Hold Off on SEO Changes After Domain Migration?

[Kingalan1]

We migrated our domain on April 4th. Our domain authority has dropped from 22 to 8. Traffic is down from 90 visits a day to 10.

Search console has indexed about 120 out of 600 pages. I have been told it may take several months to recovers some element of domain authority.

My SEO consultant has planned on implementing the following changes immediately:

1. Change in URL structure
2. Build internal links (my site has very few). 
3. Optimize URLs for specific keywords 
4. Keyword optimization of URLs using Yoast.
5. Modify Schema

Do we risk confusing Google further by making these changes until are domain authority and traffic has recovered?

Is it safe to proceed with some "softer" changes such building internal links and keyword optimizing text whicl avoiding more disruptive changes such as re-writing URLs?

Are we better off focusing on off site ranking factors such as link building and local SEO until domain authority recovers? How about only adding new content to the site such as blog posts and listings?

To complicate matters the site is old and dated and we are working on a new UX design. So perhaps it would be better to launch the new UX at the exact same time as the onsite SEO optimization occurs. This could be less work and less disruptive. At the same time I would very much like to enjoy benefits of optimizing SEO now.

Any thoughts?????

Also, my domain migration has killed traffic. It is very concerning!! Is a 90% drop in traffic normal in the first ten days!?

Thanks everyone!!!
Alan

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

Hi Allen,

90 visits a day for 600 pages is only 0.15 visits a day for each page.  That seems to me to be quite low volume.  Have you considered that the pages may not have been indexed because google doesn't consider them to be high quality?  Even 90 visits a day for 120 pages is averaging 0.75 (less than one) visit per day.

Perhaps consider the overall quality of the site and look at the volumes of the keywords that you are targeting and see where more volume could be found?  Google will consider less than one user per day as a low quality site and that would be a huge concern of mine.

Perhaps consider aggregating pages together or combining them to send signals of comprehensiveness to google and that you're answering specific questions.

March has seen some huge google updates and this could also be causing havoc on your site as these updates are based on quality.

Have sites overtaken you in your rankings and are you on page one for your particular topics and keyword groups?

Send some more information and I'm sure we can help more.

All the best,

Ed.

[Kingalan1]

Hi Ed:

That is  very interesting observation. I think you are absolutely correct regarding the number of visits vis a vis the number of pages.

But my situation is that the search volume has dropped to 10 visits a day from day after we have moved the site (no change in content or design) from the old domain to a new domain,

We are trying to figure out what has caused the drop in volume.

But we are also trying to figure out if we should start to improve the content structure before our domain authority recovers. It was previously 22, now it has dropped to 8. The domain migration was on April 4th. The question above pertained to timing for extensive SEO changes and then launch of a new design. All in context with the drop in traffic from the domain migration.

So what do you think advisable regarding SEO changes in light of problems relating to the domain switch and in light of the launch of the new design in a few months?
Thanks, Alan

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

The drop in traffic could have just been google reindexing the site following the March updates.  Check your search console and see when your pages were indexed up to the site migration.

Have you redirected the pages correctly and has the site migration been done with the SEO checklist in mind?

Here's a guide from our friends at Moz and here's another from Search Engine Land.  They are pretty comprehensive and I'm betting you might have missed something.  Also are you looking at the old Moz DA score or the new one in the beta here.

But I would be concerned about the underlying issues of traffic here.  Is the website doing it's job?  And was it before the changes you made?

[Kingalan1]

170 of the 420 pages were indexed after March 20th. 222 were indexed before March 11th. There was no drop in traffic until about April 7th, 3 days after the domain change.

I have checked and double checked with my developer and all pages were redirected correctly. We have gotten only a few redirect errors and they were fixed within the first few days of the migration.

Also, I would like to emphasize that no changes at all were made to the content or the structure.

The old site was www.nyc-officespace-leader.com
The new domain is https//:www.metro-manhattan.com

So you see we add SSL and migrated the domain as well.

My developer seems less concerned and believes it could take up to 90 days for domain authority to transfer from the old domain. I am more concerned. Certain MOZ posts claim that if implemented properly the drop in traffic should be minimal and very temporary.

Any thoughts?

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

I did a site migration from Http to HTTPS and saw no drop but google was big on making sure such transfers didn't create and problems so people did them.  They wanted to encourage it so gave us a little boost.  I saw no drop at all.  But have heard of HTTP / HTTPS % HTTP2 having problems with traffic dropping.  But usually this was an error that had been made somewhere.

OK so now I now that you are lettings that explains why so many pages.  Things should have improved but lately I am finding my pages are not getting indexed as fast as they were a month ago.  There really is a shake-up at google that is earth-moving at the moment.  Sensors and chatter has been 10/10 for almost a month now with rumours of new things happening on 17th April.

I'm not one of these people who is glued to webmaster world but I'd bet it's things out of your control that have affected it or delays in indexing that will get picked up in a bit of time.

Try re-requesting all your crawls.  I know what's obvious but it got mine finally indexed.