My experience moving from HTML to Wordpress, 301 and new domain name

[Canuckystan]

There are always folks asking about SERP effects of moving to Wordpress, using 301 and changing domain names.

Well I just finished the big task of doing all 3: Html to Wordpress, 301'd the entire site plus over 300 blog entries, and changed domain names to an exact match URL.

RESULTS?

First week - scary! Gone from Google for the most part, no traffic, eek!

Second week - Whew! Coming back in a big way, moving up the pages, matching my ranking from before the change.

Third week - Wow! Better SERP results across the board, Google Webmaster shows all 2700+ links to my new site, 301s resolving. Now on first page of Yahoo with exact match URL (Yahoo loves these things!). Exact match gave a little boost on Google but not nearly as much as I expected. Comments on blog coming in again.

Big difference is that a lot more of pages seem to be coming up in Google rather than just my home page as before. Could be Wordpress SEO plugin, not sure, but the content didn't change between sites.

All in all, very worth the trouble of doing it. And Wordpress is sooo much easier to manage and update.

[eljeffe77]

Yikes

I've only got ONE html site left in my arsenal (Record Online Media)

It was one I built 3-4 years ago, I dont do much with it and it does fairly well.

I was thinking of just outsourcing on odesk to have somebody convert it for me or something. How long did your entire conversion take?

Thanks for sharing this

jeff

[Canuckystan]

Conversion took about a week of slogging (not full-time but a decent chunk of the day) just to deal with all the little technical issues: 301's not resolving (fix it), 404's (fix them), formatting issues on new site (fix those), blog comment system not working (fix that)...you know how it goes, a million tiny cuts.

Originally Posted by eljeffe77

Yikes

I've only got ONE html site left in my arsenal (Record Online Media)

It was one I built 3-4 years ago, I dont do much with it and it does fairly well.

I was thinking of just outsourcing on odesk to have somebody convert it for me or something. How long did your entire conversion take?

Thanks for sharing this

jeff

[VladWorks]

Congrats on the move...The benefits are endless!

Glad to see you got your rank back and then some.

I bet that week out of the search engines was scary as heck!

[Canuckystan]

The first week was very scary, I thought I'd made a huge mistake and was already thinking about how I could undo everything!

Lesson is to be patient, do things rights, and the search engines will love you again.

[RevSEO]

Ya - changing/moving websites or updating them to a different CMS can be very concerning especially when you see drops in rankings like you experienced.

This is a good walkthrough of a similar experience I had when changing my sites structure/CMS. Sounds like you covered all your bases, and like you said, Wordpress is worth it in the long run because of how easy it is to manage.

[BarryWheeler]

I've just gone through this one two websites. It's a scary thought when you suddenly lose all your traffic! Eeeeeep was more than the word I used.

I did it just before the last Google update as well, and while not something I was overly concerned about, Google nailed the site big time ... however, with their quick fix update just a short while afterwards, boom ... all back, all link juice passed and back in business.

Great job! Just shows how great planning pays off when moving.