Converting Old Web Site to Wordpress

[greg.baumgartner]

I have a website I would like to update and convert to WordPress. My site rates very highly for the keywords I care about and I have a lot of domain authority and page authority that I don't want to lose. I'm concerned about the switch as I don't want to hurt my Google positioning, but would like the benefits of a WordPress site.

Any assistance and advice is appreciated.

[andrewhyde]

I've done several upgrades to wordpress. I'm assuming you are going to keep all the same content, so make sure the url structure matches.  Easy if you are already something like /page-title.  Doing that in wordpress is done through /wp-admin/options-permalink.php and your page or post titles can also be individually modified.

If those all match up, you shouldn't have a problem!  Make sure your theme is quality and loads quickly.

[RyanKent]

Absolutely. The entire question is whether the move is done correctly. There are site owners who have been in your exact situation and have seen little to no change in rankings, while others have had significant improvements and others have had ranking drops.

It is important to manage the URL structure, internal links and other aspects of your site during the move.

Legal disclaimer - the information shared in this response is "free advice" and should be taken as such. It is not meant to recommend a course of action but rather to share information which may allow the reader to make an informed decision. Any damages which may occur as a result of utilizing the information shared in this response are the responsibility of the site owner. I noticed you are an attorney

[greg.baumgartner]

I already use WP on some other sites and love it- My question is can i convert an older site to WP without hurting my google positioning on interior pages?

[RyanKent]

What kind of assistance would be helpful Greg?

I can share WordPress is the most popular blog software in the world. It is used to run millions of websites. That popularity is very helpful in that there are tons of developers who create extensions to add extra functionality to the core software.

While you can build a site yourself easily with WordPress, I highly recommend involving a professional developer. Many users simply buy a template and make adjustments themselves, but they experience many issues related to SEO. A few examples: lack of a Responsive Design mobile site, issues related to coding errors, issues where the site appears fine on one browser but not in others, crawl errors and much more.

If you wish to learn more about WordPress and some great extensions, I would recommend Yoast as a great resource. Joost De Valk, who runs the Yoast site, is a very experienced, dedicated WordPress developer.