How can I migrate a website's content to a new WP theme, delete the old site, and avoid duplication and other issues?
-
Hey everyone. I recently took on a side project managing a family member's website (www.donaldtlevinemd.com).
I don't want to get too into it, but my relative was roped into two shady digital marketing firms that did nothing but a mix of black-hat SEO (and nothing at all). His site currently runs off a custom wordpress theme which is incompatible with important plugins I want to use for local optimization. I'm also unable to implement responsive design for mobile.
The silver lining is that these previous "content marketers" did no legitimate link building (I'm auditing the link profile now) so I feel comfortable starting fresh. I'm just not technical enough to understand how to go about migrating his domain to a new theme (or creating a new domain altogether). All advice is appreciated!
Thanks for your help!
-
Hi Andrew,
Happy to be of help let me know if there's anything I can help with.
All the best,
Tom
-
Awesome answer. Thank you Thomas!
-
Not a lot to add to that reply
-Andy
-
go into WordPress and export the content of the entire site as an WordPress export file or XML
then import it into the new theme you have installed.
** follow the 4 checklist's they cover everything when put together**
- https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/a-wordpress-theme-change-seo-checklist/
- http://letsbuildwebsites.com/changing-your-wordpress-theme-checklist/
- http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/crucial-things-you-must-do-when-changing-your-wordpress-theme--wp-29806
- https://thethemefoundry.com/blog/changing-wordpress-themes/
** & more on WP setup**
http://letsbuildwebsites.com/how-to-setup-wordpress/
It sounds like you can do one of two things
Hire a developer to help you make the existing theme mobile friendly and whatever it is that is keeping your plug-ins from operating correctly it most likely is not the theme.
"Incompatible with important plugins I want to use for local optimization"
Or
You can purchase a new theme that is mobile friendly
e.g.
http://my.studiopress.com/themes/
http://www.woothemes.com/product-category/themes/
make sure that you export the content of your existing site into a WordPress export file then import it back into the new website. This can become a lot more complicated if there are shortcodes and things like that because it will export them and they will show up improperly.
Make sure all URLs are redirected appropriately using "redirect match"
To Create Redirects
Your Redirects
Add the following redirect to the the top of your .htaccess file:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/([^/]+)/$ http://domain.com/$1
Use this tool to generate redirects from your old permalink structure to the /%postname%/ permalink structure.
https://yoast.com/wp-content/permalink-helper.php
https://yoast.com/change-wordpress-permalink-structure/
More info: use a tool like deepcrawl or screaming frog t willo export your links
https://www.deepcrawl.com or http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
make sure everything is perfect by conducting an audit
https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 & https://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/indexation-problems-diagnosis-using-google-webmaster-tools/
If you migrate to a new domain was not certain but wanted to give you the information in case that's what you're saying you want to do as well?
https://moz.com/blog/seo-guide-how-to-properly-move-domains
https://yoast.com/move-wordpress-blog-domain-10-steps/
https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test
https://www.deepcrawl.com/ ( My personal favorite)
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
https://varvy.com/tools/ is showing you have a domain rank of five that is good.
Make sure you did the 301 redirects that are needed to keep your old URLs pointing to your new URLs
https://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
https://moz.com/blog/achieving-an-seo-friendly-domain-migration-the-infographic
http://www.aleydasolis.com/images/seo-website-domain-migration.gif
https://moz.com/community/q/changing-domains-how-much-link-juice-is-lost-with-301-redirect
**More (might want to come back to this) **
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/guide-to-url-design/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/domain-design-for-seos/
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/best-practice/expired-content-for-seos/
- http://www.slideshare.net/annadeepcrawl/laying-the-foundations-of-seo-deepcrawl-semrush
- http://www.slideshare.net/annadeepcrawl/mark-thomas-10-step-technical-seo-game-plan-annotated-edition-46822641
** obviously purchasing a new template will be the cheapest way to go.**
If I can say one last thing I did a built with report on your site and it looks like you're with hostgator they in my opinion are not a very good hosting company and for a little bit more money you can get something that is built for WordPress and very fast. in addition they will help you with configuration issues that other hosting companies that do not specialize in managing the application layer or WordPress in this case would do.
** Take a look at this review**
http://reviewsignal.com/blog/2015/07/28/wordpress-hosting-performance-benchmarks-2015/
I would use one of the host's below
Pantheon.io , Pagely.com , PressLabs.com, Kinsta.com , WPEngine.com or GetFlywheel.comSincerely,
Thomas
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 to Get google to get to index New URL and not the OLD url
Hi Team, We are undertaking a Domain migration activity to migrate our content frrom one domain to another. 1. the Redirection of pages is handeled at Reverse proxy level. 2. We do have 301 redirects put in place. However we still see that google is indexing pages with our Old domain apart from the pages from new domain. Is there a way for us to stop google from indexing our pages from Old domain. The recommendations to have Noindex on Page mete title and disallow does not work since our redirection is setup at RP and google crawlers always discover the new pages after redirection.
