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Website rankings plummeted after moving from wordpress to static html site

by seamy82
19 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi

My website has lost its top ten ranking and has dropped off the face of the earth after changing my website from wordpress to static html. Can anyone tell me why this is the case? I have used swfobject on this website to provide alternate content for my flash animations and think this maybe causing a problem. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
Seamy
#html #moving #plummeted #rankings #site #static #website #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author alternatesword
    Did you changed the url structure of inner pages? if yes, this may cause the problem. Redirect the old url's to appropriate new url's. Also regenerate the sitemap.
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    Alternate Sword

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  • Profile picture of the author seamy82
    Yes, I did change the url structure. the page names are all the same but they now have extension.php on them. I have checked and it seems they are not redirecting from the google indexed pages to their right pages. How do I put a redirect on a page that no longer exists?
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    • Profile picture of the author ronrule
      Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

      Yes, I did change the url structure. the page names are all the same but they now have extension.php on them. I have checked and it seems they are not redirecting from the google indexed pages to their right pages. How do I put a redirect on a page that no longer exists?
      That's definitely the reason - the names aren't the same if you added .php to the end.

      Your old pages were probably something like:

      domain.com/page/
      and now its domain.com/page.php

      The "quick" fix is to make a folder called "page" and then move page.php into that folder and rename it to index.php - that will make it read as domain.com/page/ again.

      Other than that you would need to do a URL rewrite which is a little more complicated for me to explain, maybe someone else can tackle it?
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      Ron Rule
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  • Profile picture of the author seamy82
    I've used the quick fix but my page structure is going to be messed up looking. How long do you think it will take for my website to recover, now that the links work again.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

      I've used the quick fix but my page structure is going to be messed up looking. How long do you think it will take for my website to recover, now that the links work again.
      It will never recover until you fix all the 404s you created. If you changed the entire sites URLs, every single one of your internal & external links are now pointing to a 404 page.

      Your basically starting over. That's how important URLs are.
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      • Profile picture of the author seamy82
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        It will never recover until you fix all the 404s you created. If you changed the entire sites URLs, every single one of your internal & external links are now pointing to a 404 page.

        Your basically starting over. That's how important URLs are.
        There are no 404 errors now. I've checked all internal links on the website, as well as all links indexed by Google and they all resolve against the correct webpage. I've set up an error of my own for the pages that wordpress created such as author admin, uncattegorized etc that no longer exist, to inform visitors these pages have been deleted. What else can I do?
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by seamy82 View Post

          There are no 404 errors now. I've checked all internal links on the website, as well as all links indexed by Google and they all resolve against the correct webpage. I've set up an error of my own for the pages that wordpress created such as author admin, uncattegorized etc that no longer exist, to inform visitors these pages have been deleted. What else can I do?
          The links that matter are the links used to rank the pages in the first place. Since you've basically created a situation where your starting over, you'll have to sit back & wait for everything to self correct (Google finding links again (links that matter)). Assumes the links are actually fixed, including no external links pointing to 404s.

          After reading this I have no idea what your doing with your pages. If your not serving that flash content via xml, Google isn't seeing any of the flash content.

          I have used swfobject on this website to provide alternate content for my flash animations and think this maybe causing a problem.
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          • Profile picture of the author m00d
            Hi,

            If you host doesn't provide a easy way then you need to manually do a 301 redirect from the old url's to the new url's. This will fix your problems.
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  • Profile picture of the author ronrule
    How would it be messed up looking? It would look exactly like it did in Wordpress. A quick search and replace for page.php to page/ across all files would keep everything consistent.

    I don't think you should wait it out... it's a cleaner URL structure without the .php extension, and you don't know how many other sites were linking directly to your sub pages. If you don't want to do a 301 redirect for every single old URL, I'd put it back the way it was immediately.
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    Ron Rule
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  • Profile picture of the author seamy82
    Well you seem to no more than me about this. I've changed it all back now, so the urls indexed by Google are valid once again. There are a few urls though that wordpress creates which are duplicates of posts, do I have to recreate pages for these? Or can I put an error page in their place to show that the page has been deleted.
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    • Profile picture of the author JoshMcNary
      Will you explain why you chose to do this? What have you gained in going from WP to "static html" (wouldn't .php extensions indicate it isn't static html or am I wrong in thinking this?)

      I'm genuinely curious because it's a bold thing to do.
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      • Profile picture of the author ronrule
        Originally Posted by JoshMcNary View Post

        Will you explain why you chose to do this? What have you gained in going from WP to "static html" (wouldn't .php extensions indicate it isn't static html or am I wrong in thinking this?)

        I'm genuinely curious because it's a bold thing to do.
        I was wondering this too actually. If it's a speed issue, there are Wordpress caching plugins that do a great job, they basically make static pages (which the server processes first) and then when you update in WP it replaces the static page. WPCache is one that works this way I think.
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        Ron Rule
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        • Profile picture of the author JoshMcNary
          Right, speed doesn't seem like a good reason to do something like this... which still begs the question.
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  • Profile picture of the author ProSence
    As you are changing platform then this is a major change, allow some days to get it where it was, there many things which search engines have to index again...
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  • Profile picture of the author seamy82
    I'm not a web developer guys, I'm competent using html and css. A lot of the websites in my niche are static html sites and I initially put a wordpress site up with a template to build links to my site and add content. Now I want to start making money from the site, I wanted to place the website I have built on that domain. Installing wordpress on this site is step too far for me and thought it would be easier this way. The site is less bulky. It maybe was the wrong approach in hindsight.
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  • Profile picture of the author hbteos234
    what you need to do is to edit your .htaccess file and put in some code that will redirect yourdomain.com/page.php to yourdomain.com/page.html

    in other words, when someone asks for *.php the server will serve up *.html instead

    I do not recall the code to do this in .htaccess but you can easily google it. once you've put in the code then test it by going to yourdomain.com/page.html and it should work
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Will all the plugins for the WP-challenged, I'm sure there must be
      some plugin, fix, band aid, tool, for converting a WP press.

      I would have left the stuff up, just left that part orphaned,
      but still indexed. Custom 404's, etc.

      Paul
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      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author Dokemion
    Just do the SEO again...
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    Contact me for any SEO Services you need I'm glad to be of your service.

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  • Profile picture of the author seamy82
    Why would I be starting from scratch? The links to my home page resolve. The links to my internal page resolve to the right pages. No redirects have been used on this at all. I created folders and created index files the same as what was advised above. So if all my links are still linking to the correct pages, why would I need to redo all my previous work. This links, do what links are supposed to do and link to pages on my site.
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