How to transfer old WP blog to new URL
-
I have a 9 year old WP website with a WP blog which is still getting 300+ new visitors a day even though I have not written a blog for 5 years and have not updated content. Some posts have over 25,000 links.
However the Moz analytics is fraught with significant errors-404 redirects, page not found, dup content, no metatags, title too long etc. I was totally inexperienced 5 years ago and made many errors. However the basic content was sound and still is producing new visitors.
I am starting a new ecommerce website using the same name but the URL and server will be different. I want to transfer my WP blog to the new site. I am concerned however that bringing the posts over can create the same errors on the new site.
If I update all of the blogs on the old site using Yoast before transferring the blog to the new site will that help. I suppose I could check those flagged dup content and only transfer one of that category?
-
Jane,
Thank you very much. This is the second time you have helped me!
Thanks
Brooke
-
Hi there,
Check out Wordpress's page on importing old content as well. The Wordpress information is towards the bottom of the page (there are instructions for a bunch of other blogging platforms). As jStrong said, this will be easier if you are importing to a new Wordpress installation rather than to a different CMS.
-
Thank you very much-you have given me hope!!!
-
Hello,
If you are moving the content to another wordpress install there are plugins that will help make the move easier. You could work on cleaning up the 404s and meta errors before you move the site, but in my experience migrations sometimes to do not bring the content over 'cleanly'. If you can move the content to the new site and work on it before the site is launched, I think that would be ideal. Especially if the URLs are going to be different, move the content then work on cleaning it all up. It's just easier to do this way IMO since you can see how it will all look beforehand. And yes, depending on the tool you use to aid in the migration, I would try and only bring over good content, not duplicates and broken pages. Also make sure you get all your redirects in order. If this is a large site that has a lot of traffic, mapping all the redirects to new URLs will be key.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Display URL changed for Organic Regional Searches?
Hey. We currently have a US version of the site (/us) which is displaying in US Google Search. However the /us domain is also showing for our co.uk Google searches. Is there a way I can ensure the /us is only displayed for US searches? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | LoveCrafts0 -
Where to add new content
I run a vBulletin website and vBulletin isnt very SEO friendly. I do fairly well in Google for most of my keywords, but forums dont necessarily build strong page authority etc. My site deals with fishing reports across the state of VA and drives 15-18k sessions a month and close to 100,000 page views a month based on Google Analytics. I want to start targeting new keywords and I am concerned about vBulletin inability to be SEO friendly. Many of my new keywords arent dynamic like fishing reports that are added by members daily. These are more like campgrounds, marinas etc. My thought is to install a Wordpress blog and build out this content so I can efficiently deal with on page SEO. the vBulletin software is installed in the root so I would install wordpress in something like mydomain/lake123/ Is the right thing to do, and will google see multiple sitemaps (one for vbulletin and another for wordpress) and index appropriately? Am I missing something major here? Thanks ~ Brian
On-Page Optimization | | FCBCO0 -
Transfer Blog From External Domain
Hi All I am in stages of transferring a blog. We currently have partial manual penalty for unnatural links, and we received sample links of our own blog, which happened to be originally setup on another domain. e.g. example.co.uk and the blogs hosted on exampleblog.co.uk - the only way these were linked were through anchor text in each and every blog - so it's clear why this has been picked up. We are now going to transfer these across to our actual domain. Around 60% of the blogs had no meat, so we have pruned through these. What is the best solution; Redirecting ONLY the good blogs via 301 Redirect and 404 pages with no meat OR Redirecting ONLY the good blogs via 301 Redirect the others to Example.co.uk/Blogs Thanks Tom
On-Page Optimization | | TomPryor830 -
SEO for New Magento Site??!?
Hi All, We have had a new site delivered by our developers (hurrah...the old one was to terrible for words) but we seem to be having a lot of issues with the new Magento platform. What they have done is used the community version and tried to customize it. I came on to this project about a month into the build and although Magento does seem to do a lot things well there do seem to be some problems. From an SEO prespective we have seen some increase on some search terms and a drop of in others. I would be interested in hearing from other Magento users about their experiences with this platform and any ideas on how to crank up the activity. Our site is at www.nationwidepharmacies.co.uk . There are few odd bits including the side navigation which seems to be very clunky and not overly customizable in this version. Any useful criticism would also be well received. Look forward to hearing Nic
On-Page Optimization | | nicc19760 -
Wordpress pages URL's redirection.
I was checking W3C Markup Validation and in report it was shown that that pages (not post or any other URL's just PAGES) at investmentcontrarians.com are 301 redirected. e.g. original URL "http://www.investmentcontrarians.com/debt-crisis" which is redirected to "http://www.investmentcontrarians.com/debt-crisis/" I know that its not that serious issue, but still want to know why only pages are being redirected and how can we avoid it.
On-Page Optimization | | NumeroUnoWebSolutions0 -
Removing OLD pages
Dear all, I was removing tons of old pages from my directory (about 400 pages), I was setingup a 404 custom page, all is fine, so when I go to an existing page I get a 404 and redirected to my 404 page. The problem is Google Webmaster tools list all these pages as 404, and never clean my list (1 year til now), so I assume something is wrong. Question what is the best way or natural to remove old pages from one directory? Note: previously I tryed add on these pages the NOINDEX/NOFOLLOW meta tag and I got from google Soft-404. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | SharewarePros0 -
How should I structure my product URLs?
How should I structure my product URLs for the best SEO results? Lets say my product is "American Apparel 2001". Would it be better to run the URL together or use a "-" between each word. Here are two ideas I had, but feel free to suggest others. realthread.com/products/americanapparel2001 or realthread.com/products/american-apparel-2001 Thanks for the help! Dru
On-Page Optimization | | drudalton0