Hello,
I have a extraordinary good google rank (place 1 on site 1) with all my main keyword (never bought any google addwords ever) for my business for way over 15 years now. Some years ago, I switched to squarespace and used the Wells template now for a long time. Some month ago, I wanted to change to a more modern look and switched to the Miller Template. My google rank reacted perfectly and even got a bit better with this change. Because I didnt 100% like the Miller Template, I changed with my site to the Carson Template then. With every change, I really checked to NOT change the URL structure of my site, the SEO Infos/keywords and of course the content. So everything stayed exact the same, just another Template. Just days after the change to Carson, my google rank dropped massive. My website was showen on page 6 or 7 on all of my important keyword. Google did send me warnings about "Duplicate of my canonical site". I though this might just be a short reaction on the change, and my google rank will slowly go up, but it didnt. So after 3 month, I changed back to my last site with the Miller Template. I expected google to react slowly on that, but instead I found my website back on place 1 on site 1 of all google results to all my important keyword, just on the NEXT DAY. I was shocked how fast and direct google reacted to the squarespace templates.
At the moment I am just guessing that google had a big problem with the mouseover-menu of the Carson Template on my homepage.
First of all, I would like to know if anyone here else had a similar experience with the Carson Template, or any idea why that happened?
Second, I am planning to switch to squarespace 7.1 in the next days. As I really like the mouseover menu effect, I used the Zion to start my new page there. Of course, I do NOT change the URL structure of my site, the SEO Infos/keywords and the content. Still I am a bit worried, that if I change to Zion in the next days, I could experience the same massive google ranking drop, like with the change to Carson. Any ideas on that? Will I get my money back, if that happens and I would have to go back to my old template on squarespace 7.0?
Jan