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Will moving a static site to WP hurt my site?

by Scrambler
9 replies
I have a product review site that is currently an Xsite Pro static site and would like to convert it to Word Press. I still would like to maintain the look and feel of a static site. Searching the forums I determined that it is easy enough migrate a static site to a WP site, however I am not sure if making the move will hurt the site rankings or at least in someway set it back.

Through my own experience I found that both WP and static sites can do well if built right from the start. But I do have some serious concerns that moving from one platform to the next would hurt me in the search engines. Is this a valid concern?

Thanks
#hurt #moving #site #static
  • Profile picture of the author NewRiseDigital
    Whilst you might find some bouyancy when you migrate, in the longer term Wordpress is going to be a better platform for your site going forward as it's a much more dynamic platform and very SEO friendly (especially if you use the popular SEO plugins All In One SEO etc). Static sites really remain, er... static and search engines likes to see fresh content which WordPress makes easy. You'll likely find workflow benefits too which is always a bonus...
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    It depends on how you have the new wp site set up. Thanks to wp's versatility, you can replicate your prior site's architecture. There are no guaranters though.
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  • Profile picture of the author khooster1
    You will Suffer some ranking fluctuation in the initial stage.
    You got to use back the same page name, metatag, and header to avoid much SEO changes for the ranked-highly pages.

    These might take some works. You can easily outsource them out to elance,etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author Makis77
    Seo wise, if you redirect old urls with 301's to the new WP ones then your traffic and serp's wont change a lot and as time passes you ll enjoy even better placements.

    When it comes to design you can keep your original design if you know how to code a WP theme or hire someone to do it for you or as an alternative(which will work best imo) you can simple choose another WP theme from the thousands free and premium that are available(just google about them).

    As Simon(@InternetBusinessKickStart) wrote in the longrun(well it could be more like a shortrun) you ll get great benefits from the switch considering you can now update and administer your website easier, faster and more professionally.
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    • Profile picture of the author Scrambler
      Originally Posted by Makis77 View Post

      Seo wise, if you redirect old urls with 301's to the new WP ones then your traffic and serp's wont change a lot and as time passes you ll enjoy even better placements.

      When it comes to design you can keep your original design if you know how to code a WP theme or hire someone to do it for you or as an alternative(which will work best imo) you can simple choose another WP theme from the thousands free and premium that are available(just google about them).

      As Simon(@InternetBusinessKickStart) wrote in the longrun(well it could be more like a shortrun) you ll get great benefits from the switch considering you can now update and administer your website easier, faster and more professionally.
      Thanks for the information, I kind of thought that a simple redirect would work and not hurt me too badly. As far as a theme I am all set, I basically replicated a WP premium theme using an Xsite blank site template. I can just go out and buy the WP theme and go from there so visually would change very little
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  • Profile picture of the author bhuvananichi
    Not so, wp helps you to maintain your website effectively and its free also
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  • Profile picture of the author ArielT
    Originally Posted by Scrambler View Post

    I have a product review site that is currently an Xsite Pro static site and would like to convert it to Word Press. I still would like to maintain the look and feel of a static site. Searching the forums I determined that it is easy enough migrate a static site to a WP site, however I am not sure if making the move will hurt the site rankings or at least in someway set it back.

    Through my own experience I found that both WP and static sites can do well if built right from the start. But I do have some serious concerns that moving from one platform to the next would hurt me in the search engines. Is this a valid concern?

    Thanks
    Curious about the reason you want to move to wordpress, I have thinking in building in site in an static site so I'm interested in your opinion
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    • Profile picture of the author Scrambler
      Originally Posted by ArielT View Post

      Curious about the reason you want to move to wordpress, I have thinking in building in site in an static site so I'm interested in your opinion
      ArielT,

      I have not given up on static sites and don't think you should either if it makes sense for the type of site you want, However I feel the need to move this one. The site is a 8 page product review site geared toward a line of Amazon products. Unlike some of my other small product review sites it survived the last Google updates fairly well.

      But I learned a good lesson; I need to make these types of sites bigger and get some occasional fresh content. Word Press will easily let me add user comments thus hopefully giving me a steady stream of fresh content. If I stick with Xsite Pro on this project it means buying Xcomment Pro, which I don't want to do. Or it would mean installing a blog beneath / inside my domain, which for this site I just don't want to do.

      Lastly, I already use WP as a blog platform so I am familiar with it. However I really want to give it a try for building a more traditional looking site. From this standpoint its a purely education effort to learn one more way of building sites. I find it good to have lots of tools in the tool box.
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  • Profile picture of the author TanYaV
    You're right in two things:
    Google doesn't really care about the platform (but still, WordPress is very well fit for SEO)
    Migration CAN affect your rankings.

    There are some practices which help to minimize the negative effects. You carefully plan your migration and prepare for it, set up 301 redirects on the most important pages and also monitor afterwords for errors. Here's a post with more details on Migration SEO.
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    regards!

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