Switching existing website to a Wordpress Site and afraid of losing top spot
-
I am going to be switching my current site from a standard html site to a wordpress site. I'm kind of paranoid of losing my top spot for the keyterms. If I keep the content the same, and keep the same amount of image alt tags, the same anchor text etc, nothing should change right?
Grateful for any advice.
Thanks
Will
-
Hi Ryan, thanks for the advice.
-
If your URLs, meta tags and content remain the same and only your coding changes it is likely your rankings wont be negatively impacted. WordPress is well designed so your rankings are more likely to improve.
Disclaimer: Anytime you make any change to your site there is a chance you could negatively impact your SEO rankings. Google uses hundreds of metrics to determine rankings and many are unknown. Even the known metrics have varying weights which are unknown. There are also changes to the algorithm on a daily basis.
Don't let the disclaimer scare you away. It's just reality you may inadvertently have something changed during the migration which affects your rankings. Generally speaking it is a good move for a html site to migrate to WP, so make the change. In the unlikely event rankings are negatively affected you can work to get them back.
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
-
Does same description in the directories of all affect SEO or not? - But unique on the website
Hi, I would like to do some directories. When I checked with a person for his recent work, he has given the same description in 50 directories he has done for a client. Does this affect SEO or not?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AnuManish0 -
Competitor is interlinking between his websites
I have a competitor who ranks in the first page for all his keywords and i found out in open site explorer that he has been interlinking between websites and it is obvious because he owns the same domain but different countries. for example, www.example.id (indonesia) www.example.my (malaysia) www.example.sg (singapore) (asian countries domain) my question here is this even consider "white hat"? I read one of the blog post from moz and here is the quote "#7 - Uniqueness of Source + Target The engines have a number of ways to judge and predict ownership and relationships between websites. These can include (but are certainly not limited to): A large number of shared, reciprocated links
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon
Domain registration data
Shared hosting IP address or IP address C-blocks
Public acquisition/relationship information
Publicized marketing agreements that can be machine-read and interpreted If the engines determine that a pre-existing relationship of some kind could inhibit the "editorial" quality of a link passing between two sites, they may choose to discount or even ignore these. Anecdotal evidence that links shared between "networks" of websites pass little value (particularly the classic SEO strategy of "sitewide" links) is one point many in the organic search field point to on this topic." will interlinking between your sites will be ignored by google in the future? is this a time bomb method or it is fine doing so? Because as far as concern my competitor is actually ranking on the first page for quite some time.1 -
How to save website from Negative SEO?
Hi, I have read couple of good blog post on Negative SEO and come to know about few solution which may help me to save my website during Negative SEO. Here, I want to share my experience and live data regarding Negative SEO. Someone is creating bad inbound links to my website. I come to know about it via Google webmaster tools. Honestly, I have implemented certain solutions like Google disavow tool, contact to certain websites and many more. But, I can see negative impact on organic visits. Organic visits are going down since last two months. And, I am thinking, These bad inbound links are biggest reasons behind it. You can visit following URLs to know more about it. Can anyone share your experience to save website from negative SEO? How can I save any website from Negative SEO (~Bad Inbound Links) https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iR0xMd2FHeVlzYVU/edit https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iMEtneXU1YmhWX2s/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxyEDFdgDN-iSzNXdEJRdVJJVGM/edit?usp=sharing
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Please Correct This on-site SEO strategy w/ respect to all the updates
Hello, I believe my on-site SEO process that I used to use a couple of years ago is not working well anymore for a couple of my sites, including this one. I'll tell you the old strategy as well as my new strategy and I'm wondering if you can give me pointers that will help us rank where we should rank with our PA and DA instead of getting moved down because of what could be our old on-site SEO. OLD ON-SITE SEO STRATEGY: Title tags usually match the page, but title tags occasionally on this site don't match the pages exactly. There's not many of them, but they do still exist in a couple of places. Title tags are either 1. A phrase describing the page 2. Keywords 1, Keyword 2 3. Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 4. Keywords 1, Keyword 2, branding The keywords are in the h1 and h2 of each main page, at the very top of the page. The h1 and h2 do not exactly copy the title tag, but are a longer phrase with the keywords appearing in their exact word order or in word variations. See this page for an example. Keywords occur 3-4 times in the body of the main pages (the pages with a menu link). Right now some of the pages have the exact phrases 3 or 4 times and no variation. meta description tags have exact keyword phrases once per keyword. Meta description tag are a short paragraph describing the page. No meta keyword tags, but a couple haven't been deleted yet. FUTURE ON-SITE SEO STRATEGY: I'm going to change all of the page titles to make sure they match the content they're on exactly. If the title is a phrase describing a page, I'm going to make sure a variation of that phrase occurs at least three times in the content, and once in the meta description tag. Title tags will be either a. Short phrase exactly matching page b. Keyword 1, Keyword 2 | branding c. Keyword 1 | branding 2. I'm thinking about taking out the H1 and H2 and replacing them with one tag that is a phrase describing the page that I'll sometimes put the keyword phrase in, only a variation in it and not the exact keyword phrase - unless it just makes total sense to use the keyword phrase exactly. **I'm thinking of only using the keyword phrase in it's exact words once on the page unless it occurs more naturally, and to include the keyword phrase in word variations two more times. So once (in non-exact word order) in the at the top, once (exact word order) in the text, and two more times (varied word orders) somewhere in the text. All this will be different if the keywords show up naturally in the text. **3. I'll delete all meta keyword tags, and still use exact keyword phrases in meta description tag, though I'll change the meta description tags to always very closely match what the page is about. Do you think my new strategy will make a difference? Your thoughts on any of this?****
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Massive site-wide internal footer links to doorway pages: how bad is this?