Local Website Optimization | | bhaskaran0 -
Multilanguage Website
Hi, I am responsible for managing a multilingual website. I have two questions regarding SEO, based on the structure of the website. Question 1. At the moment we have one website for UK English and one for US English .com/en-gb/ .com/en-us/ Which would be the pros and cons of merging the two website in one? Question 2. For the German website they moved it under .de dominion, I think it would be better from an SEO perspective to have it as the Italian and French, under .com/de Which would be the pros and cons of migrating German website under .com/de? Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | albertoalchieriefficio0 -
Raise in ranking but drop in visibility, also question about wordpress themed SEO
Hello,
Local Website Optimization | | SharonEKG
my first question is, i started working in August on a website for furniture repair and services that is a local business and who ever setup the website and did the SEO before me implanted the front page content and many other pages in the theme itself, we got Yoast premium and i mostly get bad rank of the page both from Yoast and Moz im guessing because it is simply cant find the links and content that is on the page since it is in the theme code. should i recommend the company to do a makeover and move everything to the actual wordpress page?
Also many changes has been made to the website, too many to track and i have seen in the past month an continues drop lower and lower of our visibility, but yet in the past week and half huge jump in some rankings. some of them are for hard to rank keywords, a jump of sometime 20/30+ up the ranks.
since i dont have a track of all the changes has been made, is there a way to know what cause it? Also one last question,
i have implemented google tag manager and been configuring it for the past month and now i have finally getting close to track all metrics we would like to track, i have removed all google analytics codes that i knew of and managed to find through search through the theme and plugins but yet when i fire up tag assistant it shows two codes the tag manager and analytics, i know it could interfear each other or give false/double readings. is there a way to track it and remove it? i have went through all theme files.. and cant find it.. Thanks!0 -
Dual website strategy
We have two websites (different businesses) in the technology sector that sell the same products on the same platform (OSC) but have different branding. We have tried to make the static content different and the user generated content is different. SEO as largely different. But the one site has much better rankings than the other. Whilst the under performing site is not responsive yet, I need to decide whether to merge the two businesses into one or continue on the two separate websites approach. I would only pursue the latter approach and invest further time and effort into this under performing website if I knew I was "on the right" track. My SEO knowledge is not extensive and so I would be interested in any views the community has? I note that kogan.com.au and dicksmith.com.au have a similar dual website approach (same company) and they are both major brands in Australia. I thank you in advance for any thoughts you may have.
Local Website Optimization | | Alpine91 -
How can i optimize my pages for local areas if we are not in that area?
Hi Mozers! So I watched a video about Matt Cutts he talks about creating multiple web pages just for one keywords is an absolutely no go. So I was wondering we serve a clients in NZ Australia and USA, If we target phrase like Psychic Readings California, Psychic Readings San Diego etc (USA) Psychic Readings Melbourne, Psychic Readings Sydney (AU) Psychic Readings Auckland, Psychic Readings Wellington (NZ) What is the best practice or right way to go about structuring my pages to do this without going against googles guidelines. Many thanks
Local Website Optimization | | edward-may1 -
Ecommerce Site with Unique Location Pages - Issue with unique content and thin content?
Hello All, I have an Ecommerce Site specializing in Hire and we have individual location pages on each of our categories for each of our depots. All these pages show the NAP of the specific branch Given the size of our website (10K approx pages) , it's physically impossible for us to write unique content for each location against each category so what we are doing is writing unique content for our top 10 locations in a category for example , and the remaining 20 odd locations against the same category has the same content but it will bring in the location name and the individual NAP of that branch so in effect I think this thin content. My question is , I am quite sure I we are getting some form of algorithmic penalty with regards the thin/duplicate content. Using the example above , should we 301 redirect the 20 odd locations with the thin content , or should be say only 301 redirect 10 of them , so we in effect end up with a more 50/50 split on a category with regards to unique content on pages verses thin content for the same category. Alternatively, should we can 301 all the thin content pages so we only have 10 locations against the category and therefore 100% unique content. I am trying to work out which would help most with regards to local rankings for my location pages. Also , does anyone know if a thin/duplicate content penalty is site wide or can it just affect specific parts of a website. Any advice greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Website Rankings - Provincial Movers
Hello Moz Community, We have been working with a company called Provincial Movers to optimize their website. We are focusing our efforts on building external local & relevant citations, however, I can't help but think there is more we can do internally --> www.provincialmoving.com The previous provider created a LOT of articles that are not necessarily relevant to the website like this: http://www.provincialmoving.com/blogs/ Do you guys have any suggestions for cleaning up the website so it performs better on Google? Thanks, Anton
Local Website Optimization | | Web3Marketing870 -
Duplicate content on a proxy site?
I have a local client with a 500 page site.
Local Website Optimization | | TFinder
They advertise online and use traditional media like direct mail.
A print media company, Valpak, has started a website
And wants the client to use their trackable phone number
And a proxy website. When I type the proxy domain in the browser
It appears to be client home page at this proxy URL. The vendor
Wishes to track activity on its site to prove their value or something
My question is: is their any "authority" risk to my clients website
By allowing this proxy site??0