Moving wordpress to main website - errors galore

[RyanKent]

Let me take a step back. We first need to separate this discussion into two parts: moving your blog to your new site (i.e. the 301 from oldblog.com to newsite.com) and then the merging of your sites.

For the 301s, my primary recommendation is you ensure any page is only affected by a single redirect. Always avoid the scenario where you redirect from the old site to the new site, and then from the old page on the new site, to another page on the new site.

For the new site, take a fresh look at it. Forget about the old site completely as it no longer exists. View the site as if you just inherited it and desire to make it the best it can be. The question is: how can you organize the content so it is easiest for users to find the right pages?

The answer involves basic website design from a SEO perspective:

• ensure each page targets 1-2 keywords or phrases

• ensure you don't have pages on your own site competing for the same phrases. Use internal linking (anchor text) and external linking (more anchor text) to help identify which keywords should be associated with each page.

• ensure each page has it's own unique title and description

It can be a relatively simple experience to merge an established blog with an existing site, but it can require a lot of effort. There are many factors including the size and structure of both the blog and website, along with the content of each.

If we could go back in time, I would advise you to optimize your blog and website pages for each key word phrase prior to the merger. Dealing with both the move and redesigning pages at the same time isn't ideal.

NOTE: I just saw you shared the URL of your site. I am now clear on your Tag pages. I have never worked with a wordpress site before so I will defer to the opinions of others. I would question whether you want those pages in search results or not. I would consider adding "noindex follow" to those pages, in which case they would not require meta descriptions.

I would suggest that topic be covered in a separate question, as I don't wish to give wrong advice.

[GardenBeet]

...well i find the 301 confusing so I would like to remove it....but my blog only got position 3 after it joined the main website - its not like the blog was powerful on its own - surely I need to manipulate the internal linking or changing the key term of the garden art blog category as suggested by Ryan Kent (response 1)? is that OK?

[GardenBeet]

...you are right ... I need to forget about my old blog .but part of the reason I posted this problem is to illustrate the complexities of moving from worpdress.com to .org - in fact I was prompted by Lara's questions and the following responses http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-are-the-issues-with-changing-my-domain

I just felt she was heading into a whole range of issues that were not being flagged - really if you ahve never moved an established wordpress blog to a .org shouldnt you at lesat declare that point to Lara - i am not trying to be harsh but just pointing out you dont know what you dont know

[RyanKent]

At your suggestion I reviewed my reply to Laura's question. I stand by it as being accurate. With that said, I completely welcome any other feedback and discussion on the topic.

When I share my time, knowledge and experience on this forum, I do it with two thoughts. Any advice taken from this site or any other forums falls under the "free advice" category and should always be taken with caution. What makes things work so well is if anyone offers bad advice, our fellow mozzers will usually jump in and offer a correction.

Lara's issues are not wordpress specific. She could have said blogger or any other blog software and the reply would be the same.

Again, sorry to hear you are having such a hard time. I know it's frustrating. I'm here to help if I can.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I agree with Ryan on many aspects of SEO.  In this situation, we diverge to a certain extent.

For me, it's the concept of 301 Redirecting any content you have on a site at all.  If you have the content, it should be indexed.  It's really that simple.  Because by redirecting it, you're telling the search engines it doesn't exist.  Which is not true.

So you're doing the redirect not because a page has actually moved, but for pure SEO reasons.  And that is, in my opinion, a direct conflict of SEO best practices tenets that you consider your users first and foremost, NOT the search engines.

In this view, if you're doing a 301, it's because there's something else improperly occurring regarding your SEO methods.  You're treating the symptoms, not the cause.

Treating symptoms and not the cause may work today, however over the evolution of SEO, it has always proven to be a myopic view and ends up not providing the long term value that only treating the cause can do.

So either actually delete the content you don't want, or move it - you can even make it a permanent page within the area of the main site - as a sub-link from the highest level page you want ranked.  Then you can do a 301 redirect, which is valid use of the redirect function.

Or leave it as is, and focus on building stronger content and signals to the pages you prefer to be ranked.

The only pages that exist on a site that should not be indexed are pages that include member area sign-in pages, secure shopping process pages, and similar pages.  And those shouldn't be 301 redirected - they should get the noindex, follow treatment if you want their on-page links to main site pages adding to the site-wide overall strength, or they should be noindexed in the robots.txt file altogether.

[GardenBeet]

Ryan - yep sorry did not mean to sound critical - apologies -

I found your sugesstions very helpful -

[GardenBeet]

ok thanks ...will think about this

[RyanKent]

I agree with Alan 100% on the re-direct.

My initial reply was lengthy and perhaps my point wasn't clear. I am still struggling on balancing my desire to offer good advice versus directly responding to the original poster's question.

My advice to Felicity is to keep both the blog page and the website page discussing Garden Art IF the pages are not duplicates and each offers unique content. In that case, each page should be optimized for different key words and the current 301 from the old blog site should be maintained.

My direct response to Felicity's question about her action of how the blog page was effectively removed by 301'ing the URL to her website page is...if you are going to take that approach, then re-direct the old blog page directly to the website page. Don't use a 301 from old blog page to new blog page, then another from the new blog page to the web page.

If I could jump into a time machine, I would re-organize the way I responded to this Q&A to focus simply on the best methods which should be used, and not talk the methods which were used. Live and learn.

[GardenBeet]

Ryan thanks for your help !!!!!

[AlanBleiweiss]

Ryan,

This is what happens here as you well know.  We're not being paid for hours of review, evaluation and consideration.  So sometimes we don't get that "let me sit on this for a couple days" opportunity to formulate a well crafted, re-arranged response...

[GardenBeet]

thanks to you too Alan

[LaraMcCulloch]

Alan & Ryan, I'm the Lara referred to in this thread. I'm wondering if either of you can recommend someone who can help me with the transition I need to make - i.e. move ready2spark.com and all applicable posts (currently my blog) to ready2spark.com/blog. My web designer is not comfortable with it and I'd like to ensure it's done correctly. Would you also mind letting me know a range of what something like this would cost?

Thank you in advance.

Lara

[RyanKent]

Unfortunately I don't have any good recommendations for you. I am working on building my first WP site so I can better understand how that popular software works.

I would recommend prior to merging the sites to look at your content from a SEO standpoint to avoid the issues Felicity encountered. Ensure your blog pages will not compete with your website pages for the same keywords.

The person who merges your site most likely will focus on the merger from the technical aspect of ensuring the content is physically located on the same server and redirects are in place. They would not be expected to consider SEO issues unless you specifically requested it.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Lara

two people I trust when it comes to WordPress issues are Andrew NorCross and Joe Hall.

Between them they get all my WordPress work (for my own sites and clients).  Cost is something you'll need to discuss with them.

[LaraMcCulloch]

Thank you, Alan. I will contact both.

[dignan99]

Lara,

Contact the person/company who HOSTS the website.  They should have the knowledge to do this properly with very few negative repurcussions.  That is how I typically move mine if I am working on a dev wordpress site.

Your hosting company should also have a decent backup system, and if the backend is run on Cpanel that would be awesome.

[LaraMcCulloch]

Thanks, dignan99. I'm currently hosting with Bluehost and their customer service is AMAZING. However, they haven't been able to help me with this issue since, as they say, wordpress is unique. That said, I didn't have all of this great information back then so I'll revisit it with them at your suggestion and see if they can help.

Thanks again for the suggestion.