Analyzing DownFall

Redesigning and restarting a site can be a truly exciting and challenging task, which is part of Internet marketing. There comes a time when it is necessary to completely revise the resource, “disassemble” it in parts, adjust the main task, and most importantly, restructure the website for successful SEO promotion . On the other hand, restarting or updating without proper attention can lead to disastrous results.

If you made mistakes when restarting, determine what went wrong and why it happened, it will cost you long hours of irritable searches. Therefore, in this article we will show you how to quickly and easily diagnose an error.

1. Check out Google Analytics

Not all traffic is displayed? If so, you may not have installed tracking on the new site. Manually check the code.

If there is organic traffic, but it is significantly less than before the restart, check the website using the Analytics Checkup tool . It is possible that part of the site, for example, in a blog, has a tracking code installed incorrectly or not installed at all.

Checking all the pages for a correctly installed counter will help identify the problem.

2. Check robots.txt

If Google Analytics is correctly installed on all pages of the site, it means that you made a mistake in something else. The first assumption is a ban on site indexing.

Check if the “disallow: /” directive is in the robots.txt file, and the page code will not contain a robots meta tag, which prohibits indexing. If your site is often reindexed by search engines, the ban on indexing can take effect very quickly, and you will immediately notice a drop in positions. If search engine robots are not frequent visitors to your site, the changes may take effect in a few days or a week.

3. Deeper Google Analytics Analysis

If the points mentioned above do not apply to you, it’s time to analyze Google Analytics data in more depth.

After restarting, the page URLs have changed.

Have you set up 301 redirects from old URLs to new ones?

Sort organic traffic by landing pages with the most traffic losses by comparing current traffic with traffic a week before launch. Did you set up 301 redirects to new URLs for landing pages that brought the most traffic a week ago?

(Note: You can also see the presence of pages with a 404 error in the Google Webmaster Tools. However, it may take several days for this information to appear in Google webmaster.) In Google Analytics, go to the Content tab, select the subcategory All pages, period – after launch a new version.

Knowing what text is displayed in the Title of your 404 error page, search the given text and determine how many pages produce an 404 error.

Adjusting redirects, did you redirect all the old URLs or sections of the site to the main page or did you use page redirects? The last option is the most preferred.

After restarting the page URLs have not changed

Check organic traffic again for landing pages. Match the current traffic with the traffic before the launch of the new version.

If you are still seeing a drop in traffic, choose the second indicator – the keyword. Check out key phrases and landing pages for which traffic has decreased.

Please note whether the target URL has changed after the site restart. The key phrases may have disappeared from the new page and it is no longer relevant to this request.

If you checked the site position before restarting, start it again and see if there is a decrease in position. Check if keywords match new pages.

4. Check hosting and server

Google Analytics tracking is configured correctly, there are no problems with page indexing, all the necessary redirects are configured correctly, and the keywords correspond to new landing pages.

What’s next?

Have you changed your hosting or server? Communication quality problems between site visitors, hosting and server can lead to a delay in providing content to the end user or even to timeout. In the latter case, the search engine will not have access to the page.

Check the Google Webmasters Dashboard for errors when crawling the site, when communicating with the DNS, and when connecting to the server. It may also take time before the information starts to appear in the webmasters panel.

Check the site using the Ping / Traceroute tool on Pingdom’s DNS Health utility page . This will help to understand if the problems from the hosting or server.

5. Finding a solution

There are alternative methods for identifying problems after restarting the site, but the steps listed above will help you quickly browse the site and determine the reason for reducing traffic.

If you went through the points and did not find the reason for the reduction in traffic, then your case is less typical and requires more in-depth analysis. Perhaps the problem lies in the new design or HTML code or in the re-optimization.

Conclusion:

Even after a carefully planned restart, there may be a slight loss of traffic. Perhaps this is Google’s strategy – to keep the modified site not in the first positions, to treat it with some suspicion.

Despite this, if you change the site for the better, over time Google will revise its ranking, and your site will become even more effective.