Website Rankings down both in Domain Authority and Alexa Global Rankings

[Sujit Rocking]

For my website it has never carried out SEO changes or any activities related to same. I started working on it from this month March 10th and every form of changes i.e. Title tags changes, Onpage changes, Content Modification as per keywords were completed on 21st Mar 2014. One thing is we were ranking well between March 10th to 20th on Alexa Global Rankings when work was on the website. Once the URL was restructured as per keywords, the traffic started dropping till date on Global Rankings. But regional Traffic has improved after certain drops.

So I want to know the reason behind the drop?
Is it due to the changes in URL structure from what it was before or anything else?
If its due to URL changes, when does Google starts giving value to those urls.

Note: Main Domain has not been changed and its up since 2001 without any changes done to it.

[JD_Toims]

Google takes time to "trust" redirects and apply the full ranking factors through them to "new" URLs, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the issue.

Something interesting about Alexa is [unless they've changed things significantly since I had the toolbar installed] if you [and/or those working on a site clicking refresh 1,000 times a day during an update] have the toolbar installed it can have a serious impact on your Alexa traffic score -- In the past I've inadvertently moved sites from the top 1,000,000 to the top 100,000 simply by surfing the site and refreshing on pages to review changes and make sure everything was in place and working correctly. I've also done it when I've looked at sites to review linking, navigation, content, etc. to see if/what changes were necessary.

[Sujit Rocking]

Hi JD_Toims

Thanks for that feedback. If that means I need to refresh that much of time a day then rankings would improve, then how credible it would be for referring Alexa Traffic Rankings. Yes I have installed the toolbar on my Mozilla and Chrome Bars.

As of today the rankings have improved again back, which i believe or think is due to link building activities and other marketing on off-page medium.

Considering Domain Authority; the drop in its value is concerning factor for me as well. Previously it was 30 and now suddenly its 29 and some link drops have happened from 180 to 157 links. So how can the links be removed as it was present till date. Is it like changes done with website URL's it happened or anything else is there?

[JD_Toims]

If that means I need to refresh that much of time a day then rankings would improve, then how credible it would be for referring Alexa Traffic Rankings.

Rankings in Google won't improve from it, only the number you see on Alexa will -- Alexa, in-my-experience, is *not* credible. Even though many think their ranking on Alexa "means something", from what I've seen it really doesn't, because it's too easy to manipulate.

Previously it was 30 and now suddenly its 29 and some link drops have happened from 180 to 157 links... Is it like changes done with website URL's it happened or anything else is there?

I really don't know, because I haven't even looked at an Alexa "score/ranking" in years. Basically since I realized I can change a site's "traffic rank" simply by refreshing and surfing a site -- Something that easy to manipulate really doesn't tell me anything, because maybe someone else, not even me, was "busy on the site" for a week and moved the Alexa "ranking" up, or maybe a "regular visitor" went on vacation and the Alexa "ranking" went down.

There's really no telling much of anything from Alexa in-my-opinion, and Google doesn't use anyone's Alexa ranking anyway AFAIK, so Alexa is just a number without much meaning to me.

-- Personally, I would ignore what Alexa says and focus on *real* traffic to the site.

[Sujit Rocking]

Thanks for that.

So actually my GM and CEO of company wanna see more focused on Alexa and in many ways it does influence ranking factors.

How do we validate about traffic apart from Google Analytics and Rankings on SERP's?