What's the best way to switch over to a new site with a different CMS?
-
Is it better to 301 or to closely duplicate each page URL when switching over to a new website from an established site with good ranking and a different CMS ( Drupal switching to Wordpress)?
-
I would base this on the number of pages and your ability to get into the database of the CMS environments. Depending on how deep your link structure is, this may be a quick process. If you are able to map the fields correctly, you can duplicate the aliases with a little elbow grease. Simply export the main drupal content table and reconstruct it as a wordpress table, then upload.
If you don't feel like handling the MySQL for this, I would still recommend duplicating the aliases... 301's are very useful, but it does seem like their is a small bit of decline as the SE's reset your info.
Do keep in mind the your page code will also need attention. Drupal vs Wordpress in its rendering will produce different code. Your SEO capabilities are also going to be effected by the plugins that you are using in WP
-
Is it better to 301 or to closely duplicate each page URL when switching over to a new website
You will either duplicate the URL or you wont. There is not any "closeness" factor.
If you can duplicate the URL, you will retain 100% of your backlink value. Otherwise using a 301 is the next best option.
If you do need to change URLs, I would highly recommend taking some time to ensure your new URLs will be stable. Plan to keep your new URL for the next 10+ years even if you change CMS.
-
use tech free URLs (i.e. don't end your pages with .html or .php)
-
take some time to really think out your URL structure. The deepest pages should ideally be within 4 clicks maximum of your landing page. If your URL is /cars/ford/sports/mustang/gt/2011 and if each folder represents a click users need to make, then your URL should be adjusted. Perhaps /ford-mustang-gt/2011 would work.
-
avoid adding anything which may change in your URL. Your company name, a department name, etc. Mergers and other changes are frequent in today's world.
-
-
I believe they say you lose some link juice through a 301 redirect so ideally make the URL's the same. WordPress has a lot of easy to handle options with it's permalink structure to mimic most URL set ups. If your old URL's weren't very "seo friendly" then you should make better URL's on your new WP site and 301 the old to the new.
-
We recently had to do this too. URL's changed completely and it was a bit of a pain. It wasn't wordpress/drupal but 301's are the best way. Took a little while to clean up the stragglers too. But if you ensure you point all you can to the new pages your SERPs should carry over fine without penalty I've found. Get those new site maps submitted asap too.
-
Are you going to be on the same host? If you have 1000's of URLs, then 301 and old URLs you don't want to use to category pages. If you have a small site, just make the same URLs and don't 301.
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
-
Unsolved URL dynamic structure issue for new global site where I will redirect multiple well-working sites.
Dear all, We are working on a new platform called [https://www.piktalent.com](link url), were basically we aim to redirect many smaller sites we have with quite a lot of SEO traffic related to internships. Our previous sites are some like www.spain-internship.com, www.europe-internship.com and other similars we have (around 9). Our idea is to smoothly redirect a bit by a bit many of the sites to this new platform which is a custom made site in python and node, much more scalable and willing to develop app, etc etc etc...to become a bigger platform. For the new site, we decided to create 3 areas for the main content: piktalent.com/opportunities (all the vacancies) , piktalent.com/internships and piktalent.com/jobs so we can categorize the different types of pages and things we have and under opportunities we have all the vacancies. The problem comes with the site when we generate the diferent static landings and dynamic searches. We have static landing pages generated like www.piktalent.com/internships/madrid but dynamically it also generates www.piktalent.com/opportunities?search=madrid. Also, most of the searches will generate that type of urls, not following the structure of Domain name / type of vacancy/ city / name of the vacancy following the dynamic search structure. I have been thinking 2 potential solutions for this, either applying canonicals, or adding the suffix in webmasters as non index.... but... What do you think is the right approach for this? I am worried about potential duplicate content and conflicts between static content dynamic one. My CTO insists that the dynamic has to be like that but.... I am not 100% sure. Someone can provide input on this? Is there a way to block the dynamic urls generated? Someone with a similar experience? Regards,
Technical SEO | | Jose_jimenez0 -
New theme adds ?v=1d20b5ff1ee9 to all URL's as part of cache. How does this affect SEO
New theme I am working in ads ?v=1d20b5ff1ee9 to every URL. Theme developer says its a server setting issue. GoDaddy support says its part of cache an becoming prevalent in new themes. How does this impact SEO?
