Comments on: Traffic loss or penalty? – When to call in the SEO detectives

By: Deepika

Deepika — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 05:31:32 +0000

This post is awesome. I was also having some problems regarding drop in traffic and don’t get any idea about how to check the culprit. Thanks a lot. I’ll work on it.

By: Julia McCoy

Julia McCoy — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 18:08:41 +0000

Excellent point. Of course, I especially love the Batman picture – made me think what if we had a webmaster superhero to signal for help whenever we needed! Overall, though, you covered the essentials of what to do when traffic loss occurs and what the error messages mean. Very informative and useful.

By: Matt Janaway

Matt Janaway — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 11:00:27 +0000

In reply to Ajith Edassery.

Yes, quite right. There are some pretty cool tools out there to use when cross-referencing traffic drops to algo updates. My favourite is the Panguin tool. It’s pretty easy to use too, simply connect the Google Analytics account to the tool and it will sort the rest out for you.

By: Matt Janaway

Matt Janaway — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 10:56:54 +0000

In reply to Janell Casey.

No problems at all, and thanks!

By: Ajith Edassery

Ajith Edassery — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 10:24:58 +0000

Any manual action message in your WM tools inbox is dangerous, I think. The rest can be somehow detected by comparing the timeline of traffic drop and Google algo update dates. Since manual action requires a lot of corrective measures plus reconsideration request, an Expert SEO cop has to be called in as you rightly phrased 🙂

By: Janell Casey

Janell Casey — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 03:38:35 +0000

You really great in SEO Matt, thanks for your post, everything have been answered!

By: Matt Janaway

Matt Janaway — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 19:05:55 +0000

In reply to Matthew Kaboomis Loomis.

Thanks for the feedback.

If I understand things correctly, you used to have a domain at mydomain.me, you replaced it with mydomain.com?

If you care about not losing out on any visitors then a 301 redirect should be applied from the mydomain.me to the mydomain.com – you have a couple of options:

1 – Do you have similar content on the .com that was on the .me? One option if you want to direct traffic to exact replacement/pages is to 301 redirect specific pages on the .me to the most relevant page on the .com – If you are unaware the exact URL’s of the old page try out The Wayback Machine, it allows you to enter any website and take you back to an older version of it. However, actually setting up the redirects could be challenging so seek help if you want to choose this option.
2 – You could just redirect the entire domain over the the .com – this is an easy solution.

However, there are a few other things to think about before doing so. Redirecting on domain to another does more than send visitors, it also passes various metrics which the search engines use to rank your website. For example, if you have a bad link profile on your old site (.me) then 301 redirecting mydomain.me to mydomain.com might not be the best thing to do. Much depends on how many visitors you were getting as to whether it would be worth the risk – that’s assuming there even is a risk at all, your link profile on the .me might be good. If you want me to check it out and advice, pop me a mail from my website.

By: recipes

recipes — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 13:55:59 +0000

Hello !!

Tanks matt this a good , useful and helpful post

By: Matthew Kaboomis Loomis

Matthew Kaboomis Loomis — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 00:21:18 +0000

Hi Matt,
Great article here! Extremely useful.

I have a question for you: A few months ago I changed one of my business websites (not the one linked to this article) from a dot me domain to a dot com domain (same URL otherwise.) I haven’t seen any analytics yet, so I don’t know at the moment how the traffic compares, but wondering if I need to apply some of your advice here?

When you go to the dot me URL now, it says Google Chrome cannot find yada yada dot me. Try reloading yada yada dot me.

Do you think my new dot com domain is being affected by my old dot me domain?