Help fixing the traffic drop that started on 4 September 2012.

[TheBigK]

Hello Rand,

First of all - I must mention that you're super-awesome and I'm a big fans of yours. I really appreciate your help.

Allow me to summarize: I deleted about 20-25k tags from wordpress (www.crazyengineers.com) which were added by our authors over a period of time (1.5 years). Each removed tag resulted into 404 error.

GWT reported large number of 404 errors on the site and at the same time (around 5th September), traffic from Google started declining. The to the overall site is down and it's quite noticeable on /community/ (where our forums reside). Over 70% of our traffic is from Google and our overall traffic (visits) are down by about 50%. I noticed that the keywords that used to rank high have slipped by 5-6 positions and some even got pushed to page 2.

Please let me know if this information is sufficient. I'll be happy to provide more information. I think my situation is similar to the following discussion -> http://www.seomoz.org/q/seek-help-correcting-large-number-of-404-errors-generated-95-traffic-halt

[randfish]

Sounds like it - fixing/redirecting those 404s is definitely a first step. You may also need to see if the content on those pages and the links to them were helping your SEO, and if for the future, you need to repoint/recreate categories that were lost or work on XML sitemaps + accessibility to recover.

Once you start down a path, just watch and see if you're recovering. You should know fairly quickly if you're on the right track.

[TheBigK]

Well, yes and I want to know what's the best way to fix these errors. I checked my backups and I don't have any way to restore those tags and associate them to relevant posts. I've received mixed responses about adding 301 redirects to the deleted tags - some say I should 301 all the deleted tag pages to homepage and some say it'd be a SEO suicide.

I believe the deleted tags were not helping much. They were the 'descriptive keywords' associated with posts and most of them were used just once.

What's your suggestion?

[TheBigK]

Rand - a simple question: There are about 20k tags that are removed. It's impossible to fix each one of them manually. Would you recommend redirecting each of the deleted tags to homepage (via 301)? Wouldn't that be disastrous to SEO?

[randfish]

Wouldn't be disastrous (certainly no more than a 404). Better would be to redirect the tags to relevant category pages, though.

[randfish]

I think 404'ing is a worse "suicide" than 301s. And as I noted above, you can start by redirecting a few bunches, then see if things improve.

[TheBigK]

Well, makes sense. So leaving the 404s are they are, is more suicidal than 301'in them to relevant category pages? In our case, we only have one category called 'VoiCE' that gets all the news articles (from where the tags were deleted). So I'd be redirecting the tags to www.crazyengineers.com/category/voice/ .

But would it not be better to redirect them to homepage?

Also - is there any way to setup a 301 redirect for only the deleted 'tag' pages? I'd like to keep the 404 pages for other locations that are not existent. I'd really appreciate inputs on setting up 301s. Can't afford to go wrong.

I want www.crazyengineers.com/tag/ <deleted tag="">to 301 to http://www.crazyengineers.com or maybe the category.</deleted>

[RobertFisher]

Rand, Had to say that I am impressed on a lot of levels. But, I always have been.

Best to you and yours,

Robert

[danatanseo]

I appreciate you hanging in there and glad Rand jumped in to assist. Thanks also for not being offended at my observations. I think it's super cool that you are a "gadget news" site. I signed up to follow your blog Please keep us posted on how this goes. I hope the suggestions you receive here help you to recover from the traffic drop.

[TheBigK]

Thank you for your words and interest in our website. We tend to focus on latest in engineering, technology (gadgets too) for our blog. Our aim is to simplify the latest in engineering & technology for people who're interested in being up to date with technical stuff.

Do you have any suggestions on setting up 301s as Rand suggested (I've stated my requirements towards the bottom of this thread.