Want to move site to wordpress and keep links without using redicrects
-
I have an old cluny site that has been around for about 56 years. It is on the homestead platform. I want to move the site to a thesis theme 2.1 wordpress platform without losing my links. I would prefer not to do 301 redicrects. With thesis I can specify the URL for each page of the wordpress site, however the wordpress site is hosted on hostgator as a subdomain of another site and the other problem is that wordpress adds a back slash that is not present on the old site. I can, however add .html to the URL's for pages on the wordpress site to conform to the URL's on the old html site. Will this work?
thx
Paul
p.s. the URL for my old site is www.affordable-uncontested-divorce.com
-
What about links that aren't going to the home page but to other pages on my old site Can those also be redirected after the old site is taken down? The hostgator plan that I have puts the first site as the main domain and subsequent sites that I create and/ or host with them are subdomains. I read somewhere that for seo purposes it makes no difference.
Paul
-
I agree, the best way would be to use 301 redirects.
You will lose some benefit of links, but you will gain this with better internal linking that you can get if you setup Wordpress correct.
-
Hi,
As long as you have the domain then you have control over the redirects. The hosting is just a place that your domain lives in. So you can host your domain anywhere you wish and redirect the traffic within your new hosting account.
Also as I asked earlier what did you mean by 'the wordpress site is hosted on hostgator as a subdomain of another site'?
-
Also, forgive my ignorance but my old site is hosted on "homestead" and after I transfer my domain I will take down the old site. Don't the redirects have to be done on the pages of the old site, so when i take down the old site there won't be any more redirects? Otherwise put do I have to ekep the old site up and pay for hosting for it?
Paul
-
Are 301 redirects "permanent" meaning do they, over time, pass less and less link juice?
Paul
-
To remove the / at the end you'll want to go to settings and then to permalinks in wordpress and you need to change the url structure to look like the attached image. This is assuming that you are using post types as your urls.
I would still highly advise that you just use 301 redirects and remove the html because it sounds sounds a$$ backwards to add it back in intentionally, but that's more of a personal preference then anything that is actually seo beneficial.
As Dean asked, you should explain what you mean by it being hosted as a subdomain of another site. Either way it's setup you should be able to configure dns settings to set it as it's own domain even if it is technically sitting in a folder on another website.
P.S. Always remember to back everything up when making changes. In this case remember what setting the permalinks were on before or copy down what is currently in the custom structure area just in case for some reason it doesn't work out how you would like it to.
-
Just to add some info, I recently moved a site with lots of pages from blogger to Wordpress and just added 301 redirect from .htaccess and it didn't hurt the rankings.
-
To keep your links you need to:
-
Point the domain
-
In your hostgator Cpanel, go to "AddOn Domains" and create an entry for affordable-uncontested-divorce.com. In Document Root you need to add your Wordpress directory.
-
Go to Godaddy and point your domain to Hostgator Name Servers (it's in the left pane in your Cpanel under Name Servers)
-
Use Permalinks and keep the same URL structure when creating your Wordpress content.
-
In Wordpress go to Settings-> Permalinks and select the "Custom Structure". In the textfield insert /%postname%.html. This will solve the .html problem for posts but for pages you need to use rewrite rules. There is an old plugin that do it , but I don't know if it works with 3.9 http://www.introsites.co.uk/wordpress/html-on-pages-plugin.html.
-
Your "Home" page is http://www.affordable-uncontested-divorce.com/Index.html. Create a page called "Index" and add your home content to that page. In "Reading Settings" define that page as your "static home page"
-
For the other pages, just create it with the same name that you're using now. Just under the title of the page in Wordpress Editor, change the permalink to the same URL of the old site.
If you need any help let me know...
