Website Re-Launch - New URLS / Old URL WMT

[19prince]

Hello...

We recently re-launched website with a new CMS (Magento). We kept the same domain name, however most of the structure changed. We were diligent about inputting the 301 redirects.  The domain is over 15 years old and has tons of link equity and history.

Today marks 27 days since launch...And Google Webmaster Tools showed me a recently detected (dated two days ago) URL from the old structure.

Our natural search traffic has take a slow dive since launch...Any thoughts?

Some background info: The old site did not have a sitemap.xml.  The relaunched site does.

Thanks!

[MoosaHemani]

This happens sometime and that is why I always encourage people to plan everything on paper when re-launching your website from old to the new version as one mistake can kill your rankings and traffic like anything.

As per my experience, I don’t see any big problem in your case as after re-launching the dip in traffic I s normal and the only way you can get the rankings back is by continuously creating new content and getting quality links back to the website.

As far as the URL in GWT is concern, there could be few URLs that you have missed (or they might not be the part of the website but system generated somehow in the past) the best idea in my option is to create a custom 404 page and take all the URLs that are not redirecting to any relevant page should go to this 404 page. I believe this way this particular problem will not occur again.

Hope this helps!

[AutofokusM]

Hi I noticed a dip in traffic after my last relaunch as well but it got back to normal within 2 weeks. I can recommend doing a search in google with site:yoursite.tld to check which sites are listed. Make a Excel Sheet from that and check if you have done all the 301 properly.