Converting From Joomla to Wordpress - Worried About Falling Out Of 7 Pack

[Czubmeister]

Joomla site is old and dated. Want to convert to new theme with Wordpress. The only thing holding me back is the fear of falling from the rankings and making the client very unhappy

If we do this conversion, is their a chance that we could fall out of the 7 pack? Will try to keep most of the links the same.

[arnoldwender]

Hello,

Try this plugin, it will help you to migrate your Joomla! site to Wordpress and retain almost everything...

http://www.fredericgilles.net/fg-joomla-to-wordpress/

Cheers

Arnold

[AaronHenry]

We just underwent the same thing (Joomla 2.5 to latest Wordpress version.  Here was our process:

PRE-LAUNCH

1. BACKUP - BACKUP - BACKUP
2. Note all current urls, eventually launched new site on the same server (IP address) as the old Joomla site.
3. Duplicated site on a private server under Wordpress CMS. This way we can run the site with full url and not a subdomain or subdirectory url structure. For us this allowed us to hone in on issues and keep things clean. We did play with our hosts file to see the site when doing the build out.
4. Transferred all content over, retaining EXACT url usage. This did take some tweaking because Joomla's menu structure creates so many different ways to serve up the same content. We also kept all meta descriptions/ titles in place. An old developer used to fill out the meta keyword box, we stripped all of that junk. We moved all of the old joomla articles in categories and subcategories to Wordpress' blog structure. That was a lot of work (we had like 1000 pages or so).
5. Updated onsite content to be more professional (better spelling, grammar, and copy in general). For the most part we kept the same content though. We did update images with the same title, alt, description tags. The old images just sucked.
6. Updated to a much faster, better responsive framework. This cleaned up the code quite a bit. We added some plugins like Yoast SEO (with local, video, and authorship markup).
7. Ran multiple sweeps with ScreamingFrog and Xenu to find and fix broken links. There were a ton because joomla can sometimes append urls with php tags pointing to the database content instead of the SEF url. [Another lovely joomla feature. - I used to be a big fan of Joomla]
8. Killed off duplicate pages using 301 redirects to updated content.
9. Ensured physical locations had their own pages, proper schema markup, location data in the footer, and verified locations within Google local business center.

POST LAUNCH

1. For whatever reason we still had like 300 or so 404 errors in GWT. We watch it like a hawk. Additionally, our duplicate description and title tags shot up as well. We also received a message in GWT telling us that our site was still on Joomla 1.5.  We were like wth?!
2. Fixed all 404 errors with 301 redirects in our htacccess file. Never thought I would see so many redirects!
3. Resubmitted index to Google/ fetched as google. Then waited for index results.
4. Duplicate HTML / description warnings in GWT are now falling off every day. We expect the old Joomla 1.5 warning to go away as well. Essentially, we had a duplicate cache issue going on. As Google reindexes the site everything is falling back in place.
5. Watch GWT, Moz Analytics, other sources like a hawk every day to immediately handle issues. Made sure schema was pulling correctly in GWT.

Rankings initially slipped 1-2 spots overall. However, once the errors were fixed the bounced right back (took about 3 days, maybe less). Additionally, we increased the overall quality of the links pointing to the site as well as better quality content in the ongoing campaigns.

Overall we were initially penalized (not a real penalty) because of so many errors. However, once those errors were fixed and reindexed by Google, we were fine again. This was just organic. Our map rankings did not slip a single position.

Hope this helps!

[Czubmeister]

Thanks for the info. Maybe I'll just update the graphics and other components to give the site a facelift!

[RobMay]

You'll have to have a very technical list of stages and list items closely monitored to ensure the best possible chance of success. In fact, in some ways, this could be a blessing if you have taken time to analyze the marketplace, the customer persona's, the sales funnel of your client, etc, etc. It obviously a tough call and you have some difficult recommendations to make to the client. I've been there!

Best thing is to be fully transparent and make sure they understand the implications of making a major move like this and the kind of time and work it will take to ensure a clean transition (well, cleanest it can be!)

You know they need it, but are worried about all the background work and critical technical steps to ensure a smooth transition to the new site.

Glenn Gabe wrote a great piece detailing some really important steps to take when going down this road! Check it out here.

Hope it helps! Rob

[TheeDigital]

There is always a chance of something going wrong.  Just try to have all your ducks in a row.  Make sure your redirects if any are setup and ready to go and make sure everything on the new site is better optimized and more SEO friendly and you should not have any problems.