Safest Route to Get from Drupal to Wordpress
-
Hi all,
I have a prospective client who currently has a Drupal 7 site and they are interested in converting it to Wordpress (or simply building it new in Wordpress) and changing CMS. They would like to update the look of their site to make it a little more modern, but they are very concerned about preserving their SEO and rank, etc so they plan to keep the structure and urls, etc. pretty identical to what they have now with only minor cosmetic changes for the moment.
I want to find the best and most economical route for them to take for a change like this. If an actual conversion/migration is the way to go, then I also want to help them find a professional developer they can trust to do the job correctly as I am not a Drupal person.
I guess my question concerns what would be the safest and most economical route to preserve the SEO and rank, etc. that they have now?
1) Would that be an actual migration and conversion of their current site into a custom WP theme that's structured as closely as possible to the site currently?
2) Or, depending on the ultimate complexity of the site, would it be possible to leave out the step of migration altogether? Would there be huge cons or red flags to starting from scratch and manually building a custom WP theme while duplicating the architecture/links/urls, etc. as closely as possible to the current site? Anything else to be worried about if this is a possibility?
3) Or would you suggest some other way entirely?
Thank you so much in advance for any guidance or suggestions on this! They are really nice people and I just want to make sure they do this safely because they get a lot of business from their site and they are justified to worry.
-
This post is deleted! -
Hey again! I would be happy to give you a recommendation - it may be something my firm can help you with too. Please reach out to me at john@sixthcitymarketing.com. Either way, I'll be happy to help you find someone. Thanks!
-
Thank you very much! Appreciate the advice!
Now, I'm hoping there's someone out there who can recommend a professional developer for Drupal to Wordpress work like this... I've had some good luck on certain things with UpWork but it would be nice to have a recommendation for something like this.
Thank you again everyone!
-
Hey! I would go route #1.
-
Hi there,
Thank you so much for responding. When you say you would recommend a custom WP theme, do you mean with regard to the #1 or #2 route? If you could be so kind as to clarify I would be most appreciative. Thank you again!
-
Hey there!
The three things that you'll need to be concerned with in preserving SEO:
1. URL structure
2. Architecture or site map
3. Content on indivdiual pages
If these are preserved (which I recommend), then you shouldn't have any SEO issues when you move it to WP. I would recommend a custom WP theme. You can preserve the design but you may want to see how you can modify it to be faster as Google just updated their PageSpeed tool: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
I hope that helps!
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
-
Amp plugins + Wordpress = speed, rankings, results
Hello beloved, Been some time since I have been on, planning to return and help out and be bit more active. Need some latest thoughts and input, on amp plugins for Wordpress, and their results and effect on rankings? Thank you all in advance 🙂
Web Design | | vmialik0 -
Are wordpress themes like from themeforest bad?
Hi to all. Ok so as I read around the internet I see a lot of people who dislike theme forest and using their themes. I have a them from them, the Avada theme. Ok so they have made a TON of money. But would so many people buy the theme if it was that bad? Going forward, my question is, are wordpress themes a bad thing to do? I feel like its peer pressure to switch to a framework like Genesis. There are so many people who state that a framework and child theme is the way to go. But I am using this avada theme and having under 2.5 sec load times. A lot of people say the code is bloated and is horrible. I understand this and got a cache plugin that makes a huge difference. But I do want to learn and I do want to approach websites in a positive way. So if you have any thoughts on themes, please tell me your thoughts. I am no developer, so they seem to work, but is it at a price? Like bad seo and serps? Thank you chris
Web Design | | asbchris0 -
Is there any negative SEO effect when using Wordpress for your Blog?
I have a site entirely done in html, no CMS used. The blog page however, is wordpress. Wondering if this will effect us negatively in terms of SEO, having the blog that is linked to our site, a wordpress site. My gut is absolutely not, but the questions was asked....what do you think?
Web Design | | cschwartzel0 -
My site build in HTML has been badly hit this recent update and I have been toying on the idea of changing it to Wordpress
My site build in HTML has been badly hit this recent update and I have been toying on the idea of changing it to Wordpress. Would this help in my rankings? It seems the hit came only that last 2-4 days when business become much quieter. Frankly i have no idea on why the site fell in ranking all of a sudden. Been comparing to competitors and even a friend in the same industry and nothing makes sense so far (link profile, DA, PA etc) This site has been ranking well for 3 years prior to this. 2. My site has loads of content and visitors arrive from various landpages. But by changing it wordpress, the url of most of them would probably change. What should i do? 301 redirect all of them or is there a better method?
Web Design | | rester0 -
Wordpress Blog Providing SEO to Main Site
Hi, I recently started a very much "learn on the job" SEO position, transitioning from a copywriting background. We currently have a wordpress blog up and running (and producing some decent quality content too I hope!) at example.com/blog/ and a sign up page located at example.com (sorry, can't put the address right now) for a site that is being custom built as it's got some nifty software linking to back end systems. My question is whether the content on the blog will bring SEO benefits to the main domain or whether it'll just be for the blog itself? If the latter, should we navigate the blog onto the a separate page of the main site? Thanks so much! I'm learning as much as I can as quickly as I can, but somethings still get me in a little bit of a tizzy.
Web Design | | LeahHutcheon0 -
What pluggin translator is the newest and the best to install on wordpress. Thank you very much
What pluggin translator is the newest and the best to install on wordpress. Thank you very much
Web Design | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Wordpress or Joomla member function - HELP!
Does anyone know of a plugin/theme/template that would allow me to create a site with the following features: 1 section of content that is public 1 section of content that is only for registered members and that is hidden until you log in. A registration page A sign up form
Web Design | | MassivePrime0 -
Drupal and Wordpress on same TLD
As Rand says on the Whiteboards, "Howdy SEOmoz fans", I am obsessed with Wordpress, but wanted to spread my wings a bit and have been playing around with Drupal. I really like it. I had the idea for a new site that would have a Drupal set up (in the front end for pages and training) with a Wordpress blog on the subdomain or a directory for the Social Media integration I like to do with Wordpress. I'm just brainstorming a couple questions: 1. Would you guys and gals recommend sticking to just one or the other for SEO or does this not really matter as long as they are deep linked well? 2. Also, would you recommend subdomain or directory for WP? Have a good one, Jared
Web Design | | JaredBroker0