Added to www prefix broke SEO

  • Hello all,

    I have scoured the forums but haven’t had any luck yet. 1 month ago I switched both my WP address and site address from https://pkcolors.com to https://www.pkcolors.com after seeing the results of a speed test from https://gtmetrix.com/.

    gt metrix recommended adding the www to the site. I did it with no research done or redirects setup but after reading some forum posts, how I understand it, wordpress should automatically redirect www to non-www site addresses. Needless to say I did no research on how adding the www to my site address might impact the site before making the change (it just seemed so simple!). Regardless, I have now reverted back to the old URL and setup 301 redirects in my .htaccess file.

    I have verified robot.txt is not blocking anything but /wp-admin.

    Changes I have made since switching back: minor changes to content. A word or two in a couple paragraphs. I also added the name pk colors in some cases thinking it would return better results. I have installed All in one SEO and the Google XML Sitemap plugins. One other change, which I am not sure is related, I installed W3 Total Cache plugin shortly before I switched the Site address for the first time (perhaps it could be a caching issue?).

    My site still does not show up in google/bing/yahoo search results. Searching: pk colors returns my site on the second results page. pkcolors with no space will show it as the first result but it is missing the correct front page title: pk colors | Interior Design | Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN.

    I previously had a google webmaster account set up so I defined a preferred domain and asked to fetch as google.

    I have also verified Search Engine Visibility: Discourage search engines from indexing this site under Settings > Reading is unchecked.

    All the changes I made and switching the address back to http:pkcolors.com was only three weeks ago. Could it also be that I have not given it enough time to recrawl? If this is the case, is there anything I may have missed that would result in issues after a recrawl? It’s just odd that the search results could have broken so suddenly and I am scrambling to repair it with no luck…

    The site not a revenue driver at the moment so its not the worst thing but we are doing some marketing mid-september.

    Thank you kindly for any assistance and sorry for the novel,
    Nick

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    You’re asking about search engine changes for a URL change. This isn’t a WordPress topic can you please consider asking in the search engine forums?
    https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters
    https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-support-24ab5ebf
    https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN2248.html

    As I understand the only problem is that Google doesn’t display search snippet correctly. For several months already Google decides what to show for the website title and description. The problem is not in your website. Try searching for “pk color Interior Design” (without quotes) and your website will appear on the 2nd position with the correct title.

    This title, most likely, will appear for any search query containing “Interior Design”. And I would suggest to rewrite all your meta titles, as you did on the main page – make them more descriptive, but under 56 characterd

    • This reply was modified 8 years, 2 months ago by Local Fame.
    Thread Starter cleansteve

    (@cleansteve)

    @jdembowski that’s a good point. I will do just that.

    @localfame I am aware of the Rich Snippets but I have not attempted to optimize for those yet. The main problem, in my opinion, is when I search the exact company name “pk colors” the results are not even on the first page. I am at a loss for what to do about it.

    Regarding the title, I saw that it displays correctly when I search “pk colors Interior Design”! The strange thing is when I search “pkcolors” it shows the title incorrectly as just pk colors. The odd part is I haven’t changed content and this displayed correctly before I change the Site Address…hmmm.

    I agree the meta titles could be reworked.

    Thanks you two! I will take this to a search engine forum but @localfame if you are feeling generous I wouldn’t mind reading your follow up ??

    Sincerely,
    Nick

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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