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Did I just destroy my site’s SEO?
My business is very dependant on organic traffic. For years we’ve dominated our niche. 3 weeks ago we migrated to a new WordPress theme (The 7) and page builder (elementor). Within a few days after, we dropped 4-7 positions in our most high value keywords and havent recovered since. I’m absolutely gutted and feel like I’ve done something incredibly stupid. My business is majorly impacted.
**Some things worth mentioning:**
* The content of the site was nearly 100% unchanged. All heading tags are the same, text the same, images the same…we feared a site upgrade might impact seo negatively which is why we did this.
* No change to URLs or URL structures
* The change happened \~Aug 8-9th.
* Site speed/performance took a moderate hit during the upgrade (Ranking on GTMetrix went from “A” to “C”)Has anyone dealt with something similar? Did it recover? If so, what did you do and how long did it take?
I’m losing sleep over this.
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1 Reply
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Once we did an website migration for a client, and there was a massive seo hit, we later realized we did it a day before a core update from google, which probably impacted his site more than the migration itself (same content, same url, 301 all around…)
Check for google updates on that timeline -
Are internal links the same?
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Hasn’t google been doing silent core updates? Kindly check whether your site is in line with the new ranking metrics
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Dm’d
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Highly suggest not being on Elementor. An update once pulled every single page of my site out of the carousel results and I lost 50% of my traffic. It’s slowly started trickling back after doing a complete site redesign, but man, that was a pain in the ass
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If you use a tool like Semrush, they’ll note when large updates occur to positions due to potential Google algo updates.
Might also try running site through audit tools, look for 404 errors etc. Could highlight if Amp pages or RSS was turned off or something like that. Would also show if URL structures unknowingly changed.
I’ve had luck using WP Rocket for speed optimization. Milage may vary depending on current setup.
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I’ve lost a bunch of traffic once when I switched my theme to GeneratePress. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with GP and plenty of people rank fine with it.
But it somehow caused a shock. I didn’t have the patience to wait and switched back to my old theme (Genesis). Rankings restored.
Mind you this was at least 5 years ago if not more, so I would not necessarily recommend this.
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Few things it could be:
– If your site speed is affected, your layout may have changed – watch for mobile performance as that can be the culprit sometimes when content is unchanged
– Elementor is a pain in the ass. You might need a developer to look behind the scenes for potential conflicts
– Google is running a broad core update this week. If you can, wait a week to see if rankings return to normal before changing everything.
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Did you check for http errors? There could be something in the theme code causing errors. Use search console to scan some urls.
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The august update is rolling out, serp volatility is in full effect.
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Having GTMetrix go to a “C” is big part of your problem. You should NOT be that low if you’re trying to rank a competitive niche. I would also look at possibly doing something like Cloud Flare CDN in ADDITION to moving to a different template like Astra, Divi, Generate Press, Ocean, Neve, or – my favorite – Kadence Pro. For reference, my sites I create are scoring 98% on GTMetrix, and doing 90%-99 on Google Page Speed Insights. Mobile is the tough one to get 90%+ with google, and that’s where Cloud Flare and WP Rocket can help.
Let me put it this way, if I speak to a client or friend to help them and the Google, GTMetrix, or Pingdom score isn’t 80%+… IMO there is no point spending real time on off-page or on-page SEO until that is fixed.
Could this be something else? Yes. Do I think it’s your performance score dipping? Yes. Make a change however you want to get the score higher. See what happens. If it doesn’t come back up, start tweeking other stuff little by little.
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you might be surprised but check robots.txt
and redirects if they are 301 or temporary, also check the status of your website on a ping
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The drop sounds a bit worrying normally there wouldn’t be much change when you migrate, but it’s too early to tell 2 weeks is not enough time to see if it’s going to fail, you need to keep an eye out to see if there is a slow recovery over next 2-3 weeks
I don’t wish to appear rude honestly but why change?if your new site isn’t going to be an improvement of speed and seo improvements ?
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Probably only 2 things out of which 1 you can work on immediately.
1. Site performance. The migration has slowed down your website. Bunch of things you can do for that immediately. You may have options even without needing to roll back to your old system.
2. Google update. Partial roll out started in the second week of August before it was announced a few days ago. Monitor it further. Rolling back to the old system may not revive your rank if you’ve been hit by the update. You may have to wait a bit to understand how the update affected you and why and then you go on to make those changes. WordPress or not won’t matter.
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In the world of algorithms, sometimes things are out of your control.
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