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
-
There is a copy of our website that is ranking. How can I let Google know our website is the authentic site?
I just found another copy of my old website and have no way to take it down. Unfortunately, it's ranking so he didn't place it as a nofollow. (My boss hired someone to redevelop our website before I came on board and never finished the project). So, could this be hurting us? I tried to look to see if we were being penalized and couldn't find that we were. Also, ever since we migrated to a new domain name, our ranking is tumbling. I've redirected properly and tested to make sure they're resolving correctly and they are. I have no idea what is going on. We've virtually lost all ranking. Any help would be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | npuffer790 -
Should I remove a high traffic page on my website?
For the last few years, a particular blog post on my site has gotten 3 times as much traffic than any other page, even the home page; however, the topic of the post is only moderately related to the website topic and I'm wondering if all that unrelated traffic is negatively effecting SEO for our primary keywords. Here's an example.... Site topic: Yoga retreats in Costa Rica (we want to attract people who are interested in booking a yoga retreat) Blog Topic: How to extend your visa in Costa Rica (it's related only because it's about Costa Rica and travel, and may help our visitors stay longer) Other Notes: In 4 years, visitors to that blog post have never converted. Blog post bounce rate is 56%, significantly higher than almost any other page Lots of comments on the blog post so visitors to it are engaged and find it very useful To get an accurate reading of interested visitors to the site, i always have to filter entrance visits to this post in my analytics because these users are not an accurate representation of the visitors we're trying to draw. My question: Because I get so much traffic from the blog post, which is about the visa renewal process, will Google consider the website less about yoga and more about visas? If so, will it make it more difficult to rank well for yoga in Costa Rica? Does Google say to itself, "Hey, this website can't be an authority about both yoga and visas in Costa Rica so we're going to consider it a visa site because of all the visits and engagement it gets for that topic." So should I remove the post or just leave it alone? It offers a lot of people valuable information so I would never delete it entirely, but would redirect it somewhere else. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Cabaretti0 -
How to change images of a page without loosing ranking?
Hi, I have two reasons to change some images of a page on a wordpress site: 1.Google speed service advise me to optmize the images size to better spead load times. 2.I want to change images titles (to improve seo optimization for the page keyword), so i need to replace them, since im using wordpress. Now the question is: Can i just change the images without worring about any related seo issues? Or should i follow some best practice to change images in order to not affect the ranking of the page? tx for your support!
On-Page Optimization | | Dreamrealemedia0 -
Is it safe to add a Backlink on all pages on another website?
I got a few old websites and I would like to add a do-follow backlink on all pages linking to a new website. Is this SEO safe to do so?
On-Page Optimization | | hakhan2010 -
Any recommendations for an XML Sitemap for a large community website?
Hi all, Once of our clients is a large community website for parents/parenting. The standard Wordpress XML Sitemap plugin is throwing up lots of errors, etc, and is not ideal. Does anyone have any recommendations for either a tool that we could use to create a better one, or else a service that we could pay to use? Gavin
On-Page Optimization | | IcanAgency0 -
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 can i change my landing page title in search engines?
Hi SEO folks, Please help! I've changed my home page title 30 days ago, but my Google search results is still showing the old one! Why is that happening? can I've a brief explanation please so i can learn. thanks a million cRnPa6d
On-Page Optimization | | aptustelecom0 -
Changing url in connection with meta title inconsistency
We run a site, which is a directory type one, where visitors can look for local businesses per city as well (at some point similar to the 'Yelp concept'). Now, we use www.example.com as the homepage, and the www.example.com/city1, where city1 is the capital of our country, is 301 redirected to the homepage, so this is your default setting. When you choose e.g city2, your url changes to www.example.com/city2, and the city value is stored in a cookie. Then, when you leave the session, and return to the site later on, you will see the homepage url, but with your previous choice of city (in case you let cookies be stored). My concern is, that the meta title always contains the chosen city name, so when you return to the website, and you previously used city2, you will now see the homepage url (which normally belongs to city1), but with the meta title of city2 or with any other previously chosen city. Does this mean a problem, and should I always use the correct url, which would be www.example.com/cityX, or this could not cause a problem for me? If it does, would you mind sharing me the exact problems as well? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Dilbak0