Rankings Dropping Like Flies
Every day we see others posting success stories around achieving page one rankings with help from the training here at WA. I have been one of them. Recently I blogged about having numerous page 1 ranked posts, a few of which were in the #1 spot.
https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/jkryscynski/blog/w...https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/jkryscynski/blog/w...
Precursor: I moved my website to a new domain name just over 1 month ago. The old website is still running and has the auto redirect that WA applies for you.
I changed to the Yoast SEO plugin from the All In One Plugin about two weeks ago.
This morning I logged into Webmaster Tools to take a look see of what was going on with one of my sites. To my surprise, I found a boat load of information I was not prepared for.
My rankings were slipping at a rapid pace. I don't mean 1 or 2 spots here and there. I am talking slipping to the tune of 2 or 3 pages, A DAY! Wait, what?
Check traffic time. My pages were averaging 250 - 300 clicks a day. Now, 20 on a good day. All coming from social media. What the Hell is going on here? And then I saw this.
Hmmm. That can't be right. I have submitted sitemaps. Even double checking to make sure they are there. I have fetched every new post as it's been written and submitted. No errors are showing.
What am i missing here? Is there something about Yoast and sitemaps that I am not aware of? I don't know if it has something to do with Yoast or not. I feel like I need to switch back to All In One and Google Sitemaps plugin. Didn't have any problems with them. I switched to Yoast based on feedback from the community and really like the features it has to offer.
Anyone else have similar experiences with Yoast?
Jason
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Hi Jason, I also moved my website and my Google Index Status shows a big, fat, round ZERO! It's been like that for days now. Reading these comments, I'm beginning to wonder myself whether I should switch back to AIO.
It all just seemed like too much of a coincidence to me. I expect a drop due to redirects and what not but that dramatic of a change once I switched to Yoast just seemed odd. Could very well have been from user error but yoast isn't exactly complicated to use. I switched back. Guess we will see how it goes.
Well, Jason, this is a bit of a sobering slap for me, to be honest. I've been banging on about how great Yoast is and so when I saw that my rankings weren't going anywhere and my Google Index Status went to zero, I assumed it was because I had moved to a new website.
I guess I've got some SEOul searching to do!
I honestly don't know the answer myself. I've seen many others talk highly about yoast which is why I tried it. What I did decide to do is install yoast on my test siterubix page. I am going to try to type a few posts there for yoast feature use (just not publish them) and then copy the posts into my website then publish. Seems like a lot of work but I really did like it's features. Then again, maybe following the guidance was the issue. Who knows. All in one was obviously working one way or another so why change it.
Kind of scary even though I didn't understand everything you wrote. I won't be switching from the WA automatic stuff. I really appreciate that you included pictures. That is so helpful. Sorry for your experience; thankful that you shared it.
No problem Susan. Basically, many people have blogged recently about using the Yoast All In One SEO plugin so i gave it a shot. Soon after I made the switch from The All In One plugin that is standard with WA I notice a drastic drop in my google rankings. Needless to say I have spent the morning converting back.
Jason
I have been telling people this, Jason. There is a reason WA automatically does the AIO SEO. I have the Pro version.
Thanks so much for the warning.
I would, Jason. I did as a matter of fact. Same experience my friend.
I have recovered and doing better than ever.
Am i safe in assuming its ok to delete the old site maps in Webmaster from yoast and add the new from All in One?
I would be assuming too.
That is an excellent question and did not cross my mind at the time I did it and I am now better than ever.
I will, however, take a S.W.A.G., since you are not changing the URL(s), I fail to see how saying, " look at these, Google, should hurt. Seeing the time stamps, Copyrighted content, and timestamps did not change.
You would in a since only be fetching your website at once. Every time your keywords are searched your URL is fetched so I would not think it should hurt at all, Jason. EXCELLENT Question, though.
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Hmmm....very interesting....I use Yoast and everything seems to be indexed for me. I have another site that is really new, I can't look to see if there is a difference.
Kathy
It all just seemed very coincidental. Not sure if it was yoast that was the issue or something else. I will say that I switched back to All In one yesterday and resubmitted sitemaps. I just checked and it now shows 89 total indexed. I am sticking with all in one.