Converting From Joomla to Wordpress - Worried About Falling Out Of 7 Pack
-
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.
-
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
-
We just underwent the same thing (Joomla 2.5 to latest Wordpress version. Here was our process:
PRE-LAUNCH
- BACKUP - BACKUP - BACKUP
- Note all current urls, eventually launched new site on the same server (IP address) as the old Joomla site.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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).
- 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]
- Killed off duplicate pages using 301 redirects to updated content.
- 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
- 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?!
- Fixed all 404 errors with 301 redirects in our htacccess file. Never thought I would see so many redirects!
- Resubmitted index to Google/ fetched as google. Then waited for index results.
- 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.
- 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!
-
Thanks for the info. Maybe I'll just update the graphics and other components to give the site a facelift!
-
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
-
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.
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
-
Wordpress Blog, Schema and Authorship Settings
Hi Everyone, What is the best practice for authorship in 2018 and going forward? I am moving my entire blog over to a new wordpress theme so it's easier to read and navigate in an attempt to make it look better on the mobile and give better UX / CRO and implicit user feedback signals to google. On the old blog I would say who the author is in the URL, H1 and in the content. This includes an image of the author with an image alt with their name, qualifications and blurb. I've now set up each author as a 'user' for the new blog and their image and name comes up because I've marked those blogs as authored by that particular user in Wordpress. What should I do as far as the SEO elements are concerned? I have read Eric Enge's blog about authorship being dead here and also that authorship should be marked up in schema correctly - which I've done. Also I've read around how it provides indirect signals even though it's no longer a direct ranking factor. Should I tell wordpress to ignore the authorship SEO element by unticking the boxes relating to publishing authorship or let wordpress just do it's thing? Should I keep the images and alt tags and H1 in there or take them out and let the wordpress system take over the authorship SEO elements? It's going to look funny to have author (in wordpress theme) and then author details again just below? So what is the best practice for authorship in 2018 and going forward? Am I making too big a deal of it and can just let wordpress sort it out. Something it seems to do very well? Thanks in advance, Ed.
Local Website Optimization | | Smileworks_Liverpool0 -
I've submitted my site to google search console, and only 6 images of 89 images have been indexed in 2 weeks. Should I be worried?
I've submitted my site to google search console, and only 6 images of 89 images have been indexed in 2 weeks. Should I be worried? My site is http://bayareahomebirth.org Images are a pretty big part of this site's content and SEO value. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | mattchew0 -
Getting my Video SERPS Packs
I having issues fully understanding how to get the Video SERP packs. I am owner of a wedding videography company and would love to start getting the video SERPS. I am just not 100% sure how to go about this and everything I have read is not making sense. Any thoughts would be great
Local Website Optimization | | UVdesign1 -
Is there an SEO benefit to using tags in WordPress for my blog posts?
We have locations across the US and are trying to develop content so that we rank well for specific keywords on a local level. For instance, "long tail keyword search in state" or "long tail keyword search near 76244", etc. The goal is to develop those content pages via blogs to rank for those keywords. We are using Yoast and will be optimizing each post using that tool. My questions are: 1. Are there any benefits to adding a long list of tags to each post?
Local Website Optimization | | Smart_Start
2. If yes, do I need to limit the number of tags?
3. Do we need to block the indexing of yoast to those tags and categories for duplicate content issues? Any insight on the best way to optimize these blog posts with the use of tags or other avenues would be greatly appreciated.0 -
Ideas on creating location based service pages for SEO value while not worrying about local SEO?
Hello and thanks for reading! We have a bit of a rare issue, where we are a nationwide distributor but have a local side that handles all tristate area requests, the sales that happen via local basically don't impact the online side, so we're trying to not focus on local SEO but in a sense worry about abroad local SEO. We want to try the location based service pages, but not for every state, at most 5 states and inside those pages target 2 to 3 big cities. Is this a waste of time to even think about or is this something that can be done with a careful touch?
Local Website Optimization | | Deacyde0 -
Is the 7 pack counted as organic
Hi- When I look in the search console at the queries and see my average rank for words am I right in the assumption that this does not include the map packs? For some target words we appear in both the packs and the organic results. For some we appear in one or the other, for some we ONLY appear in the map pack. For the words where we ONLY appear in the packs, the search console does not show us ranking at all for our target word. Thanks for the help 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | lkilera0 -
Top Pages analysis showing wordpress site pages when it was in a subdirectlry
My word press site used to be at morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding I moved my site from /Wedding to the root domain three years ago where it is currently at www.morganlindsayphotography.com. Top pages in the open site analysis are still finding ONLY my old pages, titles and posts that were in the /Wedding - which are not even on my site anymore. http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2012/11/04/a-new-product-addition-to-weddings/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2012/06/22/brittany-reis-jason-mcclaflin-tiffin-ohio-wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2013/10/06/andy-mallory-cleveland-ohio-engagement/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/category/weddings/ Does anyone know why this could be happening?
Local Website Optimization | | morganlindsaycole0 -
Ranking after switching to Wordpress
About 2 weeks ago we have switched our website and our blog to Wordpress (our website was about 400 pages) our blog was originally on Sgopify website (the blog was about 800 pages). One of the reasons we transferred all the blogs from our account on Shopify to our domain is because we were told that this will help our ranking. We switched everything in the last 2 weeks to Wordpress under the same domain name. The only thing that was changed are the URLs. We also did a 301 redirect however the dilemma we have now is not ranking at all although before the transfer we were ranking 1st or 2nd for certain keywords on organic search. Does anyone know why is this happening? Thank you
Local Website Optimization | | SinaKashani0