SEO when converting site to Wordpress

by DavidO
4 replies
  • SEO
  • |
I've found a WP theme I like and I want to convert my static site over to Wordpress. I understand that WP is easier to manage and also offers some SEO advantages.

But what about the short-term consequences for SEO? The Christmas season is my best time of year and I don't want to jeopardize my current SERPS, even if they improve in the long run.

What are the short-term consequences of converting a static site to Wordpress? Can I expect my SERPs to drop until the search engines figure things out and put me back where I should be?
#converting #seo #site #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author banless
    As long you create the exact same page names then you should be fine when you convert the site. For example, if your pages end in .html then make sure that your wordpress site will end in .html as well. Even though using 301's will keep your site from losing rankings, this can be risky since the search engines take their own sweet time picking them up sometimes. Since this is the best time of the year for you I would wait to make the conversion, this way if anything goes wrong you will not loose out on revenue.
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    • Profile picture of the author DavidO
      Thanks, banless. Following your advice, I checked the demo site of the theme I want to use. The pages do not end in .html

      Can WP pages be named so that they end in html?
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  • Profile picture of the author banless
    When you are ready to make the conversion use this plugin IntroSites Blog Archive .html Wordpress permalink on PAGES plugin, also you will want to change your permalinks to read like this /%postname%.html/ you can make this change under "Setting-Permalinks: custom structure" in the wordpress dashboard. Hope this helps, and good luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author TrafficMystic
    Personally I would leave it until after xmas, but what you could do is create a /blog folder off your static site and install wordpress into that folder and rank those inner blog posts...
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