Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Christopher Vinso on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 11/21/2015).

Traffic drop after implementing 301 redirect.

Hey everyone. Young professional starting out my career in digital marketing an SEO. I`m still learning, but I have come across an issue I can`t figure out, hope someone here can help!

 I found a page on my site that had a URL slug that was not optimal for the content on the page. So I stupidly decided to change the slug and create a 301 redirect to the new url. 

Hypothetically lets say I changed the url from "/bicycles/red-colored-bike" to "/bicycles/red-bike." My thinking behind this was that there were several keywords we were trying to rank for that began with "red-bike..." like "red bike accessories" or "red bike tune ups" ect. ect. 

So I changed the slug from "/bicycles/red-colored-bike" to "bicycles/red-bike" and created a 301 redirect from the old url to the new one. All the research I`ve read said that 301 redirects transfer about 85-90% of the page authority/link juice of the old url to the new one. So I thought that would be an acceptable loss to better increase future long-run rankings (and to make it more understandable to the user what the page was about). 

However, instead of a small 10-15% drop in rankings, 2 days later the page`s rankings fell from an average of being ranked 8 - 12 for our targeted keywords to below 50. Then they only kept going down after a week had gone by.

I saw this drop, freaked out, changed the url back to the original, removed the 301 redirect, created another redirect from the new url back to the old url (in-case there were any new links created).

It`s been a week and a half and I have only seen the rankings get worse. What`s happening? And what else can I do fix this?

-Chris?
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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

  • Christopher Vinson: Hey everyone. Young professional starting out my career in digital marketing an SEO. I'm still learning, but I have come across an issue I can't figure out, hope someone here can help!

     ;I found a page on my site that had a URL slug that was not optimal for the content on the page. So I stupidly decided to change the slug and create a 301 redirect to the new url. ;

    Hypothetically lets say I changed the url from "/bicycles/red-colored-bike" to "/bicycles/red-bike." My thinking behind this was that there were several keywords we were trying to rank for that began with "red-bike..." like "red bike accessories" or "red bike tune ups" ect. ect. ;

    So I changed the slug from "/bicycles/red-colored-bike" to "bicycles/red-bike" and created a 301 redirect from the old url to the new one. All the research I've read said that 301 redirects transfer about 85-90% of the page authority/link juice of the old url to the new one. So I thought that would be an acceptable loss to better increase future long-run rankings (and to make it more understandable to the user what the page was about). ;

    However, instead of a small 10-15% drop in rankings, 2 days later the page's rankings fell from an average of being ranked 8 - 12 for our targeted keywords to below 50. Then they only kept going down after a week had gone by.

    I saw this drop, freaked out, changed the url back to the original, removed the 301 redirect, created another redirect from the new url back to the old url (in-case there were any new links created).

    It's been a week and a half and I have only seen the rankings get worse. What's happening? And what else can I do fix this?

    -Chris
  • Ryan Link: Hey Chris. Have you tried submitting your question to the Google Forums? Lots of helpful people in those forums. 
  • Micah Fisher-Kirshner: There's a good chance that the issue is outside of the URL change you made. Unless you're running a massively large site, it's unlikely a URL change, assuming you did this in a generally acceptable way, would have caused both a drop and then upon reverting the set up, continued to drop further.
  • Sam “H” Mah: I don't think it's 301 - it's a well known fact 301 passes link juice. I suspect it's something else. Let us see the website, maybe we can help you out
  • Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this week's SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:51:13 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/traffic_drop_after_implementing_301_redirect +Christopher Vinson

    If our assistance with this issue was useful to you, please consider sharing your success story so that others might benefit.
    

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 11/21/2015).