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Okay so the site hits have ranged between in 550-600 all week leading up to 400 today. Here’s the events leading up to the situation:
I was given admin access to this site (link in ‘Sensitive Data’) in 4/01/2021 for redesign (only visual) and maintenance etc. Here are a few strange things I discovered:
1. None of the site’s 490 posts had any SEO optimization (Proof:https://ibb.co/w6HsTWX – Some of the highest viewed posts) yet it got 460,556 hits in 2020 (Proof: https://ibb.co/zrS6zSL).
2. The YoastSEO plugin was installed with only the site meta but Bing shows the site very weirdly: https://ibb.co/dpJ7vrV (It still does so with RankMath)
3. The was on HTTP until January 5th 2021. I installed SSL in January 5, 2021 and the hits started going down.
4. The hosting had issues and the site went down for 5 hours in January 9, 2021. The hits hit rock bottom. (Here: https://ibb.co/x7LM3cn)
5. The views have only dried up ever since. Nowhere near as close as it was before I came. I had disabled YoastSEO for two days (January 7 and 8) while deciding which SEO plugin to go with and finally ended up with Rankmath in January 9. All data from Yoast was imported. The new sitemap with HTTPS was uploaded to Search Console in January 9 with Rankmath.. 4 days after I upgraded to HTTPS. Before that, Yoast had the http sitemap uploaded to Search Console..So, why are the hits down? Is it because of the HTTPS upgrade? But the entire site URL/post slugs remain same but with only HTTPS instead of HTTP.. What’s going on and what’s wrong with Bing? Why is Bing showing the wrong meta?
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Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
1. The N/A is shown for posts that have not been opened/updated while Rank math is running on your site. This is because the score is calculated from a number of tests some of which depend on Js and only run when the posts are opened.
2. You can confirm the correct meta is being added for your site using this tool:
https://www.heymeta.com/
Please check if Google has seen the changes already or not.For that, please check when the Google cache was updated for that page:
a.
b.If the cache date is from before adding the new meta description, then you just have to wait for Google to re-crawl and re-index the page with the new info.
3. Domain protocol change can cause an issue with Ranking if the previously indexed pages were https, then it will take sometime to have them updated to https versions. You should check to make sure you have verified the correct version of your site in Google Search Console and also redirect all versions of your domain to the correct version via httaccess as shown here: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-redirect-http-to-https-using-htaccess/
This and the items you have listed in #4 & #5 are all likely reasons for a drop in your ranking and therefore on your hits.
I recommend that you keep working on all ways to improve your SEO to try and recover from this loss. Here are a few resources I think you will find useful while devising an SEO strategy.
1. Keyword Research: https://mythemeshop.com/blog/keyword-research/
2. Identify Keyword Intent: https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-identify-intent-in-search/
3. Writing Awesome Content: https://neilpatel.com/blog/ingredients-of-great-content/
4. On-Page SEO: https://mythemeshop.com/blog/how-to-do-seo-optimizing-your-site-for-google/
5. Off Page SEO: https://mythemeshop.com/blog/how-to-do-seo-off-page-optimization/
6. Building Backlinks: https://www.rankxl.com/outreach-link-building/Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
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