Changed Domains names and lost Google and Yahoo rankings - How to get back???

I have recently had to change my domain name from planetporsche.net (which was previously caymanclub.net) to a new name planet-9.com (www.planet-9.com)

I have verified that nightly I am publishing the content map files to Google and Yahoo, but today I received the following message from a member:
Planet-9

Claiming that nothing is showing up at Google. It has been about 2 weeks since the domain name changeover, have I done something wrong? Are there more things I need to do? I want to try and keep getting good results from people searching for "Porsche" or "Cayman" or "Carrera" etc. on Google and Yahoo. I can tell from new member signups at the site that something is amiss because they've dropped off a bit.

Any and all help appreciated!

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

did you give up the old domain names? are you 301'ing the old domains to the new one?

Sorry I was away most of the day. First here is what the member said:"However, you have completely lost visibility on Google (which is how I got here in the first place). Don't believe me? Google 'Planet-9' or 'PlanetPorsche'. The site is now invisible. "

I did a Google search for changing domain names, sorry not helpful, we know how to technically do it, my question is more around retaining a high search ranking as we had before. If you put in terms like "Porsche Cayman" or "Cayman Forum" we came up #1, when I checked yesterday we weren't even on the first page of results!

Brian,
We are doing 301's from the old domain names (which we physically still have posession of but have to give up sometime in Feb 2010) so instead of typing in Planet-9.com someone "could" type in PlanetPorsche.Net and it would automatically redirect them. If you want to come inspect my VBSEO CP settings and/or htaccess file I am happy to provide you the proper access on my site to be able to do so.

Is there some problem with a hyphenated domain name? Does Google score that lower or something? Obviously I would take Planet9.com but it was already taken and not for sale. I do own Planet9.Info but are .Info domains really a good choice either??

Looking for some SEO guidance here, I'm certainly no expert!

And here I thought everyone loved that new mod... ACK I had no idea that it would do such a thing to the content! I will remove that mod ASAP! Please check the site again shortly to see if it is working better.

ok tabs removed!
If I knew how to not use javascript or CSS in my browser I would try that to see, can you tell me please?

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

I use this FF plugin:
Web Developer


Now that this is fixed, here's some other tips

Use a CRR for your forum page to make it nice with no extention:

Code:

'^forums\.php' => 'forums/'

remove powered by vb:
[HOW-TO] Remove "Powered by vBulletin" from Your Page Titles

remove site title from title to increase long tail:
[How To] Remove Forum Title from Thread Pages for Long Tail Optimization / Increased Thread Title Relevancy

Consider making the RSS forums available only to members. There may be some duplicate content issues as none of the content is unique to your site.

validate your template html:
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.planet-9.com/forums.php - W3C Markup Validator

finish your fotter area...
Latest Threads....................


Hottest Threads....................


Most Viewed Threads.............



is all blank. or, remove it.

Consider upgrading to vbseo 3.3.2. you're a couple versions behind now on 3.3.0. At least make sure you have installed the patch for 3.3.0 for security reasons.


Your sitemap doesn't work.
the index is there, but the files redirect to the homepage (assuming this is how you have 404's set)

ie: http://www.planet-9.com/sitemap_23.xml.gz

Do you have the sitemap htacces in place?

you also have 23 files... which is a lot for a site your site. I suggest only including showthread and forumdisplay urls in the sitemap for established sites. THATS what you want the bots to focus on.

Remove showposts for our permalink:
[How To] Replace Showpost Links with Permalinks - Max Out Search Engine Crawling Efficiency



That should keep you busy for the rest of the night

Brian,
I appreciate the response and I think I can tackled some of those items, but I'm not sure I can tackle all of them since i'm not sure what some of them are or how to go about it, but I'll get started and report back. Thanks!

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

I use this FF plugin:
Web Developer


Now that this is fixed, here's some other tips

Use a CRR for your forum page to make it nice with no extention:

Code:

'^forums\.php' => 'forums/'

Ok I added this one to the CRR and saved.

remove powered by vb:
[HOW-TO] Remove "Powered by vBulletin" from Your Page Titles

remove site title from title to increase long tail:
[How To] Remove Forum Title from Thread Pages for Long Tail Optimization / Increased Thread Title Relevancy

Ok I took care of these two items per the instructions in each thread.

