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
-
How Do I Get Rel=Author to Work Via Wordpress SEO by Yoast?
I have read Yoast's tutorial and others on how to get rel=author to work properly on my site (http://injuryattorneyshouston.com). Here are the results I get from the Google Structured Data Testing Tool: "Authorship is working for this webpage." "rel=author markup has successfully established authorship for this webpage." "Publisher markup is verified for this page." All seems well except for this: hatom-feed | hatom-entry: | |
On-Page Optimization | | cbizzle
| Error: At least one field must be set for HatomEntry.Error: Missing required field "entry-title".Error: Missing required field "updated".Error: Missing required hCard "author". |
| Error: At least one field must be set for HatomEntry.Error: Missing required field "entry-title".Error: Missing required field "updated".Error: Missing required hCard "author". | Does anyone know how to fix this?0 -
Impact of rogue keyword in content
I have a page that is optimised - title, URL, content etc for the chosen keywords. However, within the content are some batches of bullet point text that has repeated text throughout. So for example I have 5 instances of my chosen keyword within the content and 24 instances of the two word text within the bullet points. Does this kind of scenario have any impact on ranking?
On-Page Optimization | | MickEdwards0 -
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 -
Changing my site (dramatically)
I am about to do a complete site change. I am going to WordPress. I am ranked #2 on SERPS. Will I lose rank for changing everything on my site? I have 500 pages indexed but I am about to have 30k indexed. It is a real estate site that is switching from a "framed" solution, to a listing indexed solution. If I make good use of my keywords etc (on site optimization) will I be at risk of losing risk just for changing my site?
On-Page Optimization | | JML11790 -
Wix.com Website Builder Html5 and SEO, what is your opinion
I'm planing to built a multilanguage website using a website builder. After reading websitetooltester.com reviews I came to the conclusion, wix.com should be the website builder I need. My first reason are the templates and there multilanguage options. But there is one thing, ready the review they mention: ''This is a bit technical; you can find the short version below. Wix is using the “single page pattern” meaning that the complete website code is essentially on one page. This works well for website visitors but not necessarily for Google as contents will be shown dynamically using Javascript and DOM manipulation. To solve this, Google supports something called ‘escaped fragments’ (or ugly URLs). With regards to Wix, it means that URLs will end like this: “#!wixseo|cqh1”. Google replaces the “#!” by “?escaped_fragment=” and receives only a minimal text-only page without Javascript. And this works well for Google. Try it here:
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze205
http://www.html5-websitebuilder.com/?escaped_fragment=cqh1 The official page ID is “cqh1” and not “wixseo”. But as the URL contains both IDs, the visitor can even see a description that’s readable by humans (and that’s important for SEO). You may have seen URLs containing “#!” already if you are a Twitter user.'' Should I worry about Google indexing all the pages? Is this website builder SEO frendly? Thank you for your help and time, BigBlaze0 -
Will changing the title tags cause me to lose rankings?
I have a site that gets pretty decent rankings. Based on Seomoz's assessment of my site I have ALOT of title tags that are too long. If I make modifications to my title tags will that hurt my rankings? I am also thinking of removing my company name from the title tag as that is taking up too much space.
On-Page Optimization | | webestate1 -
Too Many On-Page Links on a Directory type website?
Hi there, I run a website which is a directory therefore there are a lot of On-Page links. If you take a look at the site, www.south-african-hotels.com, you will see there are a number of links on all pages which are completely relevant. I'm not sure what to remove as everything is relevant. The top navigation is available throughout and that alone has 120 links in it to give users easy access to information. Do I ignore the Too many On-Page links suggestion or do I change something? Any suggestions welcome! Thank you in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | RyanMackie0 -
What changes have you made to see highest results?
What changes have you made to see highest results? such us rank increase etc
On-Page Optimization | | DiamondJewelryEmpire1