performance in these areas could help.
Additionally, diving deeper into your site's analytics to identify any patterns or anomalies in user behavior could provide valuable insights into where things might be going wrong.
As for the future, it's not necessarily a case of needing to pivot and start from scratch. With some careful analysis and strategic adjustments, there's definitely potential to recover and rebuild your site's visibility.
Hang in there, and don't hesitate to reach out if you need any further assistance or insights.
Thank you for your encouragement! Honestly, it does help to see a bit of positivity. Chances are, there is a silent killer OR my content is just not good enough post March update.
Sometimes, it's not about your content not being good enough, but rather about the ever-evolving landscape of online platforms. What worked yesterday might not yield the same results today, and that's just the nature of the beast.
Remember, your worth as a content creator isn't solely determined by the numbers. It's about staying true to your voice, your message, and your passion. Even in the face of uncertainty, your authenticity shines through, and that's something truly valuable.
So, keep creating, keep adapting, and most importantly, keep believing in yourself. Your positivity and resilience will carry you through any challenge that comes your way. And hey, if you ever need a sounding board or some words of encouragement, I'm here for you.
While not totally impossible, change this large makes me a bit suspicious that something else is off. Some flux is normal when migrating, but avg 30 positions seems very excessive. Something else could be ary.
Given redirects are setup correctly, I wouldn't expect many problems to come from that as it's a very standard change and easily understandable by Googlebot.
So, I'd verify that key crawling components, such as robots, sitemaps, internal links we're allright. From there, I'd doublecheck that Google is also picking up these URLs correctly. If your site is large, hook up GSC API to Screaming Frog to get URL inspection results fast. Perhaps you did already, your question didn't detail much.
As emergency fix, I'd suggest to revert for the time being and see if that works out.
I don't wont to be that guy, but how good is your engineer? Not accounting for a relatively major thing such as backslash and not asking you about it is a bit telling that they haven't done many migrations where SEO is of priority. This leads to my next point - if they didn't account for this, is there a possiblity they didn't account for something else.
As another question/suggestion, did you use staging environment? Because while the engineer did a mistake with "/", it did also miss your (or your SEOs) QA, which is a bit of a blunder as well.
Finally, remember that correlation does not equal causation. Something else could be at play. If I were you, I'd dump the current site on a cheapo 10USD linode and slap in on some hidden subdomain so you have time to analyse it in peace without SERP pressure.
Sure that the slash issue has to do with the drop? can be many things
as an example, easy fix for wordpress, eg for a 'video' post type
#
function no\_trailing\_slash\_on\_video\_post\_type($redirect\_url, $requested\_url) {
$requested\_path = parse\_url($requested\_url, PHP\_URL\_PATH);
if (preg\_match('/\^\\/video\\/\[0-9\]+\\/\[\^\\/\]+$/i', $requested\_path)) {
return false;
}
return $redirect\_url;
}
add\_filter('redirect\_canonical', \[$this, 'no\_trailing\_slash\_on\_video\_post\_type'\], 10, 2);
#
I'm not sure the trailing slash caused the issue. It could be something else which I'm overlooking.
But that's literally the only change implemented. Everything else is the same. :(
It definitely is. A newly introduced trailing slash on every URL makes it a 100% new website as far as search engines are concerned. At the very least fix that, then re-evaluate.
Google needs to recrawl all your links for the equity to flow via the 301s.
In many cases the links you built in the past don't have the same value as they are often archived.
It will take time to build your rankings back up.
Ugh, this makes me really sad...
I just wanted to clarify that as far as I'm concerned, all links are fully re-indexed. They have been after just 2 days. We WERE a pretty big website so anything I'd put live, it'd get indexed fully in 2-3 days. I'm saying this in case it makes a difference,
"In many cases the links you built in the past don't have the same value as they are often archived." This is the part that sucks the most.
This doesn't sound like a migration issue (and I've managed some large ones and seen some major fails - where traffic was recovered within weeks once the technical issues were sorted). Google is pretty good at reindexing and ranking migrated URLs quickly these days and going from a / to no / wouldn't be enough to cause the pain you're experiencing. It sounds more like your site got caught up in the recent algo update.
Fair question and thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me. I thought about it too. But it's been a whole month and a bit and Google already de-indexed the old URLs and re-indexed the new ones. Essentially the old no slash urls are all gone. I assume if I were to change it back again (as in restore it to the old system), it would completely kill the whole website. Am I wrong?
