Moving wordpress to main website - errors galore

[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.