-
-
Hi,
Just trying to understand 'the wordpress site is hosted on hostgator as a subdomain of another site'
So will your new site be
www.affordable-uncontested-divorce.com
OR
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
-
What's the best way for users to upload their images to my wordpress site to promote UGC
I have looked at lots of different plugins and wanted a recommendation for an easy way for patients of ours to upload pictures of them out partying and having fun and looking beautiful so future users can see the final results instead of sometimes gory or difficult to understand before and after images. I'd like to give them the opportunity to write captions (like facebook or insta posts and would offer them incentives to do so. I don't want it to be too complicated for them or have too many steps or barriers but I do want it to look nice and slick and modern. Also do you think this would have a positive impact on SEO? I was also thinking of a Q&A app where dentists could get Q&A emails and respond - i've been doing AMA sessions and they've been really successful and I would like to bring it into out site and make it native. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
Should I keep a website which is outdated or close it down? It has a few links. If I keep it can I redirect people to our newer site?
We are in the process of buying some intellectual property, and it's websites are very dated and only have around 5 external links each. What's the best course of action? Do we close down the sites; then redirect the urls to our current website, or do we leave the sites up, but redirect people to our new site. Reference: current website: www.psychometrics.com Old sites that come with the intellectual property: http://www.eri.com/ plus http://www.hrpq.com/ Thanks, Dan Costigan
Technical SEO | | dcostigan0 -
My site was hacked and spammy URLs were injected that pointed out. The issue was fixed, but GWT is still reporting more of these links.
Excuse me for posting this here, I wasn't having much luck going through GWT support. We recently moved our eCommerce site to a new server and in the process the site was hacked. Spammy URLs were injected in, all of which were pointing outwards to some spammy eCommerce retail stores. I removed ~4,000 of these links, but more continue to pile in. As you can see, there are now over 20,000 of these links. Note that our server support team does not see these links anywhere. I understand that Google doesn't generally view this as a problem. But is that true given my circumstance? I cannot imagine that 20,000 new, senseless 404's can be healthy for my website. If I can't get a good response here, would anyone know of a direct Google support email or number I can use for this issue?
Technical SEO | | jampaper0 -
524 links from a site unknown to me - contact then disavow?
Hi there, Google Webmaster Tools 'Who links the most' informs me there are 534 links from a site called econintersect.com linking to my site and 102 links from similar pages.com. I have never requested these links and am keen to know if they are harming my site due to poor link quality? Simon
Technical SEO | | simmo2350 -
Should I nofollow Geo-located links on a site?
I run various sites that use Geo-location to place related links in navigation menus on a page. For example, if you land on the home page, we will see that you are in Florida and then in one of the content boxes on the page, show job listings that this site has in Florida. We also give the option to search for other jobs or use other navigation options. The idea is to try to help the user along the best we can, but ..... What opinions do persons have here on if these links should be nofollowed as GoogleBot will always see links to places in California etc. - wherever Googlebot is crawling from? Would this then be confusing as we are a site that focused on the entire US and not just California etc Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
64,476 Links from a PR1 Site - Should I Disavow???
We recently discovered in Google Webmaster Tools that a Chinese website with a page rank of 1 has 64,476 links to various pages of our website which is about 120,000 pages in size. Their site covers the same topic as our site - technical information about plastics. My question is, should I let things take its natural course or would it be better to 'block' their site using Google Disavow?
Technical SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
How to fix errors and warnings on a wordpress.com hosted site ?
Hello Mozers, I've 18 4xx errors ,812 duplicate page content and 412 duplicate page titles with about 605 too many links warning and about 4900 notices.. My website is hosted on wordpress.com and I just do not understand how do i fix these errors . To add on, last week the errors were lesser by 150 !! How do I get these issues fixed ? Please assist !!! Thanks , VIkash
Technical SEO | | mysayindia0 -
How is link juice passed to links that appear more than once on a given page?
For the sake of simplicity, let's say Page X has 100 links on it, and it has 100 points of link juice. Each page being linked to would essentially get 1 point of link juice. Right? Now let's say Page X links to Page Y 3 times and Page Z 5 times, and every other link only once. Does this mean that Page Y would get 3 "link juice points" and Page Z would get 5? Note: I know that the situation is much more complex than this, such as the devaluation of footer links, etc, etc, etc. However, I am interested to hear peoples take on the above scenario, assuming all else is equal.
Technical SEO | | bheard0