Consider making the RSS forums available only to members. There may be some duplicate content issues as none of the content is unique to your site.

Ok I think I see what you mean, there are a couple of he forums in that section that ARE unique to our site, but the rest are not, should I just do it individually by forum them and give the unregistered/not logged in usergroup no access to the repetitive RSS forums?

validate your template html:
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.planet-9.com/forums.php - W3C Markup Validator

Whoa 312 errors! Yikes I looked at these and for MOST I have no clue how to fix them! Do you know how / where I can get help with this?

finish your fotter area...
Latest Threads....................


Hottest Threads....................


Most Viewed Threads.............



is all blank. or, remove it.

I have asked my skin guy - miner - to remove it because the searches it was run were impacting site performance, just waiting for him to do it.

Consider upgrading to vbseo 3.3.2. you're a couple versions behind now on 3.3.0. At least make sure you have installed the patch for 3.3.0 for security reasons.

I DID install the security patch but have not installed the upgrade to 3.3.2 as of yet I want to get the sitemap working first before I upgrade to rule out any potential related causes, etc.

Your sitemap doesn't work.
the index is there, but the files redirect to the homepage (assuming this is how you have 404's set)

ie: http://www.planet-9.com/sitemap_23.xml.gz

Do you have the sitemap htacces in place?

I have an htaccess file, but I don't know if that is what you mean! Can you help me with this? This seems to be the biggest problem!

you also have 23 files... which is a lot for a site your site. I suggest only including showthread and forumdisplay urls in the sitemap for
established sites. THATS what you want the bots to focus on.

Remove showposts for our permalink:
[How To] Replace Showpost Links with Permalinks - Max Out Search Engine Crawling Efficiency



That should keep you busy for the rest of the night

[/quote]

I followed the directions in that how to and removed showposts from the settings and I deleted the .gz files and re-ran the sitemap generator and it made only one file which I think is blank based on its size. Can you help me get this fixed? Should I submit a support ticket? You guys have my access information on file from my most recent ticket a week or two ago if you can refer to that?

Ok so I've done what I can for the moment, but if you can help me I can go further! Thanks in advance!

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

Hi Ken, glad you got a few of these taken care of.



Yes, I would suggest simply setting the forum permission for the non-unique items to not visible to guests/not registered users. They will be promoted with a login screen instead, and thus keep the duplicate content out of the SERPs to avoid any penalty.


Most are very simple fixes... ie, missing &amp; for the &, and closing tags on <br /> instead of <br>, etc. basically, html -> xhtml errors.

Fixing these is outside of the scope of our service agreement here as it has nothing to do with vbseo, but rather your skin/design. I would suggest contacting the person who designed your skin.



the sitemap issue is likely un-related to your version. i would perform the upgrade asap. Also make sure you have sitemap 2.5 installed. (2.2 is not compatible with vBSEO 3.3+)

if the sitemap still won't generate after following these instructions, please open a ticket with ftp access for troubleshooting.

• delete all xml.gz files from vbseo_sitemap/data/ folder
• make sure data folder is chmod 777
• re-run the sitemap manually, go to vbseo_sitemap/ login, and chose the run now command.
• if successful, try to load the last file created (as its usually the smallest) in your browser.
• if it redirects tot he homepage again, open a ticket up

Ok I changed the forum permissions on those specific forums to not allow guest access, people have to log in to see it.

I will contact Miner about fixing the items that are html errors, etc. with his skin.

I ran the site generator manually and it created one blank file, later it seems to have run on its own and has now created 3.gz files, 2 of them are about 350kb and the other is 200kb. I looked in one and saw forums and message titles, but I didn't see the messages themselves. ? I did open up a support ticket and it has my ftp information in it, would you mind taking a look at those .gz files and checking that they are what they should be? It seems awful small for a forum the size of mine. I'd like someone to verify that they are as they should be, previously I was generating something like 20+ files.

I will do the upgrade to 3.3.2 shortly. I am already using the security fix and I am using the latest sitemap generator (2.5)

Thanks!