PageRank plummets after Wordpress installation!

AMPSound

Recently installed Wordpress on http://ampsoundsystems.com. Old site was pretty terrible, but still had a page rank of 3 or 4. Just checked it now, and its 0, although due to the blog posts and more SEO effort, I am doing much better in all my search results!

How can I be getting ranked higher, with a much lower page rank?

Also, while developing the new site, I had it in a directory /site/. Google did index quite a lot of that, and now that I have moved it into the root I get about 100 404's per day from the search engines coming back to crawl! I am pretty sure I am being penalized for all the 404's, but how do I stop them?

PaulPinnacle

AMPSound wrote: »

How can I be getting ranked higher, with a much lower page rank?

Page rank is just one of the factors that google consider. If you've improved your other factors during the switch, the drop in PR can be more than offset by the gains in other areas (e.g. better titles, better use of h tags, better structure, better content relevance, etc).

The fact that you're still being indexed is a positive sign, whatever is causing the PR0 hasn't got your site banned. The PR0 penalty can be for a large number of reasons, some totally out of your control which will resolve themselves with a little time and other as a direct result of your actions.

Have you any paid links or reciprocal links on the page in breach of google guidelines (e.g. lack of a 'nofollow' tag)? If the structure of your site changed, did you provide 301 redirects to/from the relevant pages? Is there anything else on the page that might fall foul of the google/SE guidelines?

AMPSound wrote: »

I am pretty sure I am being penalized for all the 404's, but how do I stop them?

If you use Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), it provides a great help in identifying and removing broken links.

For the previously indexed directory 'site', you can request removal of the directory from the google index via GWT but obviously this will only remove the google listing. Using the robots.txt to prevent crawling of it by other SE's (ones who respect the wishes of your .txt file) will help further, but if you have the time better to remove the listing from each of the search engines in a similar manner (otherwise they can/will still return the URL in results). You could also consider adding a 301 permanent redirect if the directory is no longer in use.

AMPSound

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I have disallowed /site/ in my robots.txt, and requested a removal from Google.

The structure has changed majorly over the past 2 months. First was the move of the old site to /site/. That was a massive change of structure as it went from a static HTML site to Wordpress. I redirected all important links to their new relevant URL. Then another changed occurred just when the SE's indexed things in /site/ when I moved everything from /site/ into the root. My theory is that all these changes have destroyed my PageRank, but am I right in saying that over the next few months this will naturally settle down and the PR should recover?

PaulPinnacle

AMPSound wrote: »

My theory is that all these changes have destroyed my PageRank, but am I right in saying that over the next few months this will naturally settle down and the PR should recover?

It 'might', but it all depends on what caused it to begin with. It could be due to a hiccup (will rectify itself with time), the change in structure (caused a few backend issues but again will sort itself out) or possibly a penalty from google.

PR reduction or removal as a "penalty", which this might not be, is commonly a warning or a signal of distrust due to bad links or bad linking habbits. If you have a large number of 'unnatural' links, then this could be viewed as 'spammy' in nature by google. (Personally, I'm not a huge fan of having so many tag links on the page, but I can't see anything obvious that google will take issue with so I'd doubt that's the problem)

In your shoes, I'd have a quick review of the site to ensure you're keeping within the guidelines and, following that, just focus on your normal SEO activities ignoring the PR score as best you can.


If you really want to get your page rank up , hit http://www.pr10.com/ for some excellent advice! (hint: it's a joke site)

AMPSound

Just thought I'd post an update!

The SE's seem to be calming down and finding their way around my new structure - went from about 100 404's a day to 2 or 3.

Results in SE's are still great for my keywords.

However, my PR is still 0!!!

On a side note - is this normal... In Google Webmaster tools, most of my "Links to your site" are from my own site!! Is that the case with everyone's site?

Here are the top 3 alone, which make up most of the total 1,250 incoming links!!

Page Links (1,250)
http://ampsoundsystems.com/ 1,134
2010/gigs/free-electric-picnic-tickets 90
2010/gigs/eskies-rock-knockanstockan-festival 11

tc2010

PR doesnt matter that much if you have the same traffic as before. What has the change in PR done to your traffic and SERP rankings?

AMPSound

tc2010 wrote: »

What has the change in PR done to your traffic and SERP rankings?

Well I am getting more traffic, and more importantly better targeted traffic. My SERP ratings are better than ever!

However, as mentioned before, there has since been lots of SEO improvement since the upgrade.

tc2010

Good all round so. Just forget about the PR and concentrate on the more important things

Of all my sites ive never seen a higher PR improve my SERPs or give me any advantage. I dont even bother with it anymore

AMPSound

Great. Thanks for the advice. I will just keep going as I was going!