I have a client that recently purchased an industry-related proprietary CMS solution for their website. This company went through the typical designs, and helped them set up their website, etc. etc. There are quite a few pages (approx 35) that have duplicate content on the new site that I have been rewriting, and a few other CMS related issues that I have no control over.For the longest time their website ranked at the top of Google (#2 or #3) with the old website I had built for them. The keyword's they want to rank for are local and not that competitive.The client was in a big rush to get this website launched, so we 301 redirected each  corresponding page to the new website on Monday and planned on working on these other changes over time.The client noticed today they are no longer ranking for any of their desired keywords (I see about a 6 - 7 serp drop) and they are now freaking out about this being their busiest time of the year....My questions are:Should I revert the 301 redirect and hope it picks up its placement again until their busy season ends? Should I leave the site as-is, work through the changes as fast as possible, and wait for Google to finish its fluctuations and return the rank?Any recommendations are greatly appreciated!
New Domain, Lost SERP
seo;domains;301 redirect;serps
What else changed during the redesign, was it simply graphical?What needs to be remembered here is that if 301 redirects are set, then any off site factors should be passed over to the new domain, any ranking factors from links for example.However if there are other changes on the new site such as removing large chunks of text (or even simply changing tex), changing headers, changing page titles, site architecture (e.g names of URLs, internal linking), changes to image file names, alt tags, etc; all these (and many other) 'on site' factors could result in the sites' ranking fluctuating.  So bare in mind, its its a simple domain switch, then ranking flucations should be minimised, however if its a new site, there are many factors that could result in the loss of rankings.Also Did you notify Google about the change of address in Webmaster Tools. If not do that ASAP, as that can help.But in answer to your question, I'd leave what's already been done, but if the site has changed maybe go through and check the old site and try to replicate (or better) the on-site optimisation that was already in place on every page throughout the site.  It also might just simply be that Google needs to chew through the new site, redirects and the rankings will settle after a small while.