What's wrong with my website? (ranking)

Fred.

Well-known member
This doesn't look good...

Screen Shot 2014-12-15 at 20.24.27.webp

Begin 2014 I switched to from vB4 + vBSEO to XenForo, the first months where good.
On May 12 I switched to SSL and from then I saw I was loosing visitors. My 301 rewrites are working perfect.

It looks like i'm loosing visitors every month and my website is not ranging so well anymore.
I was thinking it was because of all these google updates that are happening. But now I think there are more problems.
Not sure what's going on...
Can anyone help me or check?
Any recommendations what I can check to find out what's wrong?

Thanks :-)
 
Couple things off the bat.

Are you properly redirecting your old vb+vbseo URLs to their appropriate new xenforo URLs? Make sure to test... Punch in an URL to a thread in the format it used to be in with vbseo and make sure it 301 redirects to its current xf URL.

Second, go to a thread on your forum as it is right now, and in the address bar remove the https:// part and hit enter. Does it automatically redirect right back to its https form?
 
The data from ahrefs isn't going to show you how many visitors you've gained or lost (and is only accurate up to a point since many sites block their bots anyway); it's a backlink / SEO resource.

To track visitors (so you can tell how slow / busy your site is over time) try Google Analytics. Login with your Google account, add your site details, then input your Google Analytics Web Property ID into your forum admin control panel under: Options > Statistics and Metrics

Over time you'll be able to see how many visitors you're getting. Using the various reporting options you can see where they are coming from, the sites / domains that referrer them to your site, and the parts of your site that get the most / least visits. Plus lots more besides.
 
Couple things off the bat.

Are you properly redirecting your old vb+vbseo URLs to their appropriate new xenforo URLs? Make sure to test... Punch in an URL to a thread in the format it used to be in with vbseo and make sure it 301 redirects to its current xf URL.

Second, go to a thread on your forum as it is right now, and in the address bar remove the https:// part and hit enter. Does it automatically redirect right back to its https form?

All url rewrites are ok. They always have been ok.

I found the exact same situation in my case. Makes no sense.
A part of it is probably because the ssl ciphers you are using.
I checked my site at SSL labs and I have an A rating
You can check it here https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/
100/95/90/90

The data from ahrefs isn't going to show you how many visitors you've gained or lost (and is only accurate up to a point since many sites block their bots anyway); it's a backlink / SEO resource.

To track visitors (so you can tell how slow / busy your site is over time) try Google Analytics. Login with your Google account, add your site details, then input your Google Analytics Web Property ID into your forum admin control panel under: Options > Statistics and Metrics

Over time you'll be able to see how many visitors you're getting. Using the various reporting options you can see where they are coming from, the sites / domains that referrer them to your site, and the parts of your site that get the most / least visits. Plus lots more besides.

I know. Backlinks is one problem and loosing visitors and the problem that comes after that.
I also use GA and AWstats. I'm loosing visitors.
 
I know. Backlinks is one problem and loosing visitors and the problem that comes after that.
I also use GA and AWstats. I'm loosing visitors.

So what does your GA visitor graph look like for the same period? And have your top referring domains changed over that same period or remained constant?
 
So what does your GA visitor graph look like for the same period? And have your top referring domains changed over that same period or remained constant?
It's stable until august, during august I saw a 1/3 drop an it stayed like that.
 
What's your website address / domain @Fred.? (Assuming you're happy to post it publicly?)

Also, as part of moving to SSL - did you change domain or the structure of your site at all?
 
What's your website address / domain @Fred.? (Assuming you're happy to post it publicly?)

Also, as part of moving to SSL - did you change domain or the structure of your site at all?
<removed at author's request>

No, I didn't change domain. I was thinking about doing that a long time because i'm still on the .info domain where I started. But I was always scared to switch domain.
I just 301 redirect the other domain extensions I have to the .info
I only removed 3 subdomains when I switched to SSL. There where a few banner links on there but nothing else. No other structure changes.

I just removed a few forums from the forum list and closed them. They are still accessible. Most of the threads are low quality content. I just want to prevent posting of more low quality content.
 
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