Impact of website redesign when changing to wordpress

[arainey007]

Agency designed website and not sure what platform was used. Are now working minor redesign of site but wants to do so in word press. I don't have any problem with word press but don't want to start over ranking for key phrases. I don't want to change URL from mysite.com for the home page. What is the right way to make sure this is done correctly. I could not find a resource on the site. I don't mind researching this but am not sure what to search for to find info. Thanks

[RyanKent]

Hi Alan.

I would like to help but am really unclear on exactly what you are asking. I understand you are migrating a site from an unknown platform to WordPress.

I don't understand what you mean when you say "but don't want to start over ranking for key phrases."

You can definitely keep your mysite.com URL for your home page with WordPress.

If your questions are specific to WordPress, I would recommend asking on wordpress.com or wordpress.org sites. There are several SEO plugins specific to WordPress which can help manage URLs. Yoast is a very popular one.

[arainey007]

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I am not an seo. I just try to keep up with the topics a little bit so as,owner, I can make sure we are maximizing search spending. My question is when the new site goes up, what happens to the old pages that the google bots have indexed and made assessments regarding ranking. So based on links etc to those old pages there is a certain ranking for words that we are making to the 1st page and that I don't want to move down 40 or 50 slots because it is a new page. So, is there any thing I need to make sure that the design agency does regarding the old pages to make sure that any rankinking juice or whatever transfers to the new corresponding redesigned page. I don't want google sending people to the old pages but the new while i want those new pages to step into our 1st page slot. Does that make sense. Should we use redirects? Or is that not necessary?

[RyanKent]

Thank you for clarifying Alan. The solution depends on your migration plan.

Option 1 - If you are keeping the same domain name (mysite.com) and your URL structure remains the same, there is absolutely nothing you need to do. You are replacing your old page code with new WordPress code.

Option 2 - If you are moving to a new domain (newsite.com) then your web pages should be 301 redirected to the most appropriate page on the new site. If the URL structure is remaining in tact, this redirect can be made with a single command.

Option 3 - If your URL structure is changing, then each page from the old site would need to be 301 redirected to the new URL.

The redirect will ensure 90%+ of your page's link value is retained. Depending on the popularity of your site it may take a month for Google to reindex all of your site's pages. During that time some results may bounce in search results. Once a month has past, your pages should settle to around where they were before.

Normally a site change like this is done to improve the site in some aspects. The improvements from the change should offset the minor loss of link juice.

I would also share it is important to have experienced, competent developers working on your site. I have seen migrations which were outstanding, and others which were so bad the entire site needed to be completely reworked from scratch. You should obtain a detailed analysis of the quality checkpoints for your new site.

Good luck.

[seoug_2005]

Hi Ryan,

"Option 3 - If your URL structure is changing, then each page from the old site would need to be 301 redirected to the new URL."

Supposing there are 25 pages in the old site, then shall we have to mention each page in .htaccess file for redirection.

[RyanKent]

In a worst-case scenario, yes.

A regex expression would need to be written to map the old urls to the new ones. Depending on the changes made to the URLs, a single expression can cover multiple or even all URLs.

[seoug_2005]

Thanks. What would be the regex expression if i were ro redirect 25 pages to new site, without changing the extension and the site is on Apache server. Will regex expression take care of redirecting to multiple pages ( 25 in this case )

[RyanKent]

I am not entirely clear on your question and I am not a regex expert. I muddle through and get the job done as needed.

Basically you would write the code based on the old URL and the new URL. The expression says to replace www.oldsite.com with www.newsite.com in any URL.

[seoug_2005]

"A regex expression would need to be written to map the old urls to the new ones" I was interested in knowing about this. Thats why i asked the question.

[RyanKent]

An example would be on an Apache server with mod-rewrite enabled

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The above 3 lines of code would be placed in the .htaccess file on the old web server. Replace the newdomain URL with the actual address of your new domain.

An excellent page which I would suggest bookmarking: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

[seoug_2005]

Many thanks Ryan.