Technical SEO | | DML-Tampa0 -
What's the best way to integrate off site inventory?
I can't seem to make any progress with my car dealership client in rankings or traffic. I feel like I've narrowed out most of the common problems, the only other thing I can see is that all their inventory is on a subdomain using a dedicated auto dealership software. Any suggestion of a better way to handle this situation? Am I missing something obvious? The url is rcautomotive.com Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | GravitateOnline0 -
Site hacked, but can't find the code
Discovered some really odd words ranking for us in WMT. Looked further and found pages like this www.pdnseek.com/wll/canadian-24-hour-pharmacy. When you click it it redirects to the home page. The developers can't find /wll anywhere on the site. The pages are indexed and cached. Looked at the back links in moz and found many backlinks to our site from other sites using URLs like this. The host says there is nothing on the server, but where else could it be. We've run virus scans, nothing, looked through source code, nothing. Anyone with some idea? www.pdnseek.com is the URL
Technical SEO | | Britewave0 -
Site's IP showing WMT 'Links to My Site'
I have been going through, disavowing spam links in WMT and one of my biggest referral sources is our own IP address. Site: Covers.com
Technical SEO | | evansluke
IP: 208.68.0.72 We have recently fixed a number of 302 redirects, but the number of links actually seems to be increasing. Is this something I should ignore / disavow / fix using a redirect?0 -
What is the best way to use canonical tag
Hi, i have been researching this since yesterday and have looked at this subject many times before but still cannot get my head around it. i done a report on my site which was very useful, i used http://www.juxseo.com for my site www.in2town.co.uk and it brought me some useful information but part of that info was it was telling me that i should have on my home page a canonical tag which would improve my seo. Now i am using sh404sef for my friendly urls and i am using joomla 3.0 and when i approached the makers of the sh404sef to ask about the tag they said i would need to be careful of using it as it could damage my site and my rankings. i have read lots of information but still do not have a clear understanding behind it. can anyone please explain the best way to use this and should i be using where i may have some sort of duplicate page, any help to understand this would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
What is the best strategy for franchise companies when building local sites?
Hi, if you represent a national franchise, I have noticed that Dominos and others do NOT use local websites for LOCAL SEO, rather they use their own MAMMOTH sites with a store locator for the local stores with a few NOT keyword rich pages with very basic information. However, for LOCAL SEO, I have been thinking that using e.g. Hyperfranchise.com for the main domain and then e.g. buckhead.hyperfranchise.com or buckheadhyperfrnachise.com would be better for LOCAL SEO including Yelp, FourSquare and more.It will take time to rank for all local sites, but is that not better in the end than having e.g. 6 pages of content that are "local" on the main site? However, I have not seen any of the big ones do that, but that might be because they are so entrenched in their own OLD system that might be ranking well anyway for their local franchisees? Any comments, ideas, suggestions?
Technical SEO | | yvonneq0 -
What's the best way to deal with an entire existing site moving from http to https?
I have a client that just switched their entire site from the standard unsecure (http) to secure (https) because of over-zealous compliance issues for protecting personal information in the health care realm. They currently have the server setup to 302 redirect from the http version of a URL to the https version. My first inclination was to have them simply update that to a 301 and be done with it, but I'd prefer not to have to 301 every URL on the site. I know that putting a rel="canonical" tag on every page that refers to the http version of the URL is a best practice (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394), but should I leave the 302 redirects or update them to 301's. Something seems off to me about the search engines visiting an http page, getting 301 redirected to an https page and then being told by the canonical tag that it's actually the URL they were just 301 redirected from.
Technical SEO | | JasonCooper0