Moving wordpress to main website - errors galore

[GardenBeet]

Hi there

A while back I asked whether I should move my established blog on wordpress over to my main website http://www.gardenbeet.com.

The overwhelming response was to move it.

I still have not seen any benefit other than problems (2mths later). Maybe something is Not Quite Right?

Here is a list of issues? Any insights would be welcome. I have installed Yeost SEO plugins

1. A blog category (garden art) ended up outranking my main website for the term Garden Art - so I did a 301 on the garden art category - main website has now regained its ranking in the top 3 position (was number 2 before the move).

2. I have removed the categories from the blog as a 301 on the Garden Art catgegory would not make sense to a user. I decided to use tags as a navigational tool instead. I figured that because I have over 500 tags I could not have had the tags out rank my main website for any key term.  So far correct. But now i have wanings from SEO moz

500 missing meta tags,(for the tags) - do i really have to write over 500 meta?

over 160 long urls and titles - when i commenced the blog I had no idea that Urls and headings were linked in wordpress ( my developer does not think i should rename the urls and use a 301 as I already have a tonne due to a site rebuild) - is it OK to leave the long urls and fix the title only?

On wordpress I had bewteen 400-900 users on my blog a day (using wordpress analytics) - now only 200 (using GA) -

Yes I now have increased links to my website but have seen no imrpovement on my SERPS - will i see an improvement in my rankings? my wordpress  site use to have page rank of 3 -

[LaraMcCulloch]

Thanks, dignan99. I'm currently hosting with Bluehost and their customer service is AMAZING. However, they haven't been able to help me with this issue since, as they say, wordpress is unique. That said, I didn't have all of this great information back then so I'll revisit it with them at your suggestion and see if they can help.

Thanks again for the suggestion.

[dignan99]

Lara,

Contact the person/company who HOSTS the website.  They should have the knowledge to do this properly with very few negative repurcussions.  That is how I typically move mine if I am working on a dev wordpress site.

Your hosting company should also have a decent backup system, and if the backend is run on Cpanel that would be awesome.

[LaraMcCulloch]

Thank you, Alan. I will contact both.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Lara

two people I trust when it comes to WordPress issues are Andrew NorCross and Joe Hall.

Between them they get all my WordPress work (for my own sites and clients).  Cost is something you'll need to discuss with them.

[RyanKent]

Unfortunately I don't have any good recommendations for you. I am working on building my first WP site so I can better understand how that popular software works.

I would recommend prior to merging the sites to look at your content from a SEO standpoint to avoid the issues Felicity encountered. Ensure your blog pages will not compete with your website pages for the same keywords.

The person who merges your site most likely will focus on the merger from the technical aspect of ensuring the content is physically located on the same server and redirects are in place. They would not be expected to consider SEO issues unless you specifically requested it.

[LaraMcCulloch]

Alan & Ryan, I'm the Lara referred to in this thread. I'm wondering if either of you can recommend someone who can help me with the transition I need to make - i.e. move ready2spark.com and all applicable posts (currently my blog) to ready2spark.com/blog. My web designer is not comfortable with it and I'd like to ensure it's done correctly. Would you also mind letting me know a range of what something like this would cost?

Thank you in advance.

Lara

[GardenBeet]

thanks to you too Alan

[AlanBleiweiss]

Ryan,

This is what happens here as you well know.  We're not being paid for hours of review, evaluation and consideration.  So sometimes we don't get that "let me sit on this for a couple days" opportunity to formulate a well crafted, re-arranged response...

[GardenBeet]

Ryan thanks for your help !!!!!

[RyanKent]

I agree with Alan 100% on the re-direct.

My initial reply was lengthy and perhaps my point wasn't clear. I am still struggling on balancing my desire to offer good advice versus directly responding to the original poster's question.

My advice to Felicity is to keep both the blog page and the website page discussing Garden Art IF the pages are not duplicates and each offers unique content. In that case, each page should be optimized for different key words and the current 301 from the old blog site should be maintained.

My direct response to Felicity's question about her action of how the blog page was effectively removed by 301'ing the URL to her website page is...if you are going to take that approach, then re-direct the old blog page directly to the website page. Don't use a 301 from old blog page to new blog page, then another from the new blog page to the web page.

If I could jump into a time machine, I would re-organize the way I responded to this Q&A to focus simply on the best methods which should be used, and not talk the methods which were used. Live and learn.

