Moving Existing Website to CMS
-
I had zero experience with design, seo, etc..prior to joining seomoz last year, but have been tweaking my site to get better ranking and leads.
I'm at the point now where I have to move my existing 8 year old static html website (lifeinsuranceadvisors.com) to a CMS system but am concerned about the impact this will have on my rankings, and money I currently make from my site selling the leads i generate.
I generate leads for life insurance industry, have 150+/- existing pages, and it takes me forever to add new pages, make changes, not to mention the look is worn.
What is the best way to make this move?
Secondly, what SEO friendly CMS systems do you recommend?
Thanks
Mike Horbal
Thank you all for the quick response and great info...I'm going to put my wishlist together before i make a move..thanks again.
-
Hi Michael,
Take a look at StudioPress.com (Wordpress Theses) - They have some excellent tutorials and help and have created the Genesis Framework and a whole load of professional designs that are easy to configure to your needs.
They have also created a set of free plug ins that make altering the detail of the designs easy. Like "Simple Edits" which allows you to change the footer section / copyright notice.
I've been using these for about a year and find them super easy to use.
Hope that helps
Steve
-
We recommend customers toward open source CMS's like Wordpress or Druple. This means that any designer/developer can work on the site for you, it's supported by a community of developers all working towards bettering the system and you can easily update content and images yourself.
It is worth sitting down and talking about your goals and desires before selecting a CMS as some are stronger in certain areas, so you want to be sure that the one you choose is scalable for your needs.
One thing I would certainly spend money on is keeping your imagery and stylising of the site updated and 'fresh'. by doing this, you are keeping up with the competition and making sure you fortify against competitors.
-
I agree with Funkitude. As a web designer / developer and internet marketing professional, the process of taking all your old website content and ensuring that it you have a clean migration is a key aspect to any website launch.
WordPress is a great CMS as mentioned and features many community plugins. For SEO in particular, I recommend http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ which provides many great features for enabling your website for easy SEO.
If you need any assistance, please feel free to reach out and I can will try to help in any way that I can!
-
Here are the steps I would take:
- Wordpress is a great CMS for those who are new to CMSs. It's free, it's easy, there's great a great support community.
- Find out which pages on your site are getting traffic (check your analytics)
- Determine which pages on your site have inbound links (SEOmoz has a great module for this)
- Copy the content on these pages to your new site (inside wordpress, or whatever CMS you end up using)
- 301 redirect the old URLs to their new home inside Wordpress
- Create a sitemap for your new site
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 a similar CMS fabric/theme used by 2 colleagues, cause SEO issues?
Does using the same CMS fabric/theme with substantially different content for each website but the same business address (on google places and the websites) cause SEO issues? For example: 2 colleagues with somewhat similar services located at the same business addresses desire to use the same CMS fabric /theme but will have different content on the sites. Will this hurt their SEO / should they use a different website skin/theme?
Web Design | | toti5880 -
Html4 menu system which is seo-friendly while moving to html5
I have a complex site and very large site that we are moving to html5 as quickly as possible given our resources (long overdue) but I was wondering if anyone knew of a menuing system that would work on mobile that is seo-friendly in terms of do-follow and does not use javascript that the spiders often cannot read. We need code/css that works for both the menu and for select boxes. I know few write such code anymore, and the idea is dated, but it is a temporary stopgap while we move to HTML5 when such tools are available. Does any such code, free or commercial, exist anymore? Thank you in advance as this is very important in terms of not usuing too much mobile real estate with side menus... Best regards
Web Design | | gheh20130 -
Ranking drop after new website
Hi there, I have a new client who has just had a new website built (by someone else). It was quite a major change as it was 12 years old and has just been moved to Wordpress. However although they are by and large happy with the new site, they have lost a lot of their rankings in Google. The content and menu structure is apparently identical. I told them I didn't think this was unusual but I'm not sure how easy it will be to get them ranking again. Where are they likely to be starting from? Is it a case of starting from the beginning or will there be some residual ranking capability left over? Or can they expect a full recovery over time? I was going to start by looking to see if things like tagging and meta data has been filled in (I will add the site to my Moz account) but is there any way of comparing the old site with the new for SEO purposes? Thanks so much, Sarah.
Web Design | | Frog-Marketing0 -
Do more links from sub-domains to domain (website) hurt rankings?
Hi all, If there are multiple sub-domains like abc.website.com, 123.website.com, etc...and if the top pages of website are linked from multiple sub-domains via top menu or footer links; will this hurts? Will too much interlinking of few top pages of a website from it's sub-domains dilute link juice? How many links ideally we can add to website from a sub-domain? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Website Redesign SEO Checklist
I am looking for a comprehensive Website Redesign SEO Checklist. One of my customers is changing its website design (including URL structure) and I need all kinds of suggestions for a smooth SEO operation. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | stradiji0 -
Intuit Website Hosting - Stand-Alone Webite?
Hi all! My name is Yehuda and I'm new to this community. There's an issue i'm having trouble with: My site is hosted by Intuit Websites, and I use their Website Builder. Though it has its own domain name, it seems my "site" may just be a subdomain of their intuitwebsites.com website. I'm trying to figure out if my site is actually a stand-alone website, and what ramifications/issues there be in terms of bot crawling & SEO. Does anyone have a thought on this?
Web Design | | Jorge1110 -
Website using javascript to serve up content - SEO Friendly?
I'm checking out a dentist website http://www.sagedentalnj.com/ I was referred by a friend so just taking a little peek at it. When you click on the menu items, the url at the top doesn't change. When you view source, the page titles are all the same. when I do site:http://www.sagedentalnj.com/ none of his pages are indexed by google. What can be done with his site so that google sees his pages? Maybe submit sitemap?
Web Design | | Czubmeister0 -
How do you visualize website structure
How do you visualize a website structure in terms of (categories of) pages and interlinking. I use such visuals for discussing what you are actually doing now and what can be improved. I have made visuals I few times myself (basically making boxes representing categories of pages and lines representing internal links), but I found that I soon ran into a scheme of huge proportions and needed more paper and more time. Appreciate your thoughts!
Web Design | | NewBuilder2