Changing from Squarespace to Wordpress - Will I Lose My Rankings?
-
I have a friend who has a squarespace site that is giving him lots of trouble. For one, even though it is supposed to redirect to GreenSpaceConstruct.com...Bing and Yahoo don't seem to recognize this domain. Instead, they show greenlightconstruct.squarespace.com in the serp's. Oddly, Google shows the site as GreenSpaceConstruct.com.
The site is ranking well for some terms. I'm afraid that converting to wordpress will hurt his rankings in the short term. If bing and yahoo are crawling this squarespace domain, and he moves it...is there a way not to just completely lose the rankings?
Thanks for any thoughts. Much appreciated!
Josh
-
Without knowing more details, we are left to blindly guess at why Bing/Yahoo are not referencing the main site. If all is well with Google, I would start by logging into Bing Webmaster Tools.
-
Thanks so much for the response Ryan. Lots of good advice. His problem/opportunity isn't just changing architecture, unfortunately. If his site were already "hosted" at the main domain, then I wouldn't be afraid of him dropping from the rankings. But it seems that the search engines are recognizing the site.squarespace.com domain instead of the site.com domain that it is supposed to redirect to.
My sense is that the right thing for him to do long-term is to fix it, and make the necessary improvements to regain the position. It can't be good for potential customers to see the site.squarespace.com result in the serp's instead of his actual domain.
-
Changing from Squarespace to Wordpress - Will I Lose My Rankings?
Your website architecture has an impact on your rankings. Whenever you change your code, your rankings may change. It depends on many factors. A few examples:
-
how is each site coded? Does one site use HTML code with is better coded then the other which leads to the site being more crawlable by search engines?
-
will URLs be changing during the move? If so, there is at least a minor loss of link juice. This loss can be made up through various site improvements such as cleaner URLs.
-
does the new site resolve various issues which were hurting your SEO performance in the past?
-
does the new site offer new features which improve SEO?
-
do you have a quality WordPress developer? I am not asking if the developer may have built a WP site before, but rather does your developer regularly build WP sites? There is a big difference between a pure WP developer who loves building WP sites and that's all he/she does, to a developer who makes a WP site one month, then a Joomla site the next, then a Drupal site the month after.
Your question is kind of like asking "I am selling my Chevy and buying a Ford. Will my new Ford be a better car?". There are a lot of follow up questions which need to be asked and answered.
-
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
-
Are non-breaking spaces ( ) in keyword phrases bad for ranking
Hello all, I came across a tip for avoiding text orphans in responsive design by putting a non-breaking space between the last two words. While this works nicely, I was wondering if I did this inside of a keyword phrase, would it still rank equally as well? Or will it be viewed as separate phrases or terms? Thanks, Roman
Web Design | | Dynata_panel_marketing0 -
Wordpress: Pages vs Posts vs Portfolio
Hi All, I'm looking to put pen to paper and design my main structual template for my website. I will be creating the new site in Wordpress. My understanding of Wordpress is broken into the Static Pages, Posts and Portfolio. Static PAGE
Web Design | | Mark_Ch
Static one off content.
No tags, categories or archived Posts
content entries, which is listed in reverse chronological order.
Update post entry to maintain overall freshness of your website.
tags, categories & archived Portfolio
????? Question What are the benefits of a portfolio page over Static Pages & Posts When creating feature rich articles should i use static pages, posts or portfolio. Thanks Mark0 -
4XX (Client Error) on Wordpress Wesbite
I've just taken over the management of a website and am getting 4x 4XX (client Error) issues. Example: http://inter-italia.com/en/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword Can anyone give any guidance as how to fix this wordpress? I also see a lot of 'temporary redirects' due to multilingual plugin - is there anything I can do to fix this?
Web Design | | skehoe0 -
So apparently SEO moz will get us de-indexed according to a SEO company!
Each and every day i get called up from an SEO company who promises to get me top spots in Google rankings if i quickly get on their special offer they have today normally i would say "no thanks and put the phone down" but i had a bit of spare time so i indulged the guy and we got talking. After the introductions and speal about his company he was showing me what his company does and how they go about it to get me top ranks (they don't get me ranks but create a website they own which then passes leads to me- kinda clever since they could then start charging me per lead or my competitors) We continued to talk and i mentioned i used SEOmoz to check my rankings and back links etc and he told me that Google are cracking down and anyone using these types of software/websites will get their websites de indexed. This struck me as BS but i wanted to get your thoughts on the matter, i personally don't believe Google would ever do such a thing as this since it would be so easy to get your competitors websites taken down (i.e. negative seo) but its certainly a talking point.
Web Design | | GarethEJones0 -
How long will the 301 ranking swap-over take?
Hi all, I'm about to hit the crunch button and finalise the 301 setup for our website to redirect all traffic, and our old very nice ranking, to our new website. My only question is, how long will the ranking take to move to the new site? Once the 301 is in place what happens when someone searches my keywords? Currently when you search our preferred keywords we rank 1 and 2 depending on the wording. Once I've made the 301 happen, will you see the old site in Google rankings until they re-index it or will it swap straight away to the new site with its continued high rank (from the link juice) or will I have a blackspot period where I don't rank at all? I cannot afford to have a period of time, at this time of year, that I don't rank 1 or 2 - if this is even a vague possibility I might have to consider postponing my 301 till a less important time of year. Thanks for your help, Anthony
Web Design | | Grenadi0 -
Wordpress SEO Change of Structure
Hi, I have a Wordpress SEO Question. I ran the SEOMOZ checker on my website and it discovered roughly 70 of my 250 blogs had a URL length problem. I have removed the year and month from the WP structure as I read elsewhere that it is not important. The blogs displayed as follows: domain.com/blog/2011/02/contents-of-the-blog and the new structure is: domain.com/blog/contents-of-the-blog I have resubmitted the new structure to Google Webmaster Tools XML and updating the on-page sitemap on my main site. My blog was cached on 25<sup>th</sup> October and seems to be caching every 7 days, my website cached on the 24th and I wonder if I should do any follow up work to ensure the content gets crawled properly. a) Individually 301 redirect the old URLs to the new. b) Individual Canonical links for each. c) Adding the old pages to the robots file and disallowing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | tdsnet0 -
What will you do with the subdomains, keep it or remove it?
A client of us has this webpage http://www.losestores.com/ not very good in design, but it has good products.
Web Design | | teconsite.com
He is having a problem with SEO, he is in page 2 for "estores" keyword. His domain authority is 27 and is upper than other domains that are ranking in page one. The question is the following: Since the webpage began to work the programmer that created it, did the following: a subdomain per section http://estores.losestores.com/ http://cortinas.losestores.com/ http://venecianas.losestores.com/ and so on. This page is not very big one. Will you remove the subdomains and do de following? www.losestores.com/estores www.losestores.com/cortinas What will be best? Thanks Victoria0 -
Changing the domain - To do or not to do - that is the question
Hello, I am in the process of updating my website (hopefully to improve SEO). It is a major update as we are going from 20,000 product line to 200,000 product lines and hiring two marketing people to work on more content. Unfortunately, I think my domain isn't the best i.e. www.direct-tractorparts.com Some of the parts have long part numbers and I am worried that my URLs will be too long i.e. I will lose link juice from the search engines. typical url www.direct-tractorparts.com/6XY41210TTTAZCAz2 I am thinking of launching the new site with a shorter domain name rather than updating the old site. My site doesn't have that many backlinks but generates a decent level of business for my company. Not sure if it would be worth setting up another brand or not Anyone got any advice?
Web Design | | DavidLenehan0