Safest Route to Get from Drupal to Wordpress
-
Hi all,
I have a prospective client who currently has a Drupal 7 site and they are interested in converting it to Wordpress (or simply building it new in Wordpress) and changing CMS. They would like to update the look of their site to make it a little more modern, but they are very concerned about preserving their SEO and rank, etc so they plan to keep the structure and urls, etc. pretty identical to what they have now with only minor cosmetic changes for the moment.
I want to find the best and most economical route for them to take for a change like this. If an actual conversion/migration is the way to go, then I also want to help them find a professional developer they can trust to do the job correctly as I am not a Drupal person.
I guess my question concerns what would be the safest and most economical route to preserve the SEO and rank, etc. that they have now?
1) Would that be an actual migration and conversion of their current site into a custom WP theme that's structured as closely as possible to the site currently?
2) Or, depending on the ultimate complexity of the site, would it be possible to leave out the step of migration altogether? Would there be huge cons or red flags to starting from scratch and manually building a custom WP theme while duplicating the architecture/links/urls, etc. as closely as possible to the current site? Anything else to be worried about if this is a possibility?
3) Or would you suggest some other way entirely?
Thank you so much in advance for any guidance or suggestions on this! They are really nice people and I just want to make sure they do this safely because they get a lot of business from their site and they are justified to worry.
-
This post is deleted! -
Hey again! I would be happy to give you a recommendation - it may be something my firm can help you with too. Please reach out to me at john@sixthcitymarketing.com. Either way, I'll be happy to help you find someone. Thanks!
-
Thank you very much! Appreciate the advice!
Now, I'm hoping there's someone out there who can recommend a professional developer for Drupal to Wordpress work like this... I've had some good luck on certain things with UpWork but it would be nice to have a recommendation for something like this.
Thank you again everyone!
-
Hey! I would go route #1.
-
Hi there,
Thank you so much for responding. When you say you would recommend a custom WP theme, do you mean with regard to the #1 or #2 route? If you could be so kind as to clarify I would be most appreciative. Thank you again!
-
Hey there!
The three things that you'll need to be concerned with in preserving SEO:
1. URL structure
2. Architecture or site map
3. Content on indivdiual pages
If these are preserved (which I recommend), then you shouldn't have any SEO issues when you move it to WP. I would recommend a custom WP theme. You can preserve the design but you may want to see how you can modify it to be faster as Google just updated their PageSpeed tool: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
I hope that helps!
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
-
WordPress Category page title h1 or h2
Hi friends, I know this is a minor technical change, but we are in an extremely competitive market and I don't want to have any points against us. On our WordPress Category pages i.e. http://www.domain.com/category/�tegory-title%/ I looked at the code behind the the Title of the category page, which is "Browsing: %Category Title%" The code is an h2. I look at the posts in the category archive below, and those are also h2's. The theme preview is here and you can click on Entertainment - Reviews to see exactly what I'm referring to - http://themeforest.net/item/smartmag-responsive-retina-wordpress-magazine/full_screen_preview/6652608 I changed the code for the "Browsing: %Category Title%" to h1, which I believe is more consistent and standard formatting. 1. Is this a correct technical on-page optimization? 2. Would it be beneficial to remove "Browsing"?
Web Design | | JustinMurray0 -
Wordpress Theme is blocking alt tags. Does anybody know of any special plugins?
We have a special wordpress theme for nataliecass.com. Unfortunately the theme is blocking all the alt tags (this is a photography website...alt tags are very important). Does anybody know of any special WP plugins for alt tags? Thanks
Web Design | | VanguardCommunications0 -
Wordpress - redirecting tags
I just ran a webmaster tool from Yoast SEO premium and notice I have a lot of problems with tags (restricted-robots-txt) For example : http://www.soobumimphotography.com/tag/wedding-group-photo/ Do I have to redirect to http://www.soobumimphotography.com/wedding-group-photo/ Should I do this to each and every posts Thank you
Web Design | | soobumim0 -
Is there any negative SEO effect when using Wordpress for your Blog?
I have a site entirely done in html, no CMS used. The blog page however, is wordpress. Wondering if this will effect us negatively in terms of SEO, having the blog that is linked to our site, a wordpress site. My gut is absolutely not, but the questions was asked....what do you think?
Web Design | | cschwartzel0 -
Wordpress Frameworks for SEO - Genesis - Does it Get Any Better?
I'm sure there's a ton of people in this community running Wordpress, any Genesis developers/users out there? For anybody who doesn't know, Genesis is a parent framework for building wordpress child themes. It saves a ton of time for people that aren't too handy w/ php (like me). I'm working on a few sites locally with it right now, and it's really impressive. I'm seriously never planning on using another WP framework. It also integrates perfectly with Yoast SEO, which is something not all frameworks do. So I thought I'd try to get some input from the community here, anybody have another framework they like? Or have an opinion on the SEO benefit of genesis? Would love to hear...
Web Design | | SVmedia0 -
‘80-90% of SEO already done for you in Wordpress’ Am I missing something?
Hi there, I’m looking for some feedback on a statement made on my Facebook Page re Wordpress and SEO. Please understand I wouldn’t class myself as an expert but I am competent and achieve satisfactory results for clients, more so since becoming a SEOmoz Pro user, I’ve just had some great results for a client using SEOmoz guidelines in ‘On Page SEO Reports’ thank you very much! A comment however made on my FB page has got my interest…. “as you (kn)no(w) google loves WP and will get listed quicker as 80 to 90% of your SEO is already done” Does Wordpress (or Joomla for that matter mentioned in the same conversation) have some SEO advantages that Google loves as the poster would have me believe, can I save time and effort working in word press from an SEO point of view? I use the age old techniques of targeting key phrases and words and distributing them accordingly. Creating internal link structures with ‘key worded anchor text’ etc before embarking on any off page SEO. Do any of you vastly experienced (in comparison to me) SEO folk have any insight into what this statement refers to? I did not gather any references to SEO advantages in Wordpress or Joomla in the Enge and Fishkin et al book The Art of SEO, or any of the other books I’ve read, to develop my knowledge on SEO for the benefit of my clients and of course my pocket. J
Web Design | | JemRobinson0 -
Im having duplicate content issues in wordpress
all of my pages are working fine. but i added my sitemap to my footer in my website and when i click on my blog from my footer it takes me to the homepage. so now im having duplicate content for two diff urls. ive tried adding a rel=canonical and a 301 redirect to the blog page but it doesnt resolve the problem. also, when i go to my footer and click blog. after it brings me to the homepage ill try to click on my pages from the original bar at the top of my screen and it will bring me to the right pages. but it will have the same blog url in the search bar even when im on other pages. other than that all of my pages in my footer and in my homepage toolbar work fine. its just that one particular problem with the blog page in the footer and how it stays with the same blog url on every page after i click the blog in the footer. can someone please help. im using yoast and idk if i should disable it or what.
Web Design | | ClearVisionDesign0