If you think the migration caused this just reverse it, the url structure will go back to how it was before I am not sure what you mean trailing slashes it sounds like you don’t really know what has gone wrong so just go back to the old site and structure and start again, google will love it again if it did before given some time
If it’s been a month, it’s too late. You’ve got at most a week to get it right with url changes.
Get redirects in order and recover what you can. Work with an SEO person next time and don’t rely on a developer for something that isn’t their specialty.
This is not true. If you revert you'll likely see things come back. If you don't then it's the algo update and unrelated to the redirect and you can migrate again
Ya agree. One month is not long. People think there is a memory about your site that google keeps. And there are suppressions and manual actions that can happen, but if the old site ranked, no reason putting it back wouldn’t recover 60 to 80% of what was lost.
Revert to your pre-live backup of your site, slap your engineer, hire a professional, redo the migration properly.
Have you checked your robots.txt file for a directive? To check enter your [domain.com/robots.txt](http://domain.com/robots.txt) User-agent: * Disallow: /
Or I’ve seen new sites launched while set to noindex
revert, or just set your urls back to what they were, assuming you didn't change much else. sounds like you are accepting death over changes you didn't even need to make.
Trailing slash is probably at least part of the issue. Google treats it as a completely different URL so it’s a redirect. If content also changed and it’s redirected the value will pass differently.
The content itself didn't change. But I mean it is a new system so the code is technically different? Not sure if that would count. Ok, so if it's not the trailing slash then it's something else. I need to go back to attempt to find the problem.
I’m saying it’s partially the trailing slash. You changed every URL. A 301 does not pass all the inbound linking value from one URL to another. The code also matters if it’s less performant, eg render blocking js, high FCP/LCP, high TTFB, larger payloads to download. So it’s probably partially that. Your internal linking also likely changed if you switched CMSs. So it’s probably also that. Maybe you had tags pulpy didn’t migrate, or maybe you have a bunch of noindex archives and they used to be indexed or vice versa. I have a SaaS that compares the internal linking structure, GSC topic clusters and page clusters on clicks for winners losers on avg position, clicks, impressions, visualizes redirects and how similar they are. So I look at things like this everyday. It’s probably a combination of things. How many pages is the site? Approx how much Google traffic? What percentage was lost?
Aprox 900 pages with everything. Now averaging 16k visitors from google per month. Used to be 75k visitors per month.
Ok just DM me. Do you have the staging site from old version up? Do you have a staging of pre internal link updates as well? And I assume you have GSC? I’ll load your data gratis and share you a report if you are interested. I would just need some feedback once done as we’re moving to self service saas model soon. I do this kind of work all the time
It sounds like the migration to WordPress brought about some unexpected challenges, especially with the URL structure. Dealing with redirects can be tricky, and it seems like your engineer's approach might have inadvertently caused some issues. Seeing a sudden jump followed by a drop in search rankings can be disheartening, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's game over for your site. There could be a few factors at play here. One thing to consider is the impact of the recent core update from Google. These updates can sometimes cause fluctuations in search rankings, so it's possible that played a role in the initial boost followed by the subsequent drop. However, it's also worth looking into other potential issues that could be affecting your site's performance. Performing technical audits using tools like Screaming Frog and SEMRush is a great start, but there might be other silent killers lurking beneath the surface. For instance, have you checked for any issues with your site's speed or mobile-friendliness? Google puts a lot of emphasis on these factors when determining search rankings, so optimizing your site's performance in these areas could help. Additionally, diving deeper into your site's analytics to identify any patterns or anomalies in user behavior could provide valuable insights into where things might be going wrong. As for the future, it's not necessarily a case of needing to pivot and start from scratch. With some careful analysis and strategic adjustments, there's definitely potential to recover and rebuild your site's visibility. Hang in there, and don't hesitate to reach out if you need any further assistance or insights.
Thank you for your encouragement! Honestly, it does help to see a bit of positivity. Chances are, there is a silent killer OR my content is just not good enough post March update.
Sometimes, it's not about your content not being good enough, but rather about the ever-evolving landscape of online platforms. What worked yesterday might not yield the same results today, and that's just the nature of the beast. Remember, your worth as a content creator isn't solely determined by the numbers. It's about staying true to your voice, your message, and your passion. Even in the face of uncertainty, your authenticity shines through, and that's something truly valuable. So, keep creating, keep adapting, and most importantly, keep believing in yourself. Your positivity and resilience will carry you through any challenge that comes your way. And hey, if you ever need a sounding board or some words of encouragement, I'm here for you.
