sitewide 301 redirects killed traffic - need info on recovery time

[abkaiser]

My domain was hit by Panda - I took roughly a 60% traffic hit. So I decided to improve my website. I converted it from hand-coded HTML to importing everything into WordPress.

The pages changed from things like this:

http://www.mydomain.com/123/widget1.htm

To this:

http://www.mydomain.com/123/widget1/

...So I put in a .htaccess 301 redirect for every page I migrated (there were under 200 of them). I also completely deleted certain pages with thin or useless content (about 50).

...and immediately after the 301 changes, I've lost almost all traffic. I've gone from roughly 2000-3000 visitors per day to about 10. The above numbers are Google incoming traffic, but I also see similar-ratio drops for Yahoo and MSN.

301 redirects are working. Sitemap correctly reflects the new page locations, was submitted to GWT, and was successfully processed. Robots.txt does not block the new pages. All content was original at the time I posted it. Site has been online for 7+ years. Site code validates for both CSS and HTML. GWT does not show any diagnostic problems, apart from flagging 404s on the ~50 thin content pages I deleted.

I understand that I need to give spiders time to index the 301s and re-process the SERPs, but it's been almost two weeks now, and since the hit is from all three engines, I'm worried that something significant is broken here.

I'm looking to WebmasterWorld for advice - anything you can think for me to check? Or, if you've done sitewide 301 redirects before, how long have you waited before traffic began to flow again?

[pageoneresults]

Anything you can think for me to check? Or, if you've done sitewide 301 redirects before, how long have you waited before traffic began to flow again?

The only thing you didn't mention above is verifying that the server headers being returned are correct?

I'd 410 Gone those 50 404s. Google will remove them quicker.

Many of us have done redirects of this nature. My experience is that the losses are temporary while the recalculation takes place. During that time you'd see a blend of old and new destination URIs appearing in the SERPs. After a bit, the old finally makes it way out of the index to be replaced by the new. All of the implementations I've done have happened within 2-4 weeks.

But, since you state you were hit by Panda and this was a reaction to that, I think there may be some other things at play that may extend your recovery period, I'm just guessing now.

So I decided to improve my website. I converted it from hand-coded HTML to importing everything into WordPress.

You know, from my perspective, that may not be an improvement at all. Unless you needed all the backend bells and whistles, which many do not, I would have kept the hand coded version. That's just me though. ;)

[abkaiser]

>All of the implementations I've done have happened within 2-4 weeks.

Okay, this is good to know - thanks. However, in my case, I see no fluctuation of old/new urls - all indexed pages (currently) seem to be the new, correct page. I'm curious not about the SERP changes with old/new links, but more when traffic will recover back to normal levels, or if I've done something to break it.

[pageoneresults]

I'm curious not about the SERP changes with old/new links, but more when traffic will recover back to normal levels, or if I've done something to break it.

So I decided to improve my website. I converted it from hand-coded HTML to importing everything into WordPress.

See, you not only have the 301s at play but you also moved to an entirely new platform. If recovery hasn't happened and you're seeing the new URIs already indexed then something doesn't seem right. Maybe the meaning/semantics of the documents have changed dramatically after the move to WordPress? Different structure behind the scenes, more stuff happening than previous?

I'm also guessing that your choice of theme may have some impact on this? Was it a free theme or paid? Are you sure there are no hidden secrets in the theme code? Have you browsed your site as Googlebot to verify that?

Have you updated all of your internal links to point to the new URIs? I know, might seem like a dense question but you'd be surprised at how many times I find hard coded internals going through a 301 hop after a move like this. With the small number of documents you have, I'd guess you have all that covered.

However, in my case, I see no fluctuation of old/new urls.

There would have been right after the new directives were fed to Googlebot. You would have seen a mixture of old and new URIs at the beginning. Eventually the old fade away to be replaced by the new. It happens fairly quickly these days if everything is in proper working order.

I'm curious not about the SERP changes with old/new links, but more when traffic will recover back to normal.

Unfortunately I cannot give you an answer to the above, I don't think anyone can at this point. If your eyes are the only one reviewing the site from a technical perspective, you may want to get a second pair taking a look at everything.

GWT does not show any diagnostic problems, apart from flagging 404s on the ~50 thin content pages I deleted.

With the lag time in GWT, I wouldn't rely on that data 100%. I do pay close attention to crawling activity though as it may be a precursor to problems. Spikes and/or dips in those routines may indicate brewing issues.

How about your site speed in GWT? Did you take a hit in that area after converting to WordPress?