Help! Moving to webafrica reset my SEO

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21stcn

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Help! Moving host reset my SEO

Hi there,

I wonder if anyone can help me.

I had multiple domain hosting at hetzner of 3 domains which are SA businesses which rely on internet leads to survive.

I had spend over 3 years optimising these sites so that every one of them was literally no. 1 on google for their most important keywords. These include "yamaha generators", "used golf cars" and "golf car batteries" respectively. The sites were unequivocally no. 1 for 3 years.

I moved to webafrica reseller hosting to try save some money, and for extra databases. The 3 sites were down for 6 hours during the move. For 6 hours the domain pointed to the new server without the new site. I realise this is bad from my side but I have in fact moved hosts before in this manner and not had an issue.

The webafrica hosting is also shared, and the domains are addon domains (the same as multiple ie: in subfolders) but this isn't meant to be an issue with google and hasn't before. It is 3 weeks after the move now and those sites have no traffic. They have disappeared from google. They are maybe in the 5th page, all 3.

I am pretty sure this is not normal. The domains did not change, and neither did the sites, just the host and obviously the server.

Is this most likely a DNS error or servers with bad reputation or some other issue I can't think of? Such as the primary package domain being different from the primary package domain on the hetzner server? Is it webafrica?

I cannot describe the frustration in losing all your SEO overnight, never mind my poor clients who have had the slowest 2 weeks in history, and them ****ting all over me.

Can I recover from this? Any ideas?

Thanks so much
 
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I think he means the Google webmaster tools, those should show when last they were indexed.
 
Btw, is your client Yamaha themselves or a online store selling Yamaha generators? I loathe Google when people peddling the wares comes before the manufacture. Makes searching for info on the product a lot more difficult.
 
I have webmaster tools. There is 1 soft 404 and 3 access denied errors which occurred after the move. Could it be this?

There are ticks for DNS, connectivity and robotfetch

Also, "We didn't detect any content issues with your site"

Fudzy they are official dealerships retailing for the manufacturer. If retailers are official then search rankings are fair game.
 
21stcn said:
Fudzy they are official dealerships retailing for the manufacturer. If retailers are official then search rankings are fair game.
Click to expand...

As long as they provide the same information as the manufacturer. So often I'll Google "%product% review" and be met with e-commerce sites that are listed first with words like "Be first to write a review" etc. I out of principal will not buy from a company like that corrupting search results.
 
Morning 21stcn, Where does the server which hosts your sites reside? Are they local or internationally hosted?
In theory, if your domain's content and configuration has remained the same as it previously was on the previous hosts server there should be no drop in rankings, with exception to the IP's and geo location of the server it is now hosted on.
 
Thanks server-admins for the replies. Both servers are locally situated in South Africa as the businesses target south africans exclusively so I don't think this is the issue.
 
21stcn said:
Thanks server-admins for the replies. Both servers are locally situated in South Africa as the businesses target south africans exclusively so I don't think this is the issue.
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No problem at all 21stcn - was the only thing that I could think of. For what its worth, it may be worth paying to have an external SEO company analyze the situation and advise on the matter.
http://www.seomoz.org/plans
http://www.gofishclientcatchers.com/

Some interesting info on IP's and Google's results
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU

Please do keep us posted on your investigation into the matter.
 
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could the website being crawled during downtime result to this? maybe ranking will be restored upon next crawl?? how often do you update your sites?
 
Hi 21stcn,

We don't really offer support on SEO but according to some of our Hosting guys the SEO rankings will change since you moved to a new server due to the IP address changing. They have advised to best thing to do is check the Google webmaster tools which should show you where the issues will be.

Really sorry I cant be of much help but like I said this is a bit out of our scope.
 
I update the sites quite regularly but haven't since the move. Webmaster tools demonstrate the crawl happens frequently and has been happening since the move and probably during downtime too.
 
WAJustinW said:
Hi 21stcn,

We don't really offer support on SEO but according to some of our Hosting guys the SEO rankings will change since you moved to a new server due to the IP address changing. They have advised to best thing to do is check the Google webmaster tools which should show you where the issues will be.

Really sorry I cant be of much help but like I said this is a bit out of our scope.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks.

You see the grey area comes in here. I realise you guys don't do SEO as you are not a emarketing company like quirk. But the way I see it, there is a possibility that this server setup for whatever reason (maybe bad rep) has undermined my SEO efforts. If this is the case, is it not reasonable to assume the server issues become your problem? IE: If it is your servers hurting the traffic of a site, then the customer has a right to complain and seek assistance for you as a server provider. I am merely trying to establish if this is the case.

Anyway I will leave it here and get on with sorting it out myself. Thanks for the replies.
 
WAJustinW said:
Hi 21stcn,

We don't really offer support on SEO but according to some of our Hosting guys the SEO rankings will change since you moved to a new server due to the IP address changing. They have advised to best thing to do is check the Google webmaster tools which should show you where the issues will be.

Really sorry I cant be of much help but like I said this is a bit out of our scope.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks.

You see the grey area comes in here. I realise you guys don't do SEO as you are not a emarketing company like quirk. But the way I see it, there is a possibility that this server setup for whatever reason (maybe bad rep) has undermined my SEO efforts. If this is the case, is it not reasonable to assume the server issues become your problem? IE: If it is your servers hurting the traffic of a site, then the customer has a right to complain and seek assistance for you as a server provider. I am merely trying to establish if this is the case.

Anyway I will leave it here and get on with sorting it out myself. Thanks for the replies.
 
Ok thanks.

You see the grey area comes in here. I realise you guys don't do SEO as you are not a emarketing company like quirk. But the way I see it, there is a possibility that this server setup for whatever reason (maybe bad rep) has undermined my SEO efforts. If this is the case, is it not reasonable to assume the server issues become your problem? IE: If it is your servers hurting the traffic of a site, then the customer has a right to complain and seek assistance for you as a server provider. I am merely trying to establish if this is the case.

Anyway I will leave it here and get on with sorting it out myself. Thanks for the replies.
Click to expand...

Why not purchase a dedicated IP for the domains in question so you can reduce the chance of the IP address being the problem?
 
Clickworks said:
Why not purchase a dedicated IP for the domains in question so you can reduce the chance of the IP address being the problem?
Click to expand...
If anything the dedicated IP will reside within the same range so I cant see this helping, but its a shot in the dark...
 
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