Can I change my site from html to WP without losing Google rank?

6 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
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My site, Sailingmates Sailboat maintenance is an html site that I built several years ago.

I would like to change the site to a WP based site and I'm not sure how to do this. I am fairly competent in WP when I build a site from scratch, including themes, plugins etc. but this proposed changeover worries me.

The reason for my concern is that many pages on Sailingmates are ranked on page 1 on Google for their keywords and I don't want to lose these rankings.

I would appreciate any advice on how to make this changeover and how to ensure I keep my Google rankings.

Thank you

Peter Reuter
#change #google #html #losing #rank #site
  • Profile picture of the author msu
    I think the only solution to use htaccess redirects. For example, when you recreate your
    "Sailing downloads index.htm" in WordPress, the new permalink will be "sailing-downloads", so you will need to use an htaccess file to tell browsers that spaces are now a - and to lose the "index.htm" part.
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  • Profile picture of the author JezWebb
    MSU is right - redirecting even just the most important pages would be a wise investment of time. By important, I mean not only the ones that are key landing pages, but also those that have the most in-links.
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    • Profile picture of the author Karen Blundell
      yes, another one agreeing with MSU.

      it's not that hard to do
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  • Profile picture of the author Abledragon
    Yes - you can preserve your links and rankings but, as the others have said, you must implement the page-to-page redirects.

    This article goes into a bit more detail and sets out some other things to think about, plus it links to another article that sets out the step-by-step process you need to go through:

    Migrate an HTML Website to WordPress | WealthyDragon

    Cheers,

    Martin.
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    • Profile picture of the author ozesailor
      MSU, JezWebb, Karen and Martin,

      My thanks to you all for taking the time to reply and help me.

      Martin, your link is exactly what I need - thank you.

      Peter
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  • Profile picture of the author tracehaskins
    I have done this many times and it's not a problem. Definitely follow the advice the others have given you by redirecting old URLS to new URLS with htaccess. That, combined with the new page content remaining relatively the same (including Title, Header, etc. tags) you'll be good to go instantly.
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