help! am I disappearing from searches?

[mmyplace]

Hi,
I completely revamped my site http://maravillamountain.com in the last few months, but have it up and seems to work fine. Trying to optimize, though and figure out what is going on with my stats at awstats.
The no. of unique visitors has been falling...thought it could be seasonal, but now not sure.
I did make and submit a google sitemap, and I think that worked ok.
What I find strange at the moment, is that, under the statistics for browsers, Firefox is now on top (about 60%) and IE under that at about 30%. With the reduced number of unique visitors, I'm wondering if I've somehow cut myself out of IE searches or something. They usually have been in reverse position and the numbers higher.
The google numbers also are lower than before, yet when I google the site, it seems to come up just as quickly for me as ever (I mean in the first pages where I would expect it to be, for my search terms)
The business is a niche variety, so huge numbers are not as important, but I'm just confused as to why the stats seem to have changed so much.
Is it my re-design, my attempt to rename pages, renaming of photos, any of the things I've been doing to optimize it?
Also, almost forgot, I was doing VodaHits, and stopped a few months ago, so I at first thought that was the problem.
I'm pretty confused, (not to mention ignorant!), so would appreciate insights!

[Karen Mac]

Re: help! am I disappearing from searches?

To be honest that bright yellow is too much on the home page.. would send me flying unless i was really interested in something you had. You need to tone it down like the rest of your pages.

If you have RENAMED pages then you will temporarily lose them from the SE... you need to leave the old pages and redirect them to the new because people are probably still clicking on the old links. It will just take a bit to gain it back to the new pages.

Karen

[kortia]

Re: help! am I disappearing from searches?

sorry I timed out.

I agree with Karen however color is to each its own. If you change a page form mysite.com/home to mysite.com/house your indexed pages will be lost with google and yahoo and msn. They have to stay exactly the same to stay in the same position.

A great way to keep up is with www.google.com/webmasters

it is free and it gives you tons of information. Remember , the page extension really does not matter it is your content that does.

[Karen Mac]

Re: help! am I disappearing from searches?

I disagree.. the extension does matter.. if youve already USED it to rank. However, reup the old pages if you have them ..but put a meta redirect on them until the new pages catch up. The new pages properly optimized will catch up..and after a couple of months you can lose the old pages.

Karen

[mmyplace]

Re: help! am I disappearing from searches?

Hi Karen,
I guess I'll have to get a poll on the yellow color...I like it, myself.
Anyway, re: the problem -
I have not renamed most of the pages, I think just one, actually. and I have a 404 redirect (does that help?).
Since I haven't renamed many , that means that I don't really have a problem there? How would people be getting to the old pages, anyway - from bookmarks?
I HAVE added alot more pages, and reTITLED them. But everything is linked.

Also, Does this all explain anything about the sudden reversal of IE/Firefox percentages and positions?

[mmyplace]

Re: help! am I disappearing from searches?

Also, Kortia,
Hi, I don't feel like I can help anyone else very much at this point...sorry.

[Karen Mac]

Re: help! am I disappearing from searches?

Hi Karen,
I guess I'll have to get a poll on the yellow color...I like it, myself.
Anyway, re: the problem -
I have not renamed most of the pages, I think just one, actually. and I have a 404 redirect (does that help?).
Since I haven't renamed many , that means that I don't really have a problem there? How would people be getting to the old pages, anyway - from bookmarks?
I HAVE added alot more pages, and reTITLED them. But everything is linked.

Also, Does this all explain anything about the sudden reversal of IE/Firefox percentages and positions?

The SE would cache the OLD pages, and sometimes maintain them for some time. The point is.. .they could still be clicking links to them from the SE and getting 404 not found. Its up to you how you handle it. A 404 is not a redirect. Its just a page that says what they are looking for isnt found.

Your drop could be a number of things... seasonal, where you rank in the SE, what people are actually searching for to find you...etc

Karen

[DarrenC]

Re: help! am I disappearing from searches?

off topic I know but the yellow has been mentioned. I noticed that the yellow behind the flowers is a different yellow to your backgrounds. If you want it all to match the colour rgb is 255,218,55 and it will tone it down just a tad.

Darren