Dumb SEO Questions

(Entry was posted by Leanne White on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 07/09/2020).

I`ve done a lot but hasn`t had any effect

I migrated 3 sites into one a month ago (for different cities but all with related key words), did all the correct forwarding, all the links have updated etc to the new site but it has stuffed up the ranking just for one of the directories, the other 2 are fine, but one of them which was at the top for a number of key words, is either on page 2 or I can`t even find it in the search engines. As I have paying clients advertising their business on this website who are now getting hardly any hits, I am getting a little desperate and thinking about waiting another week or so and then if it still doesn`t improve migrating it back to the original domain name and hope it will go back to its normal ranking. I have made a lot of improvements since the migration - added videos, a blog, pdfs, more wording, checked it with the Screaming Frog etc but hasn`t had any effect. Has anyone had any experience with this or any suggestions?
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YOUR ANSWERS

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

  • Leanne White: :) thanks
  • Leanne White: Hi Sam - when you migrated, did you use the Change of Address tool in the Google Search Console for your old domains? If so, does it show a message like "This site is currently moving to www. etc or have a Cancel move button? Because I haven`t on mine so I don`t know if I did it properly, and if I migrate one of my directories back, I don`t know how to cancel the original move I requested (if I requested it).
  • Michael Martinez: The redirects/migration might not be the problem at all. The search engines change the way they index and rank things all the time. It could just be that it was time for that section of content to drop in rankings.

    You could try undoing that part of the migration and see if things go back to the way they were. If they do then that could mean you overlooked something in your migration implementation.
  • Leanne White: This particular website I have had for 14 years and it has been at the top for a number of keywords for most of those years so I don`t think it is that as it would be too much of a coincidence but I wonder if it is because either the age of my original website (I have heard the older the website, the better for SEO, when I migrated it, is it seen as a brand new website? Or the change of the actual domain name - although the new domain name has similar good keywords in it, the original website had the city name in it which when people are searching for certain keywords, they would usually also add the city name to the keywords as the website is for function venues. Also I wasn`t sure what you meant by undoing that part of the migration?
  • Michael Martinez: Leanne White You said you merged three sites together. I assumed (always a bit short-sighted to do so, I know) that each site was merged into its own directory on a new domain/site. So I just meant reverse the process for that 1 directory.

    But with something like this, there are so many variables you could devise 100 hypotheses to test.

    Maybe the most efficient approach is to accept the loss in traffic and start building new content for those keywords.

    I`m just making suggestions to consider.
  • Leanne White: Thanks - you are correct, they are in their own folders, ironically the worse hit, was the best one which earnt the most income and I really only did it because I thought it would help the other 2 directories ranking in having a much larger website - all targeting similar keywords. and the migration didn`t affect their ranking at all so I must have done the migration correctly.
  • Leanne White: Michael Martinez do you know if I migrated that one directory back, obviously I delete the forwarding code to the new site I had in the old htaccess doc, but do I put any similar forwarding code, in the new current folder to forward back to the old directory? Or because it has only been a month, I don`t need to?
  • Michael Martinez: Leanne White When reversing a migration I have, in fact, always tried to put reverse redirects in place, too.
  • Leanne White: Thanks :)
  • Michael Martinez: Things will probably be confused for a while. The search engines will be following redirects back and forth. Google specifically uses a "crawl cache" so it may pull previously fetched pages from that cache for a few days or weeks, depending on how large the site is.
  • Leanne White: Thanks - it can`t get much worse than what it is at the moment - hits wise, hopefully it will go back to what it was previously.
  • Leanne White: Michael Martinez sorry one last question - what redirect code do you use, I tried the same code I had used to direct my old site to new but it isn`t working to redirect back to the old site - maybe because it is in a folder (I have tried to put it both in the folder and in the root directory in the htaccess doc) ie RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %HTTP_HOST ^mysite.com.au/perth/ NC, OR
    RewriteCond %HTTP_HOST ^www.perthsite.com.au/perth/ NC
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.perthsite.com.au$1 L, R=301, NC
  • Leanne White: I think I got it - RewriteEngine on
    Redirect 301 /perth http://www.myperthsite.com.au/
  • Michael Martinez: Leanne White That`ll about do it, as the Goblin King said.
  • Leanne White: Good news - I moved it back about 2 hours ago and it has already not only gone back to my original domain name in the search engines but also back to the top of Google :) can`t believe it would be so quick. thanks for your help.

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 07/09/2020).