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Switching site from html to Wordpress... confused about this

by Mabuhay Land
6 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
We are switching a clients site from a static html site to a Wordpress site. But when we do this we are going to lose some of the pages from the static site going to the Wordpress site.

Is this going to damage our SEO? I have heard it will and then I have heard it will not be. For example, the contact us page will have the extension contact_us.html. But that page will not exist.

Is there a way to keep that page but have it on the Wordpress site or should I not worry about those pages anymore. There are no links to these pages at all.
#confused #html #site #switching #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Abledragon
    Switching from an HTML site to WordPress will result in all your links changing because the WordPress URL structure is different from the link structure of your HTML site.

    Therefore setting up 301 re-directs from the old pages to the new is critical to avoid losing the links and other SEO impact of your HTML site.

    During this process you can, of course, rationalise your pages wherever you need to: if you can combine pages or simply don't want to transfer some pages to the new site then you can leave them to 404 (if you're scrapping the pages) or set a 301 re-direct on the old page to the combined page for ones where you're doing that.

    I've written a step-by-step process for moving an HTML site to WordPress - you can find it here:

    HTML to WordPress: How to Convert Your Site | WealthyDragon

    Cheers,

    Martin.
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    WealthyDragon - Earning My Living Online
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    • Profile picture of the author Mabuhay Land
      Wow! Thanks so much for the quick reply. Here is the deal, the site has no rankings at all. It is a two year old domain. There are no links to the pages that we would like to scrap.

      So would just scrapping those pages hurt much? We have done this with other sites and it did not hurt us at all. In fact with other sites we transferred to Wordpress the rankings skyrocketed.

      But I want to learn and know if just scrapping those pages really matters much with SEO because the pages we want to scrap have no links to them anyway.

      Thanks for the help.
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      • Profile picture of the author Abledragon
        Originally Posted by Mabuhay Land View Post

        But I want to learn and know if just scrapping those pages really matters much with SEO because the pages we want to scrap have no links to them anyway.

        Thanks for the help.
        If they have no links and you don't want to keep them for any reason then delete them and let them 404. In the long run that will help your SEO because Google will eventually de-index them which will improve the focus of your site (assuming you're staying on the same domain, that is).

        Cheers,

        Martin.
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        WealthyDragon - Earning My Living Online
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        • Profile picture of the author Mabuhay Land
          Ok, great! Thanks guys for the help. Much appreciated.
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  • Profile picture of the author webcosmo
    Some some time it will hurt. But things would get back to normal once the new pages get indexed.

    Best approach would be 301 redirect. Easiest is using the .htaccess method to specify the new urls for the old pages.
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  • Profile picture of the author managepro
    Originally Posted by Mabuhay Land View Post

    We are switching a clients site from a static html site to a Wordpress site. But when we do this we are going to lose some of the pages from the static site going to the Wordpress site.

    Is this going to damage our SEO? I have heard it will and then I have heard it will not be. For example, the contact us page will have the extension contact_us.html. But that page will not exist.

    Is there a way to keep that page but have it on the Wordpress site or should I not worry about those pages anymore. There are no links to these pages at all.
    You can maintain your links in Wordpress, to do the same follow these steps:

    1. Change the permalinks to /%postname%/ in Settings on the dashboard.

    Now when you create a post/page in wordpress your new links will be www.yourwebsite.com/name-of-your-page

    Name the pages the same as you old pages, and the slug on your post / page the same as your old link name.

    This way you will get all the links at the top level on your old site to wordpress.

    2. If you have sub-directories in your html site i.e.

    www.oldsite.com\abc\xyz

    then in wordpress create a page abc and then create page xyz, make abc as parent of xyz in the xyz post/page, then you will get your link in wordpress as www.newsite.com\abc\xyz

    Hope that helps....if you have more questions PM me.

    Thanks, Best Regards,
    Santosh
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