Need Help Due to Site Move Changes

[SakshamSingh]

Unfortunately our company made live our new WP website on 15 March 2:40pm IST and on 16 March search impressions on Google Search Console went down by 30% and next day it went down by 55% than 14 March. Our old website was using Gatsby and had pagespeed score over 90. But the new website is having issues with page speed which is very less on mobile and around 50-60 score on desktop. There are huge changes in the menus also. Earlier there was mega menu now there is very few links in the menu. We have the same URL structures both in old and new but many pages are now orphaned pages. Around 7-8 main old URLs were missed. There were old 301 redirection that are also not working in WP as platform is changed. Because of this reason, Google is picking very old 404 or old URLs and giving 404 error. Images alt tags were also not moved from old to new website.

Can anyone suggest should we rollback to older version of website or stay with new WP and wait for the update to finish? Will Google core update have more negative impact or will there be no issue after roll back? Will the original keywords ranking be achieved if we roll back to old website?

Please help

[edited by: not2easy at 1:11 pm (utc) on Mar 27, 2023]
[edit reason] Thread split/move cleanup [/edit]

[not2easy]

It sounds as though you might benefit from a rollback and a more carefully planned move. No one can accurately guess whether your previous status will be restored if you do a rollback because the rules were changed with the Core Update.

You mention 301 redirects that are not currently functioning and that would also cause your status to change. That is why it seems that insufficient planning went into the changes that were made. Whenever possible you should initiate such a complete change by setting up the new site on a test server and only when it is functioning smoothly, initiate the replacement of the old structure.

[RedBar]

There are huge changes in the menus also. Earlier there was mega menu now there is very few links in the menu. We have the same URL structures both in old and new but many pages are now orphaned pages.

And herein most probably lay all your issues.

Whenever a site is changed like this Google usually views it as a new site, not an update, therefore you may well have to go through all the "birthing" problems of a new site.

Rollbacks used to work ok however I do not know of anyone who has attempted it recently BUT time should be on your side being only a couple of weeks ago.

[tangor]

Any major changes will always impact your g results. If you are going to rollback, do it NOW, not later, sends confusing signals.

In general, when doing something like this two methods are best, do it on a test site to work out all the errors, or roll it out in pieces, SMALL pieces.