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New Site - Screwed by Old Hosts
thepotato232
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Got a couple of questions for any search engine know-it-alls out there. I just built a new website to replace an old clunker. As expected, when we switched the websites out, our search engine rankings took a hit. What we didn't expect is the magnitude of the hit.
For starters, our previous hosting company seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving us with a bunch of busted-ass old urls that lead to '403 Forbidden' errors. I know this must be hurting our search engine standings, but do any of you have an idea as to how much this issue alone would screw us? Obviously, this is something we need to fix now-ish, but our contacts from the last company are completely unresponsive. Assuming they've disappeared into the aether never to be seen again, any ideas as to how to solve this problem ourselves? Is there any way to inform Google et al. that these sites no longer exist and quit getting clobbered in the rankings?
My second big problem is that one of our keywords that shows up in the titles, body of the page and in the meta tags doesn't seem to be getting picked up at all by the search engines. We aren't just keyword spamming here - this phrase is more or less the core of our business. I would understand if we were just showing up low on the listing ranks, but analytic tools suggests the SEs aren't indexing the keyword at all. Anybody ever encounter this? The keyword was all over the old 403'd site, too - would that lead to the keyword being blocked simply due to interference from the old site?
For starters, our previous hosting company seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving us with a bunch of busted-ass old urls that lead to '403 Forbidden' errors. I know this must be hurting our search engine standings, but do any of you have an idea as to how much this issue alone would screw us? Obviously, this is something we need to fix now-ish, but our contacts from the last company are completely unresponsive. Assuming they've disappeared into the aether never to be seen again, any ideas as to how to solve this problem ourselves? Is there any way to inform Google et al. that these sites no longer exist and quit getting clobbered in the rankings?
My second big problem is that one of our keywords that shows up in the titles, body of the page and in the meta tags doesn't seem to be getting picked up at all by the search engines. We aren't just keyword spamming here - this phrase is more or less the core of our business. I would understand if we were just showing up low on the listing ranks, but analytic tools suggests the SEs aren't indexing the keyword at all. Anybody ever encounter this? The keyword was all over the old 403'd site, too - would that lead to the keyword being blocked simply due to interference from the old site?
thepotato232 on
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your website being down will have a tremendous effect on your standing because now when Google spider goes out to find your website is liked by x amount of websites it will see that the website is giving errors so one of two things will happen. in my opinion you will get dropped in standings or when searching the tags it will not display your page title and just 403 error.
If I am wrong please correct me.
"Thoughts are a persons imagination going rampid…" - ME
If you didn't, what does your old host have to do with anything..?
Hosting from domain registrars is usually a sucky deal, getting a domain from a hosting company is usually fine.
Also, if you're getting a domain name packed in with hosting, the domain might be registered with the hosting company. It should be with you personally.
Meta tags are no longer that important because of all the abuse. Search engines now base rankings on content for the most part. A good XML file does help. Also the age of the site is a factor so if you are starting over you will have to wait.
Google Webmaster tools will tell you have any problems Google is having searching your site.
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