"From old site to Wordpress - help?

16 replies
Im going to migrate my high ranking high traffic sites to wordpress sites because of the killer seo plugins available to me on a word press them.

My main question is do I take each page on my old site and create a PAGE on the wordpress site and then is it skip posts altogether?

Im trying to see where posts fit in to my site and I don't think they do - is this the common answer to a regular wordpress SITE that's not exactly a blog?

Thanks in advance

If some of you could tell me how you handle this for SITE purposes I would appreciate it
#site #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author BubbaJay
    I'm not sure I exactly understand your question - but you don't want to skip any posts - the content is probably what got your site to be a "high ranking traffic site". You can bring all your content into WP and do 301 redirects on the high traffic pages after looking at your analytics to see where the traffic was coming specifically.
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  • Profile picture of the author rosetrees
    That's certainly what I would do - use pages not posts. Make sure you use a custom permalink structure so the page names and URL paths are the same as before.
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  • Profile picture of the author mhdeaton
    Good tip Rose thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author nyapartments
    You can use either one. I understand pages and posts rank equally well on search engines. However, you can find different opinions on that. I use both in a few of my websites actually.
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  • Profile picture of the author azmanar
    Hi,

    I'm guessing that you have a lot of pages from your old site.

    What you need to do is to categorized those pages carefully. This means you have to group them into several categories.

    An optimum number of categories which will not mess up your WP would be 5 or 6.

    Once this is done, you write all the old site pages into new posts. For each post, set the category.

    Now how do you set them into your WP really depends on the theme you have selected.

    Most of the time, WP Pages are for these :
    1. About
    2. Terms of Use
    3. Privacy Policy
    4. Contact Us
    5. Site Map ( index of your posts based on category ).

    These Pages will appear as the MAIN MENU of your WP site at the top. Those 5 Pages are well liked by Google and other SEs.

    Now the next menu would be your CATEGORY MENU. Here all your categories will appear. And when anyone mouse-over a category, your post will drop down automatically. So you have to get a Theme that does this.

    This way, you WP site would not look messy.

    To make sure, all your posts and pages are SPIDERED & INDEXED WELL by Search Engines ( especially Google ), you have to use permalinks.

    It is best to set the custom structure of PERMALINK to /%postname%/ .

    To even be better SE optimized, use ALL-IN-ONE SEO PACK plugin. For each, Header of the post or page, make it so that the Title of the Post and Page appear first before the Site Title. Enter each page/post descriptions with at least 1 keyword in the beginning.

    After you've done all the above, create an XML site map and submit to Google Webmaster Tool. Or use Google XML Site Map plugin.

    And finally, you might want to re-write some posts for better SEO like having some keyword in the first para and another LSI keyword in the last para. Put some bolded sub headers in the posts, if possible using H3 tags.

    Finally, use pingomatic or pingler to ping your site and submit your site to RSS syndicators.

    I don't know whether the efforts above would match the popularity of your old site. But typically, sites gets indexed quite quickly when done right.
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    I am scratching my head... reading the OP and seeing that nobody asks the obvious question:

    If you already have a high ranking high traffic site - why do you want to mess with it? What kind of SEO "voodoo" you hope to achieve beyond the "high ranking" and "high traffic"?
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    • Profile picture of the author mhdeaton
      Its high ranking #3 to #6 for most keywords but I think I can do better.
      its 10 years old full of content and its time for a revamp. Thanks for the tips guys, I do appreciate it!
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      • Profile picture of the author Gail_Curran
        Originally Posted by mhdeaton View Post

        Its high ranking #3 to #6 for most keywords but I think I can do better.
        its 10 years old full of content and its time for a revamp. Thanks for the tips guys, I do appreciate it!
        Seriously, what makes you think switching to WP is going to help? It would make more sense to increase your backlinking activities to push your site up higher. Not to mention, it would be a lot easier.
        .
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        • Profile picture of the author mhdeaton
          There are some SEO plugins I want to take advantage of. I have evidence that with my old domain and my thousands of backlinks I will jump to the top quickly by incorporating my ideas. Simple as that - I may be wrong I usually am but when I'm right I tend to nail it if you know what I mean.
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  • Profile picture of the author mhdeaton
    Hey Azmanar do you know of some good ways to find such a theme? I mean if I find a theme I like how do I determine if I can catagorize as you describe?
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    • Profile picture of the author azmanar
      Originally Posted by mhdeaton View Post

      Hey Azmanar do you know of some good ways to find such a theme? I mean if I find a theme I like how do I determine if I can catagorize as you describe?
      Hi,

      Most themes can categorize as I described.

      The categories are lined up as a menu, horizontally.

      And you can also have it vertically as your left or right side bar by using the theme widget.
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  • Profile picture of the author mhdeaton
    Ok thanks can I make sure that my home page is content in which I want to remain the home page ? - In other words how do I avoid having the posts run one after another and avoid the BLOG LOOK?
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    • Profile picture of the author azmanar
      Originally Posted by mhdeaton View Post

      Ok thanks can I make sure that my home page is content in which I want to remain the home page ? - In other words how do I avoid having the posts run one after another and avoid the BLOG LOOK?
      Hi,

      You can set this up in WP easily. You decide where visitors will land first when they reached your site.

      When you're in WP Admin Dashboard, look for the SETTINGS OPTION. And then click on the READING OPTIONS.

      There you can select any Page or Post you wished to be your STATIC Home Page.
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      • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
        Originally Posted by azmanar View Post

        There you can select any Page or Post you wished to be your STATIC Home Page.
        Only a Page. Never a post!

        (WP uses capital P only for Pages in its documentation...)
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        • Profile picture of the author azmanar
          Originally Posted by Istvan Horvath View Post

          Only a Page. Never a post!

          (WP uses capital P only for Pages in its documentation...)
          Thank you for correcting me.

          You're right.

          Only Pages can be selected as the static Landing Pages.
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  • Profile picture of the author Istvan Horvath
    Only Pages can be selected as the static Landing Pages.
    Frontpage. Occasionally, a landing page might be the same as the blog's frontpage... although not necessarily. In my books the two terms are NOT synonyms.
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