Impact of website redesign when changing to wordpress
-
Agency designed website and not sure what platform was used. Are now working minor redesign of site but wants to do so in word press. I don't have any problem with word press but don't want to start over ranking for key phrases. I don't want to change URL from mysite.com for the home page. What is the right way to make sure this is done correctly. I could not find a resource on the site. I don't mind researching this but am not sure what to search for to find info. Thanks
-
Many thanks Ryan.
-
An example would be on an Apache server with mod-rewrite enabled
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]The above 3 lines of code would be placed in the .htaccess file on the old web server. Replace the newdomain URL with the actual address of your new domain.
An excellent page which I would suggest bookmarking: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
-
"A regex expression would need to be written to map the old urls to the new ones" I was interested in knowing about this. Thats why i asked the question.
-
I am not entirely clear on your question and I am not a regex expert. I muddle through and get the job done as needed.
Basically you would write the code based on the old URL and the new URL. The expression says to replace www.oldsite.com with www.newsite.com in any URL.
-
Thanks. What would be the regex expression if i were ro redirect 25 pages to new site, without changing the extension and the site is on Apache server. Will regex expression take care of redirecting to multiple pages ( 25 in this case )
-
In a worst-case scenario, yes.
A regex expression would need to be written to map the old urls to the new ones. Depending on the changes made to the URLs, a single expression can cover multiple or even all URLs.
-
Hi Ryan,
"Option 3 - If your URL structure is changing, then each page from the old site would need to be 301 redirected to the new URL."
Supposing there are 25 pages in the old site, then shall we have to mention each page in .htaccess file for redirection.
-
Thank you for clarifying Alan. The solution depends on your migration plan.
Option 1 - If you are keeping the same domain name (mysite.com) and your URL structure remains the same, there is absolutely nothing you need to do. You are replacing your old page code with new WordPress code.
Option 2 - If you are moving to a new domain (newsite.com) then your web pages should be 301 redirected to the most appropriate page on the new site. If the URL structure is remaining in tact, this redirect can be made with a single command.
Option 3 - If your URL structure is changing, then each page from the old site would need to be 301 redirected to the new URL.
The redirect will ensure 90%+ of your page's link value is retained. Depending on the popularity of your site it may take a month for Google to reindex all of your site's pages. During that time some results may bounce in search results. Once a month has past, your pages should settle to around where they were before.
Normally a site change like this is done to improve the site in some aspects. The improvements from the change should offset the minor loss of link juice.
I would also share it is important to have experienced, competent developers working on your site. I have seen migrations which were outstanding, and others which were so bad the entire site needed to be completely reworked from scratch. You should obtain a detailed analysis of the quality checkpoints for your new site.
Good luck.
-
Sorry for the lack of clarity. I am not an seo. I just try to keep up with the topics a little bit so as,owner, I can make sure we are maximizing search spending. My question is when the new site goes up, what happens to the old pages that the google bots have indexed and made assessments regarding ranking. So based on links etc to those old pages there is a certain ranking for words that we are making to the 1st page and that I don't want to move down 40 or 50 slots because it is a new page. So, is there any thing I need to make sure that the design agency does regarding the old pages to make sure that any rankinking juice or whatever transfers to the new corresponding redesigned page. I don't want google sending people to the old pages but the new while i want those new pages to step into our 1st page slot. Does that make sense. Should we use redirects? Or is that not necessary?
-
Hi Alan.
I would like to help but am really unclear on exactly what you are asking. I understand you are migrating a site from an unknown platform to WordPress.
I don't understand what you mean when you say "but don't want to start over ranking for key phrases."
You can definitely keep your mysite.com URL for your home page with WordPress.
If your questions are specific to WordPress, I would recommend asking on wordpress.com or wordpress.org sites. There are several SEO plugins specific to WordPress which can help manage URLs. Yoast is a very popular one.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Onpage Optimisation Changes
Hi Guys, I love the SEO world I really do, but sometimes it can be quite confusing and even after 11 years and a few clients under my belt, I still have head-scratching days and this week has been one of them. It seem the rules surrounding onpage optimisation of keywords have changed quite a lot this year. Whilst, I understand blatantly sticking to a 3% keyword density rate for your keywords, hasn't been good practice for a while, and with RankBrain and machine learning, we have to pay attention to semantic words and phrases but it seems there is a new set of rules I haven't learnt yet. For example I had a client I was working on and we we noticed although they were ranking quite high for a keyword phrase, it wasn't actually mentioned in the text at all and so by adding it in a place it made sense, we should lift this and other keywords. Here is what happened, within a week their main keyword moved down from 1 to about 6 and the keyword that wasn't added moved from 4th to 23rd. After scratching my head and then going to full panic mode, I calmed down and looked at competitors, they didn't mention the word in the content either and so I decided to remove the one word we added to the text. The rankings came back overnight (well after doing a fetch as Google and getting to reindex). So if keyword density now is clearly NOT a metric to go on, how do we know the sweet spot? Do we use something like Ryte and make sure we using semantics and keywords within the average of the top ten? Does what Google deems important depend on the niche? Not a right or wrong answer here, just interested in your thoughts Regards Neil
On-Page Optimization | | nezona2 -
Changing site title
I'm wondering what the procedure and implications are of changing my sites tile? I realise that my Having my keyword in my sites title whilst chasing the same keyword in articles may be causing over optimization. The slug also takes on the article title too, in effect giving me the keyword three times before I've even written my article. Example below. Imaginary site title : soap benefits.org Article: The essential guide to making homemade soap Slug: The-essential-guide-to-making-homemade-soap As you can see, soap has now been mentioned three times, not including excerpt/meta description or image alt tags. As most of the article titles would contain my supposed keyword "soap" I'm thinking the best option would be to change site title with allinoneseo (that possible?) and change the slug to something relevant, giving me more room to escape over optimization. Does this sound sensible? I don't have that many articles so if I had to change other things it wouldn't be too much of a hassle. It seems a pity to loose my sites title I picked, but if I end up writing hundreds of articles this would be a problem. Help appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | marangus0 -
How to website faster?
