I have recently switched from a html site to a Wordpress based one...

[HeadlandMachinery]

Obviously all my indexed links have changed. How can I avoid loosing page rank?

[kelly_vaught]

Thanks for the explanation - I've got a better understanding of what is going on.

I think 301 Redirects are going to be the way to go.  Some PR should be passed along to the new target page, though I imagine a significant amount will be lost due to the lack of relevant content to the user.  I agree that the bounce rate will be higher, and the degree of that change will be directly related to how much overlap the new and old pages have.  At the very least, though, you won't have 404 errors.

I'm not aware of any risk of penalty from the search engines as a result of redirecting an old page to an unrelated, or less-related page, but you may want to research a bit or check with other resources to make sure.  That would be my only concern, though it doesn't seem to me that it likely to become an issue.

If you continue using 301 redirects, you may want to consider installing a plugin into wordpress to help you execute and manage them.  I haven't used any, but I searched around a little bit and found some options.

If interested, you can check out:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/

or

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=301+Redirect&sort=

for other options.

Hope this helps.

[HeadlandMachinery]

Hi Kelly,

To give you a quick background as to how we got here...

We have consolidated allot of the pages from our old site into one page. Our strategy was to let our suppliers websites expand on the machine range, and we concentrate more on the solution with the customer. The descision of what kind of specific machines our customers need usually comes later on in the sales cycle.

Our site now talks more about 'the application' rather than the individual equipment (we sell machines).

Potential prospects will normally search for 'laser cutting machinery' as opposed to 'TRUMPF TruLaser 3050" (which is a laser cutting machine model). Pages with individual machinery was what our old website was all about. This is why allot of the pages that have been indexed will no longer have a home :O(

To cut a long story short, we would like to pass page rank of what's out there to our new pages, but to a certain degree, I am expecting this not to work so well as the new content will not 100% support what the searcher is obviously expecting. I'm guessing we will simply yield higher bounce rates.

I have gone through my top 70 +/- indexed pages that are high stake for us and manually added a 301 redirect in htaccess (I know, you're probably laughing). There are still another 200 or so pages out there which will land as a 404. This is my main concern and I guess this is what this post is all about. 404 = loss of site integrity.

Few! I'm done. :O)

[kelly_vaught]

So I understand a little better, what is your goal with the pages that no longer exist on the new site?  Is it to pass page rank of those pages that are no longer hosted on the web to those that are now live on the new (WP) version of the site?  Or am I missing something?

[HeadlandMachinery]

Thanks Kelly. That actually helped with an issue I wasn't aware of. But what about the pages that are out there that are no longer available on the new site... not with the indexed URL anyways..

When I do a site: query in Google, I can see hundreds of products that have been indexed and are going to specific url's - www.domain.com/machine/machine_one.html etc which no longer exists.

I have customised my 404 page to read something like "The page you are looking for has permanently been moved due to our new website structure... etc" but it's still a page not found in the search engine's eyes.

Thanks again for you help

[kelly_vaught]

Hi Maurice,

I apologize - it seems that there was a period connected to the link I posted before.  Try this one:  http://www.seosteve.com/seo-best-practices/redirecting-index-html-after-a-wordpress-migration.html

[HeadlandMachinery]

Hi Kelly, links seems to be invalid. Thanks for your reply!

[kelly_vaught]

I also was interested in information concerning this topic, and did some research.  I found the following article to be helpful:  http://www.seosteve.com/seo-best-practices/redirecting-index-html-after-a-wordpress-migration.html.  I hope this helps.