[GardenBeet]

ok thanks ...will think about this

[GardenBeet]

Ryan - yep sorry did not mean to sound critical - apologies -

I found your sugesstions very helpful -

[AlanBleiweiss]

I agree with Ryan on many aspects of SEO.  In this situation, we diverge to a certain extent.

For me, it's the concept of 301 Redirecting any content you have on a site at all.  If you have the content, it should be indexed.  It's really that simple.  Because by redirecting it, you're telling the search engines it doesn't exist.  Which is not true.

So you're doing the redirect not because a page has actually moved, but for pure SEO reasons.  And that is, in my opinion, a direct conflict of SEO best practices tenets that you consider your users first and foremost, NOT the search engines.

In this view, if you're doing a 301, it's because there's something else improperly occurring regarding your SEO methods.  You're treating the symptoms, not the cause.

Treating symptoms and not the cause may work today, however over the evolution of SEO, it has always proven to be a myopic view and ends up not providing the long term value that only treating the cause can do.

So either actually delete the content you don't want, or move it - you can even make it a permanent page within the area of the main site - as a sub-link from the highest level page you want ranked.  Then you can do a 301 redirect, which is valid use of the redirect function.

Or leave it as is, and focus on building stronger content and signals to the pages you prefer to be ranked.

The only pages that exist on a site that should not be indexed are pages that include member area sign-in pages, secure shopping process pages, and similar pages.  And those shouldn't be 301 redirected - they should get the noindex, follow treatment if you want their on-page links to main site pages adding to the site-wide overall strength, or they should be noindexed in the robots.txt file altogether.

[RyanKent]

At your suggestion I reviewed my reply to Laura's question. I stand by it as being accurate. With that said, I completely welcome any other feedback and discussion on the topic.

When I share my time, knowledge and experience on this forum, I do it with two thoughts. Any advice taken from this site or any other forums falls under the "free advice" category and should always be taken with caution. What makes things work so well is if anyone offers bad advice, our fellow mozzers will usually jump in and offer a correction.

Lara's issues are not wordpress specific. She could have said blogger or any other blog software and the reply would be the same.

Again, sorry to hear you are having such a hard time. I know it's frustrating. I'm here to help if I can.

[GardenBeet]

...you are right ... I need to forget about my old blog .but part of the reason I posted this problem is to illustrate the complexities of moving from worpdress.com to .org - in fact I was prompted by Lara's questions and the following responses http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-are-the-issues-with-changing-my-domain

I just felt she was heading into a whole range of issues that were not being flagged - really if you ahve never moved an established wordpress blog to a .org shouldnt you at lesat declare that point to Lara - i am not trying to be harsh but just pointing out you dont know what you dont know

[GardenBeet]

...well i find the 301 confusing so I would like to remove it....but my blog only got position 3 after it joined the main website - its not like the blog was powerful on its own - surely I need to manipulate the internal linking or changing the key term of the garden art blog category as suggested by Ryan Kent (response 1)? is that OK?

[RyanKent]

Let me take a step back. We first need to separate this discussion into two parts: moving your blog to your new site (i.e. the 301 from oldblog.com to newsite.com) and then the merging of your sites.

For the 301s, my primary recommendation is you ensure any page is only affected by a single redirect. Always avoid the scenario where you redirect from the old site to the new site, and then from the old page on the new site, to another page on the new site.

For the new site, take a fresh look at it. Forget about the old site completely as it no longer exists. View the site as if you just inherited it and desire to make it the best it can be. The question is: how can you organize the content so it is easiest for users to find the right pages?

The answer involves basic website design from a SEO perspective:

• ensure each page targets 1-2 keywords or phrases

• ensure you don't have pages on your own site competing for the same phrases. Use internal linking (anchor text) and external linking (more anchor text) to help identify which keywords should be associated with each page.

• ensure each page has it's own unique title and description

It can be a relatively simple experience to merge an established blog with an existing site, but it can require a lot of effort. There are many factors including the size and structure of both the blog and website, along with the content of each.

If we could go back in time, I would advise you to optimize your blog and website pages for each key word phrase prior to the merger. Dealing with both the move and redesigning pages at the same time isn't ideal.

NOTE: I just saw you shared the URL of your site. I am now clear on your Tag pages. I have never worked with a wordpress site before so I will defer to the opinions of others. I would question whether you want those pages in search results or not. I would consider adding "noindex follow" to those pages, in which case they would not require meta descriptions.

I would suggest that topic be covered in a separate question, as I don't wish to give wrong advice.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Felicity,

I need to weigh in on this one.  If you've got two pages on your site that focus on the same phrase, as was said, you need to decide which you want to rank more for it.  However I definitely recommend NOT killing the other page to do so.  Using a 301 Redirect is not SEO best practices here.

