Moving a site from .cfm to Wordpress - How to keep the authority?

[alpen]

Hi guys,

My client has a site built with Cold Fusion (web pages end in .cfm) and we're moving them over to Wordpress (for many reasons), keeping the same menu structure and navigation.

Their previous SEO company was pretty awful, however, they did manage to establish some decent authority/backlinks for the website and its 20 or so pages.

My questions:

• I assume I'll want to do 301 redirects for each page, possibly by editing the .htaccess file?  Any advice on this?
• Anything else I need to consider in this move?

Thanks!

[goodlegaladvice]

Im sure wordpress like joomla has an addon for url rewrites essentially 301 is the way to go...

Get a plugin to make it easy

[webestate]

If you are simply migrating a site to Wordpress I don't believe 301 redirects are necessary.  All you need to do is make sure the same url structure is used.

Its basically like doing a website redesign.

Now if you are moving to a new domain:

1.  get the new pages live first.  Add canonical tags pointing old pages to new pages.

2.  Watch search results and see your existing ranking results move to new pages.  Wait until all significant search traffic has shifted to new pages

3.  take down old pages and replace with 301 redirect.

[edwardrj]

Actually, a 301 redirect can be avoided here, provided you maintain the same page/URL structure. You can use this WordPress plugin to generate the custom .cfm page extension and retain your URL structure to avoid hurting your rankings:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-page-extensions/

It would be best to avoid a 301 redirect if possible.

[webestate]

I agree with the above.  301 redirect.  Keep in mind that changing urls however will result in some traffic loss...the only question is how much.

The more 301s you have the more your rankings will suffer in the transition.

Do not move your entire site with just 301s.

If you are changing domain below might be a safer option.

[acs111]

Were just doing the same kind of thing with our own website.

Make sure you run the existing site through screaming frog and open site explorer. You want to make sure any incoming links are pointing to relevant pages within the new site. there are a number of plugins in wordpress to handle 301's but I usually start by adding them to the htaccess just because it keeps things a bit tidier.

Have you checked webmaster tools to make sure any broken links are addressed?

Also you'll need to add your Google analytics code to the new site. Maybe try Google tag manager if its a new site.

[alpen]

Thanks for all the help guys.

@Cardigan Media - This seems to be the best solution.

The website is about 8 years old and we're staying on the same domain, so don't want to lose those existing backlinks.

Cheers,
Steve