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Will Google penalize a site by changing from html to Wordpress?

by TommyG
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a 4 year old site that I'm redoing. It was my first site and I set it up as a html site. I want to set up a wordpress site.
It's on the bottom of page 2 now but I don't want it to be penalized by getting sandboxed for making a major change to the site.

Will changing it from html to a wordpress theme have any negative effects on google rankings?
#changing #google #html #penalize #site #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author automaton
    Based on my experience, Google WILL sandbox your site for some time (in my case, it was 2 weeks) and not send you any visitors. Comparing to your site's age, my blog was very new. In trust rank age matters, so a 4 year old site would probably be sandboxed for a lesser time.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      That's crazy.

      If you change anything related to site structure, links, content management,
      etc., why would you think google would not re-evaluate your site?
      That's not a penalty. It's called putting your site where they think it now
      should now be. That is in now way, shape, or form, a penalty.

      I guess the sandbox-crazies are out in full force.

      Paul
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Like paulgl said, there may be a reassessment period, but you do not get penalized for such a change.
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  • Profile picture of the author TommyG
    Thanks for the replies. I am concerned about how much re-evaluation it gets but I guess a short term change is better as I do think it will be much better for customers and for the search engines when I'm done.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jordan Kovats
    Google loves Wordpress. You may actually come back stronger.
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  • Profile picture of the author hotftuna
    No- make the change but keep page url's the same.
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  • Profile picture of the author Abledragon
    The main thing to keep in mind is that your URLs will be different when you're using the WordPress platform, because the Permalink structure is different from the file structure that ends in .html (or .php).

    So you need to set up your 301 (permanent) redirects from your old pages to your new pages carefully. If you do that and then resubmit your sitemap once your new site is up then you should not experience any deterioration in traffic from search.

    Here's an article that goes into more detail:

    Migrate an HTML Website to WordPress | WealthyDragon

    Cheers,

    Martin.
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    • Profile picture of the author justbringit
      No google won't penalize you because you are not violating TOS of google...
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    • Profile picture of the author TommyG
      Originally Posted by Abledragon View Post

      The main thing to keep in mind is that your URLs will be different when you're using the WordPress platform, because the Permalink structure is different from the file structure that ends in .html (or .php).

      So you need to set up your 301 (permanent) redirects from your old pages to your new pages carefully. If you do that and then resubmit your sitemap once your new site is up then you should not experience any deterioration in traffic from search.

      Here's an article that goes into more detail:

      Migrate an HTML Website to WordPress | WealthyDragon

      Cheers,

      Martin.
      Good point about the redirects! I think there is a plugin that changes permalinks from .php to .html so that may be an option too.
      The site only has 5 pages so there's not much to it and it will be easy to change over. I just wasn't sure if google frowns on major site structure changes for a long period of time.

      I guess the best thing to do is to test it.
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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgR.
    I just converted www.1UP-SEO.com from Drupal to Wordpress. A major change. Rankings actually shot up. You just need to make sure your links stay the same if you change your site and Google can access the old links.

    Otherwise there is nothing better than going with wordpress!
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