Why? because you're preventing yourself from having your site found in two organic entries, which can be invaluable.

Instead, if a blog page is showing up higher than your home page, it means that page deserves (from Google's perspective) to rank higher.

That could be because it's really the one page on the site that is most optimized for that phrase.  That's proper SEO, doing its job.

If you want your home page ranking higher, then it's best practices to work on building additional signals that your entire site deserves to be ranking for the phrase.  These should be both on-site and off-site.

For example, there's got to be at least some content on the home page that discusses the topic, that warrants the ranking.

Another is that there would be many pages on your site related to that topic, with slight variations of each - the cumulative power then gives more strength to the home page for that specific topic.

And then there's the need for additional inbound links confirming this, as well as social signals.

So please - seriously consider removing the 301 Redirect and working on building the case that you have a right to have the home page gain that rank back.  Anything else is really a false manipulation and could end up failing in the long run, because it's as much confusing the search engines as anything else.

[GardenBeet]

http://www.gardenbeet.com/garden_design_blog/

[GardenBeet]

hey thanks for your detailed response

Issue 1 - the 301 redirect is in the htaccess - redirecting http://www.gardenbeet.com/garden_design_blog/category/garden-art/ to http://www.gardenbeet.com - that is OK is it not?

I dont think changing the focus of the key search terms for the blog articles is a great idea - but I may be wrong..Oh just re-read your advice ...OK will do ..thanks good response

.but am also thinking perhaps my blog should have stayed on the wordpress domain because the blog architecture mirrors the website . The blog's categories were all broken into the search terms that the website was chasing - ie the blog was supporting my main site for its key terms. Each time I wrote an artciicle on garden art I would link back to www.gardenbeet.com on the words garden art as my home page was optimised for garden art

Issue Two - the meta desriptions are missing for each tag of the blog - i was not aware that each tag and category even got a url - this is a huge amount of work - but I suppose I just have to fix

Issue three - once again I just have  to fix?

What I am trying to highlight (plus get some help) to others -  its not that easy to migrate a well established blog into your website - but responses on this forum seem to indicate that its not that difficult -

[BedeFahey]

Thanks. Somehow I missed it in the original post.

[RyanKent]

Hi Felicity.

I'm sorry to hear your moving experience hasn't been as pleasant as you hoped. It sounds like your issues are not with the move itself, but the merging of two sites. Please let me know if I am mistaken.

Issue #1 - Page A outranking Page B. You want to evaluate your entire site and determine which pages you wish to rank for each relevant search term. If you have a page from the blog ranking for "Garden Art" but you also have a page on your main site ranking for the same term, you NEED to make a decision, or else Google will make it for you.

It sounds like you prefer the page on your main site to rank for garden art. That's great. The 301 you added works, but it is far from an ideal solution. First of all, your users now have to be 301'd from your old Garden Art blog page to your site, then another from the blog page to your main page. You are leaking link juice on the double hop. IF you were to keep this solution, then go back to your old blog site and 301 the category directly to your main Garden Art page.

The better solution is to optimize your blog for another keyword phrase. For this example I will use Garden Decoration as the new phrase. Replace all of the "Garden Art" phrases in the title, description and page with "Garden Decoration", except for maybe 1 or 2 instances. In those cases, use anchor text on "Garden Art" to direct users from your blog to your website page.

This process allows you to keep all of your existing content and sends a clear message to Google that your main website page should rank for Garden Art, not your blog page.

Issue #2 - You are missing meta tags on 500 pages. Which meta tags? Description? Title? Every page should have unique meta title tags and meta description tags. If it is another meta tag please let me know which one.

Issue #3 - Is it ok to leave the long URLs? You could do so, but I would fix them. I run into these situations all the time. Do I leave something alone, or do I commit time and effort to fixing a problem to the way things should be. I usually vote for the latter unless I know there will be a better opportunity within the next year (i.e. site redesign) in which case I will plan to make the change then.

The bottom line, you merged two sites and made some mistakes. Fix all the mistakes. Make the changes using the best known practices, and then most of your traffic should be restored. IF the change was a good one for users, then you can even see an increase in traffic.

[mosaicpro]

Yeost SEO plugins

[BedeFahey]

Hi Felicity,

Are you using a plugin, such as all in one SEO pack, for your site?

[dignan99]

Could you let us know the address of your blog?  I'd like to take a look how it's structured before I answer.