From Google Sites to Wordpress - Anyone Ventured this SEO terrain?
-
We have a few sites in Google Sites - and they are ugly! We have a majority (40+) of websites in Wordpress. But we have a few websites just stuck on Google Sites, and since Google won't let you fully edit the HTML, add scripts, or implement any technology since 2000, we want to move.
The sad problem - the Google sites are ranking well. We rank well in Manhattan, Atlanta, Dallas, and Philadelphia. The problem is - the sites do not give much room for growth - and the bounce rate is high because they are so ugly.
Has Anyone moved from Google sites to Wordpress? Should we just stay with Google and bite the ugly bullet? My fear is that these sites will not allow for growth. It is hard to update them and even harder to make them look nice.
To get a sample - beware: www.counselingphiladelphia.com
Even another reason to leave: The slider is non-semantic and terrible SEO. Google won't allow a slider script with tags and a hrefs, so the only way to implement a slider is through a Google Docs Presentation that keeps sliding. I know - terrible SEO (#donthate) but we needed something.
Any advice and thoughts would help! Thanks Mozzers!
-
Hi Anthony
There's two separate things here, so I'll attack each one individually - and give you some insight to the thought process.
- First - there's the issue of IF you should move them to WP
- Second - if you should, the question is how?
Should You Move To** WordPress**
It's unquestionable that for design, practicality, and long term benefits - you should move them to WordPress. The issue it really all about the ranking. So the questions then become - WHY is the site ranking now, and could you preserve that ranking with a migration.
I would look at things in the following ways.
- First - determine what keywords we're talking about. Is it just head terms? Is it just the exact match of the domain? I'd make a list.
- Then - try to determine why the sites are ranking for the given keywords. The Keyword Difficulty tool is great for that.
- Basically - what we really need to rule out, is if Google sites pass any authority that regular sites do not? I don't see that this is the case.
My inclination would be the say that you can safely migrate - so long as it's done correctly .. see next.
How To Migrate To WordPress
I should preface and say that I have no experience with Google Sites. But let's assume the following things are possible.
- Build your new WordPress site - obviously on a test server of some sort.
- Make the new WordPress site have the same content as the current site (same text, titles, etc). We want as little variables and moving parts. Scrape the existing site if you have to with Screaming Frog to grab a lot of that.
- You can change URLs if you want to - but prepare the 301 redirects ahead of time.
- "Flip the switch" - I assume you're on your own hosting? You can just basically switch out Google Sites with WordPress.
- Immediately activate the 301 redirects (if any).
- Immediately crawl the site looking for 404s
- Monitor webmaster tools for 404s.
- After a few weeks, you can probably start improving text etc etc.
Obviously without a deeper look I can't guarantee this as full proof. But I believe you should be fine - the main thing is just those 301s.
Also - couldn't hurt to just try this on one site first!
-Dan
-
If its generating converting traffic for you - I would not fix what was not broken.
I've seen many websites sites that were not at all graphically pretty, or even laid out in a way that was very user friendly- they were simple design, with a strong message that generated millions of dollars in revenue. It is pretty amazing.
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
-
Do Google Fonts Slow Down Your Site?
Hi Guys,
Web Design | | jeeyer
I just did a webpage speed test on http://www.webpagetest.org to see how our site is performing.
I noticed that an exteral URL called fonts.gstatic.com has a "huge" impact on our sites loading time. See a screen here: http://monosnap.com/image/z6drzC2ELoJ48d1rM0Tmtuszl3pFpH#
An overview can be seen here: http://monosnap.com/image/9hofUpr5Ld8D7mi7zyaJmGFIGhpBsY# All our scores are green and A (finally!) but I was a bit concerned when I saw the outcome of the pagespeedtest regarding the fonts.
When I load a page on my pc I indeed notice that the text content is usally quite slow in showing up, pops up afer a few seconds. Is this a know problem and Is this something I need to fix? If so what is the best approach? Looking forward on your thoughts!
Joost1 -
Anyone using CloudFlare on multiple sites?
We are considering using CloudFlare as a CDN for a large group of sites. The fees are $5 to $200 depending on many factors. We tried the free trial on one site and were impressed with the results. I am wondering if any of you have any longer term experience with this and performance metrics, etc.
Web Design | | RobertFisher1 -
Can anyone recommend me a good wordpress website designer for local services website?
Hi all,
Web Design | | chanel27
Does anyone know of any good wordpress SEO designer? I am looking to build some sites on:
Aircon Services
Laundry Services
Carpet Cleaning etc The wordpress must be able to easily add articles from time to time like this HTML site:
http://www.airconservices.com.sg/articles.html Appreciate you help!0 -
On site SEO opinions
Hi all, I have been testing different configurations for my on-site SEO for a while now and I think I am pretty much there. However it is always nice to know what other SEO's think about my keyword density and usage. My site is http://www.tomlondonmagic.com I am curious as to what you think regarding landing page content, whether you need lots or text or little text? I have just removed links in the text as I feel I want to keep as much juice on my landing page as possible. Thanks all!
Web Design | | TomLondon0 -
Javascript, PhP and SEO Impact?
What are the Pro's and Con's of using Java Script and PHP in a site when factoring in SEO?
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Google Bot cannot see the content of my pages
When I go to Google Webmaster tools and I type in any URL from the site http://www.ccisolutions.com in the "Fetch as Google Bot" feature, and then I click the link that says "success," Google bot is seeing my pages like this: <code>HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:11:50 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.6 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.6 OpenSSL/0.9.7a DAV/2 PHP/5.2.4 mod_jk/1.2.25 Set-Cookie: CCISolutions-UT-Status=66.249.72.55.1303845110495128; path=/; expires=Thu, 25-Apr-13 19:11:50 GMT; domain=.ccisolutions.com Last-Modified: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:36:45 GMT ETag: "314b26-5a-2d421940" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 90 Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/html Any clue as to why this could be happening?</code>
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
Mobile sites! Any advice or suggestions for building one?
Hello Mozland, I'm looking to have a mobile site built. We have a fair amount of traffic coming from smart phones, tablets etc and want to capture this traffic better. Do you have any advice on how to have it built properly, if/how it can be optimised, what good features to include, or anything else you think might be of help? Many thanks Martin
Web Design | | Martin_S0 -
Seo for flash home page?
I have a client who insists their home page be a single graphic image of their logo with php menus linking to all of the other pages up top. This appears to me to be an seo nightmare. They seem to be unwilling to have anything to do with changing the appearance and want to rely on seo for "all the other pages" on the site. What's an SEO to do in this situation? Is it possible to have a flash image that lands on a "homepage" for google to crawl, rather than a single image? What's the best seo approach here?
Web Design | | peaceland0