Have I Messed Up My Ranking? Options

[jo-dee]

Did a clean up on my site and my Alexa rank has bottomed, removed all the broken links, renamed several pages (no redirects) deleted a few and added a few. Will the ranking recover or have I messed up by renaming pages without putting in redirects.

[Randy]

Forget Alexa. It doesn't tell you anything useful.

renamed several pages (no redirects)

A cardinal sin in the SEO world. At the very least you need to set up some 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones. Then give the engines several weeks to catch up with your changes.

[jo-dee]

Forget Alexa. It doesn't tell you anything useful.



A cardinal sin in the SEO world. At the very least you need to set up some 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones. Then give the engines several weeks to catch up with your changes.

Oh, that explains a few things then. Not sure what I should do now I have deleted the pages.

How do I set up a 301 redirect, and how would I recover the name of the old pages. What if I do nothing will the search engins drop the old pages and index the new ones in time?

[tamar]

Oh, that explains a few things then. Not sure what I should do now I have deleted the pages.

How do I set up a 301 redirect, and how would I recover the name of the old pages. What if I do nothing will the search engins drop the old pages and index the new ones in time?

Go to Google and type in site:yourdomainname.com and see all the pages that come up. Click on those links one by one and if they're returning 404s, implement appropriate 301s immediately. (Then test to see if they're working.)

It's better to 301 the pages than to worry about getting your entire site reindexed. If you can 301, do it. Otherwise, you may be waiting awhile.

[Jill]

How do I set up a 301 redirect

Please see our 301 redirect thread.

[jo-dee]

Go to Google and type in site:yourdomainname.com and see all the pages that come up. Click on those links one by one and if they're returning 404s, implement appropriate 301s immediately. (Then test to see if they're working.)

It's better to 301 the pages than to worry about getting your entire site reindexed. If you can 301, do it. Otherwise, you may be waiting awhile.

Done that (well actualy reinstated the deleted pages from an old backup and updated the content)and my Alexa Ranking has shot back up, no change on Google but as you say may have to wait for it to reindex.

Any Idea how this Alexa ranking works, seen some strange results on some site, seems a high ranking on Google doesn't mean a high ranking on Alexa and vica versa???

[torka]

I'm sure we have many threads here about how bogus the Alexa "ranking" is. The best thing you can do is stop paying attention to it and start focusing on measurements and performance indicators that mean something to your business.

Alexa has nothing to do with Google. They're two totally unrelated companies. There is no reason on earth why a high Alexa ranking should necessarily translate to a high ranking on Google or vice versa. Especially since their respective rankings are measuring two entirely separate things.

All Alexa does is count the number of visits you get from people who have the Alexa toolbar installed. Since these people are not a representative sample of the Web surfing population as a whole, and since it's trivially simple to manipulate the results, the numbers are basically meaningless.

If you're bored and looking for something to do, install the Alexa toolbar and visit your own home page several times a day for a few weeks. You'll notice you start to climb in the rankings pretty quickly. If you want to climb even faster, coerce a few friends and family to do the same.

Of course, that won't do a darned thing toward making your business any more successful, but you sure will have more robust Alexa rankings...

--Torka (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mf_prop.gif)

[jo-dee]

OK thanks, will stop looking at that as an indicator

[sethsark]

I've noticed a huge drop in our alexa ranking over the last 6 months, but our server site stats are showing an increase. I'm assuming this is because of the local populations merge from xp to vista and not reinstalling the Alexa bar. So, looking around some suggested adding a widget to our site so as to collect better statistics (I assume that this would be comparable to the urchin script we installed for Google analytics). Please check our site widget at the bottom of this page <removed see Forum Rules >
Is my understanding of the widget correct? Does it gather visit counts?

It's well known that these stats can be faked, and that is the very last thing I want to do as it would also skew my server stats. I just want to know if they offer a more accurate option.

This post has been edited by chrishirst: Oct 8 2007, 04:15 AM

[chrishirst]

Welcome to HR (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hi.gif)

The only reliable measure of site traffic is your own server logs, even the log analysers will mislead you as each one will use a different setup for what they report.