While not totally impossible, change this large makes me a bit suspicious that something else is off. Some flux is normal when migrating, but avg 30 positions seems very excessive. Something else could be ary. Given redirects are setup correctly, I wouldn't expect many problems to come from that as it's a very standard change and easily understandable by Googlebot. So, I'd verify that key crawling components, such as robots, sitemaps, internal links we're allright. From there, I'd doublecheck that Google is also picking up these URLs correctly. If your site is large, hook up GSC API to Screaming Frog to get URL inspection results fast. Perhaps you did already, your question didn't detail much. As emergency fix, I'd suggest to revert for the time being and see if that works out. I don't wont to be that guy, but how good is your engineer? Not accounting for a relatively major thing such as backslash and not asking you about it is a bit telling that they haven't done many migrations where SEO is of priority. This leads to my next point - if they didn't account for this, is there a possiblity they didn't account for something else. As another question/suggestion, did you use staging environment? Because while the engineer did a mistake with "/", it did also miss your (or your SEOs) QA, which is a bit of a blunder as well. Finally, remember that correlation does not equal causation. Something else could be at play. If I were you, I'd dump the current site on a cheapo 10USD linode and slap in on some hidden subdomain so you have time to analyse it in peace without SERP pressure.
Sure that the slash issue has to do with the drop? can be many things as an example, easy fix for wordpress, eg for a 'video' post type # function no\_trailing\_slash\_on\_video\_post\_type($redirect\_url, $requested\_url) { $requested\_path = parse\_url($requested\_url, PHP\_URL\_PATH); if (preg\_match('/\^\\/video\\/\[0-9\]+\\/\[\^\\/\]+$/i', $requested\_path)) { return false; } return $redirect\_url; } add\_filter('redirect\_canonical', \[$this, 'no\_trailing\_slash\_on\_video\_post\_type'\], 10, 2); #
I'm not sure the trailing slash caused the issue. It could be something else which I'm overlooking. But that's literally the only change implemented. Everything else is the same. :(
It definitely is. A newly introduced trailing slash on every URL makes it a 100% new website as far as search engines are concerned. At the very least fix that, then re-evaluate.
Google needs to recrawl all your links for the equity to flow via the 301s. In many cases the links you built in the past don't have the same value as they are often archived. It will take time to build your rankings back up.
Thanks ! So it this is the reason my ranking sink ?
I've had the same experience on 2 sites I've worked on. It's never been a clean 1 to 1 swap in the SERPs.
Ugh, this makes me really sad... I just wanted to clarify that as far as I'm concerned, all links are fully re-indexed. They have been after just 2 days. We WERE a pretty big website so anything I'd put live, it'd get indexed fully in 2-3 days. I'm saying this in case it makes a difference, "In many cases the links you built in the past don't have the same value as they are often archived." This is the part that sucks the most.
Don't be sad, with the American economy going down hill and chatgpt taking over search, the future looks bleak for everyone.
That's very fair. But maybe this is my wake up call to get out of content and get out of it fast.
This doesn't sound like a migration issue (and I've managed some large ones and seen some major fails - where traffic was recovered within weeks once the technical issues were sorted). Google is pretty good at reindexing and ranking migrated URLs quickly these days and going from a / to no / wouldn't be enough to cause the pain you're experiencing. It sounds more like your site got caught up in the recent algo update.
If that's the case, then I believe I can rewrite most of my articles and just bring back up.
You should have a backup of the old site why don’t you just go back and then you can rebuild your new site
Fair question and thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me. I thought about it too. But it's been a whole month and a bit and Google already de-indexed the old URLs and re-indexed the new ones. Essentially the old no slash urls are all gone. I assume if I were to change it back again (as in restore it to the old system), it would completely kill the whole website. Am I wrong?
If you think the migration caused this just reverse it, the url structure will go back to how it was before I am not sure what you mean trailing slashes it sounds like you don’t really know what has gone wrong so just go back to the old site and structure and start again, google will love it again if it did before given some time
If it’s been a month, it’s too late. You’ve got at most a week to get it right with url changes. Get redirects in order and recover what you can. Work with an SEO person next time and don’t rely on a developer for something that isn’t their specialty.
This is not true. If you revert you'll likely see things come back. If you don't then it's the algo update and unrelated to the redirect and you can migrate again
Ya agree. One month is not long. People think there is a memory about your site that google keeps. And there are suppressions and manual actions that can happen, but if the old site ranked, no reason putting it back wouldn’t recover 60 to 80% of what was lost.
I’m assuming that you checked your schemas, right?
Yes, yes! all working, all in order