My company has stuffed several hundred links into the footer of every page. Well, technically not the footer, as they're right at the end of the body tag, but basically the same thing. They are formatted as follows: [" href="http://example.com/springfield_oh_real_estate.htm">" target="_blank">http://example.com/springfield_pa_real_estate.htm">](</span><a class= "http://example.com/springfield_oh_real_estate.htm")springfield, pa real estate These direct to individual pages that contain the same few images and variations the following text that just replace the town and state: _Springfield, PA Real Estate - Springfield County [images] This page features links to help you Find Listings and Homes for sale in the Springfield area MLS, Springfield Real Estate Agents, and Springfield home values. Our free real estate services feature all Springfield and Springfield suburban areas. We also have information on Springfield home selling, Springfield home buying, financing and mortgages, insurance and other realty services for anyone looking to sell a home or buy a home in Springfield. And if you are relocating to Springfield or want Springfield relocation information we can help with our Relocation Network._ The bolded text links to our internal site pages for buying, selling, relocation, etc. Like I said, this is repeated several hundred times, on every single page on our site. In our XML sitemap file, there are links to: http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BD69
http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/Homes/
http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/Townhomes/ That direct to separate pages with a Google map result for properties for sale in Springfield. It's accompanied by the a boilerplate version of this: _Find Springfield Pennsylvania Real Estate for sale on www.example.com - your complete source for all Springfield Pennsylvania real estate. Using www.example.com, you can search the entire local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for up to date Springfield Pennsylvania real estate for sale that may not be available elsewhere. This includes every Springfield Pennsylvania property that's currently for sale and listed on our local MLS. Example Company is a fully licensed Springfield Pennsylvania real estate provider._ Google Webmaster Tools is reporting that some of these pages have over 30,000 internal links on our site. However, GWT isn't reporting any manual actions that need to be addressed. How blatantly abusive and spammy is this? At best, Google doesn't care a spit about it , but worst case is this is actively harming our SERP rankings. What's the best way to go about dealing with this? The site did have Analytics running, but the company lost the account information years ago, otherwise I'd check the numbers to see if we were ever hit by Panda/Penguin. I just got a new Analytics account implemented 2 weeks ago. Of course it's still using deprecated object values so I don't even know how accurate it is. Thanks everyone! qrPftlf.png0 -
Is there a danger linking to and from one website too many times?
Basically my webdeveloper has suggested that instead of using a subfolder to create an English and Korean version of the site I should create two different websites and then link them both together to provide the page in English, or in Korean, which ever the case may be. My immediate reaction is that search engines may perceive this kind of linking to be manipulative, as you can imagine there will be a lot of links (One for every page). Do you think it is OK to create two webpages and link them together page by page? Or do you think that the site will get penalized by search engines for link farming or link exchanging. Regards, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CoGri0 -
Wordpress keeps reinfected
hello my wordpress theme keeps reinfected i dont know were the virus is coming from, they upload archives on ftp and redirects all wordpress pages i installed this pluggin http://sucuri.net what is your opinion about this pluggin my wordpress is all actualized. Any ideas to spot reinfections
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Google SEVERE drop as of last week (oct 10) on long standing .org site
Hello Experts Wanted some imput if possible. I own a .org informational site that has been #1 in its category for Google Yahoo and Bing under a major keyword for years. The site is aged back to 2005 and all of the sudden it dropped on August 10 (Google only- Yahoo and Bing still #1)) but remained atop the primary keywords that it is namesaked for .org (xxxxyyyzzz.org) and then Oct 9-10 it dropped from the page 1 top ranking it had for years on that primary keyword to page 13. I dont know where to begin to look. Any ideas how something like this could happen and what "Stones" I should turn. We purchased the website and are not SEO gurus so just not sure. Any help would be appreciated
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TBKO1