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
-
Homepage Gateway for Website Divisions (Residential / Commercial) Bad for SEO?
When a website offers multiple divisions for products and services would it be a good SEO practice to implement something as Culligan does by having their homepage be a sort of gateway to the different divisions of site (home, office, commercial, industrial)? 2DaYz
Web Design | | m-johnson0 -
Ranking of non-homepage leads to decrease in website ranking?
Hi all, Google picks up a non-homepage to rank for primary keyword where homepage is actually optimised to rank for same keyword. This means Google is ignoring the actual page and ranking other page. Does this scenario means that we are ranking lower as the homepage is not considered here? We may rank much better if homepage is preferred by Google? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Multiple H1 Tags for different section on one webpage in HTML5 Website? Should I have only one?
https://www.tcs.com website has multiple H1 tag on around 40 out of 1000 pages. Webpage has different section and each section is important that's why used multiple H1 tag (one h1 for each section) **I understand, google will not penalize for multiple H1. But having multiple H1, for site like tcs, is it good or should use only one H1 tag? **Pls check https://www.tcs.com to see heading tag(6 heading tag used).
Web Design | | JayprakashSEO0 -
Moving to new site. Should I take old blog posts with me?
Our company website has needed a complete overhaul for some time now and the new one is almost ready to go live. We also have a separate "news" site that is houses around 800 blog posts and news items. (That news site will be thrown away because it's on a completely different domain and causes confusion.) So we have a main site with about 100 decent blog posts and a separate news site with 800 poor posts. I plan on bringing all the main site blog posts over to the new site (both WordPress), but my question is whether or not to bring over the news site posts? All, handful, none? Another issue is the news site doesn't have Google Analytics, so I'm not sure if any posts actually generate traffic, but I can from the main site we do get some referrals from it. As far as quality of content goes, it's poor. Not sure who wrote it all, but it's mainly text press releases that aren't very interesting. Is it worth bringing over for SEO purposes or simply delete the site and create a mass redirect so all of those pages will direct to the new website's blog page? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | codyfrew0 -
Does moving Server (IP) affect rankings?
I work for a pretty large company with an established web domain with thousands of pages. We are working on a new website and they talked about moving the site onto a new server. What is the impact ranking wise of going to a new server? Does Google care so long as it's the same domain, or is there some equity lost? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | ScottOlson0 -
Are jobsite themes harder to optimize than say a traditional website?
Until recently I have enjoyed a great deal of success with SEO on my websites and clients websites. SEO is more of a hobby than a profession for me however I am really struggling with my latest website www.securityjobsuk.co.uk - The keywords are easy, 1. security jobs and 2. security vacancies. The site has vanished off radar completely since I used the jobify theme. Has anyone had similar experience with job boards? Do they require more TLC / expert attention?
Web Design | | SJUK0 -
Website title next to a post title-how to remove it?
I just have checked on some of the keyword I am ranking for and found in the serp that next to the post I have also the site name. But I thought that I have remove it. Does somebody know how to remove it? perhaps I did not do it correctly. I am also using yoast seo plugin but I do not have it set there to show the site name after posts name. Can somebody help me to fix this please? I have also attached an image from the serp where is behind the post title also Villas Diani-the site name Thank you very much! Iris O1oj4W0.jpg
Web Design | | Rebeca10 -
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