SEO experts what would you do?

[shimmer]

I created a Wordpress site a few months ago and right away it went to #4 in Google and was getting traffic. As it was a low competition keyword no backlinks were needed.

It stayed there for several weeks.

Then I noticed that page loading times were very long so I got rid of WP and changed all my pages to html and the site loaded very quickly.

Then my #4 ranking went to position 500.

When I type in my keyword in quotes the site still shows up and is at #1 but it still ranks at around #500 in Google so is there a penalty of some kind?

Should I abandon the site and create a new one or will the site return eventually?

[BigNorm]

You built a site in wordpress which ranked on Google with no backlinks. The load times were slow so you changed to a static HTML site which improved your load times but your site dropped off the first page.

But you still haven't tried backlinking it and was wondering if you should dump it and try a different one?

[octavyo]

No. You don`t need to abandon your website. If i was in your place i would switch back to WP immediately.

I recommend you to install a plugin called Wp Super cache. This plugin will significantly improve the loading time of your site.

It`s not a secret that a factor which Google uses to rank a website it`s also the loading time.

Also by it`s nature wordpress is way more SEO friendly than a regular HTML site.

Also install "All -In -One SEO Plugin" and make sure you put your keywords in the title and the description. This will also improve your SEO significantly.

That should make your website come back in the rankings. Then If the keyword have little competition i would social bookmark the site to give it a few backlinks.

I think this would be enough to recover your rankings. If you still don`t rank after that i will recommend to continue building a few backlinks from different sources (social networking, article marketing, rss etc)

I hope this helps you !

Good luck !
Octavyo

[DeskCoder]

I am by no means an SEO expert, but you need to redirect all your old pages that are probably now 404 errors. Sign up for Google Webmasters, and they will tell you every page that Google can no longer find, and fix those.

I would go back to Wordpress if you can. There is a lot of benefit, especially SEO benefit, when you use Wordpress.

[tobyddd]

Originally Posted by DeskCoder

I am by no means an SEO expert, but you need to redirect all your old pages that are probably now 404 errors. Sign up for Google Webmasters, and they will tell you every page that Google can no longer find, and fix those.

Was just about to say the same thing - either try and recreate the exact URLs or 301 redirects

Originally Posted by octavyo

Also by it`s nature wordpress is way more SEO friendly than a regular HTML site.

I'd say from an out of the box point of view - yes - but if you know how to produce site properly, there is no issue with coding in HTML as opposed to producing in Wordpress

Also - I prefer to use Yoasts SEO plugin - find it far better than All-In-One SEO plugin - IMHO

Originally Posted by octavyo

It`s not a secret that a factor which Google uses to rank a website it`s also the loading time.

It is a factor - but not as big as alot of people thing More an issue from a user point of view and them clicking "Back" because the site takes too long to load.

[Rankx]

Originally Posted by DeskCoder

I am by no means an SEO expert, but you need to redirect all your old pages that are probably now 404 errors. Sign up for Google Webmasters, and they will tell you every page that Google can no longer find, and fix those.

I would go back to Wordpress if you can. There is a lot of benefit, especially SEO benefit, when you use Wordpress.

Yep. Hit the nail on the head.

[webworm]

No this is not penalty ! It is just a google error.It will be solved soon.Hope so!

[seoparadise]

Hi,

I would switch back to wordpress. Did you test the website with another hosting provider? Maybe this is the reason that is slow.

Also you need some backlinks and OnPage SEO and it will back to the first page soon.

[freebusinessguide01]

Wordpress blogs tend to do better on search engines, so i think the problem started when you changes the site to a html page.

Search engines especially Google love blogs. So i will advice you to go back to wordpress and try to reduce your images or its size to make it load faster.

Also work on getting more backlinks

I know this will help, just try it.

[dburk]

Hi shimmer,

What you experienced likely has little or nothing to do with switching to static HTML verses dynamically created WP pages. However, there is something that could have caused a problem. If you changed the URL structure, page titles or internal link structure those things could have a serious negative effect.

Another likely scenario is that you have simply experienced the well known effect of QDF and it has absolutely nothing to do with your change to a non-WP framework. If this is the case, switching back to WP will not help in any way.

[Chris-]

I recommend switching back to WP, improving the speed, plus doing a decent backlinking campaign.

For WP speed, here's the best info I found on the subject . . .

11 Ways to Make Your WordPress Site Faster and Leaner

and as for backlinking, why not read my FREE report on the subject . . .

Uniquely Natural Social Bookmarking Service - FREE downloads


Chris

[wahidswebgarage]

The main problem is you screw up the urls that was indexed in google.Now all those links are giving 404 error when google tries to access them.It's a big issue with ranking.You can't have many 404 pages.You need to redirect your old urls to new one using google webmaster tools.webmaster tools will show you how many 404 page r there and you also need to resubmit your sitemap.Then do little linkbuilding.All will be back to normal.