Technical SEO Question: Why is our new platform showing a small decline in traffic?

[nicole.healthline]

Hi there!

We are in the process of transitioning to a faster platform, and we recently moved a subset of URLs over. The subset that moved over saw a drop. We didn't change the URL pattern, or the content. The only thing that is different is the new platform. Here's a link to one of the URLs that is currently served from the new platform:

http://bit.ly/1YjXD7H

And, here is an example of a URL currently served from the older platform:

http://bit.ly/1Jtx7Di

Any ideas why the newer platform is seeing a decline in organic traffic?

[RyanPurkey]

There are a lot of factors that could be contributing to this, for example, the tracking isn't implemented properly or implemented differently than on the previous platform. Or on the non-technical side maybe the search volume is down overall for that time period that affects that particular page, or your rankings decreased due to competition strengthening even if your site stayed completely the same...  It's hard to say exactly without more precise details from Search Console, Analytics and so on.

If the dip isn't major, you know for a fact that your code is implemented properly, and the site loads much faster for your user base, you should likely go ahead and finish the complete transition.  A low site speed is a conversion killer and a major factor that should be addressed.

[Packaging-Group]

I would also look at how you are currently managing the sitemaps between the two platforms to make sure that the new pages have not been left out of the sitemap generation.