my website's speed is slow, and in my source code website have many line css and javascript from themes and plugin when install Can I @import other css file to one file ? and if can, how to? my site is : itvseo.com, i using wordpress themes from rockketthemes, it has many plugin (rokbox, rok seach, gantry...) --> so site load slow --> how can fix it see images below Thank very much dgox.png
On-Page Optimization | | ITVSEO.COM0 -
To change or not to change site URL structure?
I am learning my way around SEO, having always used professionals for it in the past on previous businesses i have decided to do it myself and learn more about it. Now the dilemma i am up against is i recently changed some of my permalinks on quite a few main pages throughout the site. The site launched in April this year so we're quite new. The problem is since my last change i have not seen any increase...a decrease which in fact hasn't recovered at all. Having now analysed them in more depth and read up more on the whole subject of SEO, (which is endless) i have put together a complete new strategy; with this increased understanding of what i am doing (but by no means conclusive) i want to complete a full overhaul on all SEO (via Wordpress which i use along with YOAST SEO tools), ensuring i have all my keywords, permalinks and descriptions spot on throughout every page, post and picture. I spent a lot of time mapping these out, ensuring there is no Focus keyword duplication, and that the site is relatively flat in terms of its layout. What i am unsure about now is whether changing my permalinks again is a bad thing to do?
On-Page Optimization | | MrCostello
Could it permanently damage my rep going forward?
Should i just focus on my content and keywords/descriptions? I am at a loss as i don't want to do irreparable damage to our reputation. The site is still reasonable easy to manage so changing now is the best time to do it, but if changing the URLs is a waste of time then i may just forget that and just work on the keywords, descriptions and content. Advice is 'oh so welcome' 🙂0 -
Disabling archives in wordpress
Hi! Do you think it better to: a) have all archives crawled (date, time, category etc.) even though they create duplicate content,. or; b) disable crawling of all archives? Ideally, I'd like to set up just excerpts in the archives and have a unique intro for each, but I'm having trouble doing this just now so was wondering which is the smarter option in the meantime? Thanks very much!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Impact of nofollow links
Does anyone know what the impact of a nofollowed link is on the ranking value any given page has to distribute? For example, if I have 2 links on a page, both followed, I know those links each distribute nearly 50% of the total ranking value the current page has to offer. However, if one of those links is nofollowed, does that automatically mean the other link gets the ranking value cast off by the nofollowed link? In other words, the single followed link now distributes nearly 100% of the ranking value the page has to offer? It seems to me I remember hearing this was not the case and that the ranking value a nofollowed link would have if it were followed just evaporates. This would mean the single followed link still only passes on around 50%...not 100%. Is the effect different if the links are internal vs. external? If any citations are available to justify knowledge here, that would be great. I know a lot of people have opinions about this subject, but I'm not sure anyone knows Google's position. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | RyanOD0 -
Change in link structure due to Joomla
Hi, I have been using Joomla 1.5 until recently and the link structure would be something like - http://www.guru99.com/software-testing.html Now with Joomla 1.7 , ".html " automatically stripped and the URL become "http://www.guru99.com/software-testing" My site is due upgrade but ".html" part is a concern. Once I upgrade , Can I re-direct all ".hmtl" url like http://www.guru99.com/software-testing.html to non ".html" url like "http://www.guru99.com/software-testing" Will this ensure all the link juice is passed ? I have more than 350 URL in my site ... Please guide ... Cheers Krishna PS = the link http://www.guru99.com/software-testing will not work since the site is yet to be upgraded
On-Page Optimization | | iamnew0 -
Do Schema.org changes impact local SEO
I've reviewed the various presentation and blog posts from SMX advanced regarding local SEO and I didn't see any mention of Schema.org and microformats. Has any research or case studies been presented supporting that implementation of Schema.org microformats will improve local results? Here is one example where I've implemented the basics in the address info of the footer. http://bit.ly/lZQYeg Any tips on how to further optimize with schema.org markup?
On-Page Optimization | | DotCar0