Moving a site from .cfm to Wordpress - How to keep the authority?
-
Hi guys,
My client has a site built with Cold Fusion (web pages end in .cfm) and we're moving them over to Wordpress (for many reasons), keeping the same menu structure and navigation.
Their previous SEO company was pretty awful, however, they did manage to establish some decent authority/backlinks for the website and its 20 or so pages.
My questions:
- I assume I'll want to do 301 redirects for each page, possibly by editing the .htaccess file? Any advice on this?
- Anything else I need to consider in this move?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for all the help guys.
@Cardigan Media - This seems to be the best solution.
The website is about 8 years old and we're staying on the same domain, so don't want to lose those existing backlinks.
Cheers,
Steve -
Were just doing the same kind of thing with our own website.
Make sure you run the existing site through screaming frog and open site explorer. You want to make sure any incoming links are pointing to relevant pages within the new site. there are a number of plugins in wordpress to handle 301's but I usually start by adding them to the htaccess just because it keeps things a bit tidier.
Have you checked webmaster tools to make sure any broken links are addressed?
Also you'll need to add your Google analytics code to the new site. Maybe try Google tag manager if its a new site.
-
I agree with the above. 301 redirect. Keep in mind that changing urls however will result in some traffic loss...the only question is how much.
The more 301s you have the more your rankings will suffer in the transition.
Do not move your entire site with just 301s.
If you are changing domain below might be a safer option.
-
Actually, a 301 redirect can be avoided here, provided you maintain the same page/URL structure. You can use this WordPress plugin to generate the custom .cfm page extension and retain your URL structure to avoid hurting your rankings:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-page-extensions/
It would be best to avoid a 301 redirect if possible.
-
If you are simply migrating a site to Wordpress I don't believe 301 redirects are necessary. All you need to do is make sure the same url structure is used.
Its basically like doing a website redesign.
Now if you are moving to a new domain:
1. get the new pages live first. Add canonical tags pointing old pages to new pages.
2. Watch search results and see your existing ranking results move to new pages. Wait until all significant search traffic has shifted to new pages
3. take down old pages and replace with 301 redirect.
-
Im sure wordpress like joomla has an addon for url rewrites essentially 301 is the way to go...
Get a plugin to make it easy
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
-
Hreflang - Is it needed even if the site is only one language
This topic came up in a discussion I had with a fellow SEO colleague, I don't believe it makes sense to have Hreflang if you don't have a second language but according to my friend they mentioned that it is great if your only targeting one country. Any opinions out in the Moz community? It seems like overkill to me
On-Page Optimization | | JonAlonsoCNC0 -
How do I keep content-refreshment manageble for large site with facetted product categories?
Dear MOZ'ers,
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing-Omoda
i hope you can help me with the following issue: As a fashion e-commerce site we have a category structure by gender: , brand, product-category and colour. We sell over 250 brands in 50 categories. Off course, we don't sell products in every category for all brands but, in general, we sell 3 or 4 product categories for a brand. Next to this, we also have unique content for brand-product-gender (in fact this is the most common in our site-structure, since fashion is really a gender-based product.) We are planning to leave the site category as it is. we rank well for specific products like 'blue mens sneakers' My question is about copy, or more specific: to keep content-refreshment manageble. At the moment we have a small text at the top of the page and long form content on the bottom (very low below the fold, near the footer, only shown when the product-lister is) Because of seasonality in fashion, category text are regularly updated. As you can imagine, this is quit some work and pretty expensive. So now my question is: on which page level should you advice to have long form content, or distinctive content at all?
On the one hand I'm really sceptical about the value of the text at the bottom, on the other hand I am afraid that, should I decide to remove content from lower hierarchy pages, I might give the wrong signal to search engines: making my site from content rich content modest.0 -
Should I use nofollow when interlinking large, networked sites?
My company runs a network of very large networked sites, each with thousands of content pages. In our main navigation we are currently not nofollowing links between these networked sites. The links appear on every single page in the top navigation, and there are thousands of pages on each site. I am worried this will look to Google like we have suspiciously received thousands of links from one domain - one link from every page on the domain. Should we be nofollowing these navigation links between the different sites in our network?
On-Page Optimization | | Natasha90040 -
Wordpress GD Star Rating Not Showing In SERPS
I've installed the GD Star Rating plugin on my site for example this page: http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com/up-for-it/ (this links to an adult site) and have tested it with the rich snippet testing tool and the results show the stars as I want them. However in search results google is not displaying the stars? Has anyone come across this before? When I check webmaster tools structured data it is finding 1 type on 15 pages. I have two types, star ratings and google authorship so it appears google is not picking up on the star ratings in webmaster tools but it works on the rich snippet testing tool? Very confusing! Any help much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Which pages on my site should I back link to
The majority of the back links I have been creating link directly to our home page and to the store page. Is this the best approach or should I be trying to spread the links throughout our site to include product categories and subcategories etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Hardley0 -
AD on wordpress
I notice advertisement hyperlinks on my site such as hyperlinks on my test gift, fill out etc. I never put hose links but somehow it shows up on firefox. Does anyone experience this? It's showing up this url http://www.soobumimphotography.com/portfolio/wedding/
On-Page Optimization | | BistosAmerica0 -
How is my on-site SEO looking like?
I know this is a broad question. My site's content has been written more than one year ago and haven't been changed so far. Our main goal is to make the application hosted in the site work better every day, so we don't worry much about writing content. The URL is http://www.onlinelogomaker.com
On-Page Optimization | | rpedri0 -
Is ranking hurt by slow moving product
I sell B2B industrial products. I have 300 products on the site. Some products are seldom purchased and the brand name is not significant for these products If the title page is the right wording and length, and there is a valid product widget -1-1-1 but nobody has bought one in 5 years due to it being a niche product, but they could and it's a profitable sale. Question: Is** overall site rankin**g **being hurt **by valid content ( Description, Part # and Price and it can be checked out in the cart), but is is never/seldom searched for.?
On-Page Optimization | | Wales0