So I finally took the plunge and made the switch to https. It has actually been on my "to do" list for over 3 years, but for various reasons I put it off. I also had been meaning to upgrade my hosting. I did both of these moves a couple of weeks ago.
When I switched hosting, I was happy. Happy to see Hostgator go, as I had so many issues with them, especially over the last year. And, happy to be with Big Scoots - a breath of fresh air. They sped up my site, so now my page speed went from around 8 seconds down to 1. Yay. Finally, my site is in the normal/expected range.
But, what I didn't expect is that my organic search traffic would take a dive. Nobody warned me about this. And, I get (or used to get) a lot of traffic from google. Apparently with the switch to https, and all the URLs renamed, it can lead to a temporary decline in search rankings...until google recalibrates. I was told that this is normal and many people see a 20% decline, but it comes back in 2 to 4 weeks...then, that got expanded to 1-2 months. And, of course the word "should" bounce back.
Not a happy feeling.
And, because so much of my traffic (80%) was from search, I saw a really large decline. So, not so happy here. I'm working actively to check/redirect any broken links (these links were actually broken before the switch, but I hadn't noticed them) and trying to build my backlinks to my site.
In particular, I'm doing some extra work on these few articles: 2018 hardwood flooring trends, my review of Coretec Plus and what is the most popular sheen for hardwood floors. It looks like 6 of my top 20 articles lost traffic, and I have another 2 that didn't lose traction, but I'd like to boost them higher.
So, I'm writing some more articles off site, sharing new pinterest pins (with the new URL) and sharing on google plus. We see if it works, and how long it takes.
Thankfully, yesterday, I started to see an uptick from organic traffic, and I'm hoping that this is the start of something great. Wish me luck.
