I feel as if my website is being hurt by the fact we redirect all traffic to HTTPS via htaccess(301 redirects). We used to be very highly ranked on google but our rankings have dropped significantly since upgrading from v3 to v4 and enabling https redirects. I can't figure out why, I was wondering if I was missing anything obvious and if someone can take a look our site at https://www.bulldogprinting.com A link report is available here https://www.bulldogp…rokenlinks.html
thank you
does your redirect contain a 301 to keep your link juice.
[color=#1B8D01]RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80[/color]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.your_domain.com/$1[R301,L,NE]
[color=#1B8D01]Also bear in mind Panda has been doing its thing and some rankings are all over the place lately[/color]
This is the type of redirect I use in the htaccess
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.bulldogprinting.com/$1 [R=301,L,NE]
we upgraded to v4 and switched to https at the same time so its hard to tell what dropped the ranking to almost nothing
have you got them both listed in wm tools and verified etc to monitor pages and traffic etc.
have you submitted a sitemap with the https aswell?
site:bulldogprinting.com shows only 95 results
site:www.bulldogprinting.com shows 75 results
site:http://www.bulldogprinting.com 75 results
site:http://bulldogprinting.com 95 results
site:https://www.bulldogprinting.com 95 results
so not much variation, how many pages did you used to show, seems at the moment all is showing are category pages and no singular products?
Check your sitemap and find one of your old product urls and see if it redirects ok
[quote name='johnbol1' timestamp='1439313271' post='226419']
have you got them both listed in wm tools and verified etc to monitor pages and traffic etc.
have you submitted a sitemap with the https aswell?
site:bulldogprinting.com shows only 95 results
site:www.bulldogprinting.com shows 75 results
site:http://www.bulldogprinting.com 75 results
site:http://bulldogprinting.com 95 results
site:https://www.bulldogprinting.com 95 results
so not much variation, how many pages did you used to show, seems at the moment all is showing are category pages and no singular products?
[/quote]
I HAVE THIS SAME PROBLEM! v4.2.3… little or no product pages indexed!
I submitted all the sitemaps in HTTPS, was that a mistake? For the results there only should be 68 total of pages I want to index as of right now. Google says it has indexed 66/68 so I assume its working but our ranking is very low across the board.
Yeah all look indexed, when we swapped over and submitted all https we did notice a drop but picked back up after a few weeks, I wouldnt say the click throughs are the same amount but order value and range of products have increased.
Remember the google panda has been rolling out at about the same time mid to end of June, maybe your a victim of this?
Why are you having the var/cache directory indexed? It will change when you clear the cache.
Make sure to redirect all www to non www.
[quote name='tbirnseth' timestamp='1439330459' post='226443']
Why are you having the var/cache directory indexed? It will change when you clear the cache.
[/quote]
I have disallowed the /var/ folder in the robots.txt, thank you
[quote name='P-Pharma' timestamp='1439334503' post='226447']
Make sure to redirect all www to non www.
[/quote]
Why is that? Everything I've read says it does not affect ranking and google implies it is irrelevant as long as your sitemaps are correct.
[quote name='bulldogweb1' timestamp='1439393250' post='226555']Why is that? Everything I've read says it does not affect ranking and google implies it is irrelevant as long as your sitemaps are correct.
[/quote]
I've always heard that you should decide on one or the other–either all www or all non-www–and redirect everything to whichever you choose. But I'd say that's probably irrelevant if you're already redirecting everything to https.
If it would be irrelevant then you would not be getting this difference:
site:http://www.bulldogprinting.com 75 results
site:http://bulldogprinting.com 95 results
looks like your indexed fine, maybe the panda has bitten you
P-Pharma is right that your ranking is being diluted by having both the www and the non-www versions indexed. You should choose one or the other and stick with that.
They are different “locations”. Consistency is required for accuracy. Either all www or no www. I would lean toward no www given that it is a very old construct from the earliest days of html publishing. If you use any subdomains, having no-www makes things simpler from a DNS perspective too.
[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1439404407' post='226573']
P-Pharma is right that your ranking is being diluted by having both the www and the non-www versions indexed. You should choose one or the other and stick with that.
[/quote]
You will see them both linked for a little while after making the choice, one will drop in listings and the other should gain as it crawls and replaces via the r 301. make sure you have set up the https version in WM tools so you can see the data
So I should delete the profiles in webmaster tools for any domain with www?
Im not against trying it our ranking couldnt drop much lower than it is right now
No you can just leave them, google treats http:// and https:// as seperate , you will then see traffic stats dropping on 1 and should build up on the other. Submit your https sitemap (though Google will crawl it swiftly anyway)
As google treats them both as different entities you could actually serve different content from each, but thats a whole other story and usually you want it all going from https
Set your preferred version either with the www or without.
https://support.goog…wer/44231?hl=en
As you dont have many urls it may be worth you submitting url removal request for the duplicates you want removing to Google, one you decide which protocol you will be using.
Just in case someone stumbles upon this, if you are using the google sitemap addon and use HTTPS redirects remember to change all the URL's it generates in the sitemap.xml to HTTPS from HTTP otherwise google will not index you…ask me how I know…
Seems your refering domains total dropped from over 45 to under 30 Dec to Mar.
But it also seems you had high growth from Oct to Dec - could have have bought some backlinks then ? if so it would explain the drop off in ranking later. But it does now look as if it's recovering, try not to change anything from when you were well ranked or you might do more damage then good. Concentrate on off the page SEO if I were you but only quality not bought.