Move HTML Site to WP without Loss of Page Ranking

I would not take down the old site for several days. Leave it up and running.

Develop your new site either locally on your desktop or on another server.

When you are ready migrate to you new production server if required, but do not switch DNS just yet.

Change your local host file to point to your new server to do your last minute checks – and when happy switch DNS.

This means there is no downtime for Google to go ‘hey that page has gone, I’ll de list it )

In terms of permalink, site structure, match that exactly.

In terms of HTML try and match that as close as possible, certainly in terms of headings.

In terms of performance, it is likely that your static site is fast as there is no database, make sure your new hosting is adequate for you needs in terms of speed and use caching and or CDNs where appropriate to try and match performance.

It may well be worth creating a staging.yourdomain before going live, so you can use third party speed tools to compare your WP build with your static sitebefore switch over.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 12 months ago by Alan Fuller.

You cannot match URLs exactly. Your current site URLs have .html or .htm file name extensions. WP permalinks have no file extensions since it’s a CDN. What you do want to do is closely match all of each URL except the .html|.htm so a single .htaccess redirect directive can handle all requests. Be sure the redirect returns a 301 status (permanent change). IME the page rank will get inherited through 301 redirects.

It is totally possible to have permalinks that end in .html ( or .php ) it is often done.

For posts it is easy you set it up in permalinks – custom permalinks

For pages it require a little bit code of filtering on the page_link filter.

I expect there probably are plugins that can do this too.

There seem to be a lot of technicalities associated with not only preventing loss of SE ranking but also moving the existing content to WP.

Would it be workable to register a new domain, build the new site there, and redirect all static HTML pages to that new website? I would then orphan the old site and publish all new content only to the WP one.

Questions. Upon visiting the old HTML, would the SE’s see the new content on the WP side and, going forward, factor this into the ranking of page names associated with my old HTML domain name? If so, could I remove all content from the HTML site to avoid being penalized for duplication? IOW just leave a shell for forwarding purposes?

Sloppy I am sure, but more in line with my limited coding abilities. I guess what I am looking for is the “easiest”, rather than most correct, functioning solution. At some future date, I could outsource a proper conversion.

Yes, there are all sorts of possibilities. What I’ve done in similar situations is as I suggested previously. Setup my WP permalinks so that they all can be redirected to with a single (or very few) .htaccess directives, returning a 301 status. RedirectMatch is actually pretty powerful since it processes regexp. Alternately, rewrite rule sets can accomplish almost any sort of logic you need if redirect directives alone don’t make the grade.

.htaccess directives can be intimidating and frustrating. Same can be said for any coding solution if it’s new to you. If your directives do require regexp, you can pre-test and refine your regexp at sites like regexr.com.

If you do want to change domains, do it for other reasons besides dealing with page rank. Better marketing or something. If you do do this, you certainly need 301 redirects on the old site to transfer any SEO juice. Thus the old pages no longer have a purpose and there would be no duplicate content.

I agree permalinks can be made to look like .html files. IMO it’s more fuss than a simple .htaccess directive.

Yes, I was hoping for a less challenging non-coding solution. This is just a one-off exercise.

Maybe I will leave the HTML site as it is and insert a “visit our new website” link within the page header template. And/or redirect to the new domain through my web host’s control panel. Of course, neither satisfies my original aim of using the domain name for the new WP site.

Given the above “simple” solution, I would then need to address the duplication issue. However, I have heard conflicting opinions on whether or not duplicated content really affects ranking. Maybe someone here can clarify this point.

non-coding solution

Apologies, as when people post in the development forum I sort of assume that developing is not an issue.

The non coding solution would really be your first option, create the new site on the old domain. And then use a redirection plugin to do the 25 redirects you need to map the old pages to the new.

You do risks a drop in Google ranking, but Google is pretty smart and will likely recover quickly.

One reason for moving the HTML site and domain to WP is so in the future I can work on the site within the better featured WP platform.

Excuse me if I have misunderstood, but you seem to be proposing the opposite, i.e. work in HTML and redirect from WP.

If I just apply the old domain name and content to a new WP site, is Google perhaps “smart” enough to see that it is essentially the same site? Maybe my concerns about ranking are trivial?

You are right, you have misunderstood me.

I’m saying build it in WP

but your concern was loosing search ranking

to minimise that you need to map old pages to new pages with 301 redirects

e.g.

old site page -> 301 redirect -> new site page
———– ———-

mydomain/oldpage.html -> 301 redirect -> mydomain/mywp/mynewpage

as mentioned about you can do this in .htaccess but if you are not happy with the technical aspect there are plugins that do 301 mapping easily for ‘end user’

• This reply was modified 3 years, 12 months ago by Alan Fuller.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 12 months ago by Alan Fuller.

Thank you for all the relies so far. I think I now have the general idea on how best to proceed within my abilities.