Domain migration via Wordpress - organic still 60% down four months later

[mattpettitt]

Hi guys!Almost four months ago I performed a Wordpress domain migration. Three pet-based sites were migrated into a new pet-based one that incorporated them all - the new site is petskb.com and 240 posts were migrated.The site migration was performed via 301 wildcard re-directs using the .htaccess files in the old domains, which are still in place and working. I also used the site move tool in GSC. Afterwards, I performed an audit of the new site to ensure that all the old urls were being re-directed to the new one, which they were (and are). There have been no manual actions reported in GSC.The results have been very poor. A small few of the articles that were in the top 10 moved over and I quickly claimed the same positions in the new site. Most did not though and still sit >100 in the SERP or absolutely nowhere (or even omitted) using the main keyword.I've created about 60 new articles (using the same SEO analysis I did previously) since that time on the new site and not one of them has ranked <100 in all that time, whereas on the old sites they would initially rank somewhere in the top 50 after a couple of days and work their way up over the months. These new posts haven't moved though. The posts that were published on the new site four months ago are still in the exact same position.So, I've created new content, re-submitted the sitemap and manually requested re-indexing of the posts. Nothing has changed. I've hired SEO's and not one has found any problems with my site or how I performed the migration. Clearly there is a problem though. The original posts that were ranking previously and all the new posts have not moved in the SERP. There were a few spammy links pointing to the new domain but nothing significant, I did disavow these though - no more than on the old sites though.As a test, I created a new post on another domain which has no posts with the same long-tail keyword as one that has been on my new site for almost four months. The one I posted on the new domain out-ranked the one on petskb after just two days.Can anyone help? If you can I will personally travel to where you live and buy you several beers.Thanks,Matt

[Dalerio-Consulting]

One of the most comprehensive case studies that comes to mind for this issue is the following from Jeff Baker:
This Is What Happens When You Accidentally De-Index Your Site from Google

My main suspicion as to why the new site isn't ranking as well would be because often times Google is very slow at re-crawling the pages on your site. If Google hasn't re-crawled the old domain and documented the 301 redirect, then it hasn't transferred the rank of the old domain to the new one. In order to verify this, you should check if the old article page has de-indexed. If it hasn't de-indexed and the new site is ranking in a low position, then it means that the new site is ranking by itself without the support of the 301 redirect.

There is bound to be some change in rank as you joined several sites into a new domain, but since the topic is very similar, then the change should be very small. With time Google should be able to slowly crawl all the pages and transfer their authority to the new one.

Please let me know if my theory holds ground and whether there's anything else I can assist with.

Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com

[mattpettitt]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for replying - it's appreciated.

Firstly,  yes - to answer your question, there are around 180 (out of 300 articles) of the old articles that are still indexed. By 'indexed' I mean if you type site: <old_url>they come up. If you go into GSC and perform an inspection of the old url though it does say that the 'URL is not on Google'. So, is it indexed or not?</old_url>

I have manually tried to re-index (via GSC) these old urls but they still exist months later. So, I guess my next question is - how do I get Google to de-index the old urls?

Also, I'm not sure why this would prevent the 60 articles that have been created during these last few months not to rank - but I guess this is a secondary question to the one above as I would suspect that's the priority!

Cheers,

Matt

[Dalerio-Consulting]

Hello Matt,

As mentioned, it will take time for Google to crawl the old site's URLs, de-index them and transfer the rank to the new site. That process should take a few months to complete, so all you can do is wait. Trying to manually request crawling through the search console can speed up the process a little but in the end, it will still take its time.

As to why the new articles aren't ranking, the issue should be looked over individually to your site, as there are many factors that contribute to a post ranking higher or lower in the SERPs. Feel free to contact me if you need an analysis and possible solutions for the issue.

Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com