I'm considering a move to a new CMS. The CMS requires article ID's within the URL. So for example, I cannot have www.mysite.com/blue-widgets using the new CMS. I have about 10 or so pages that are ranked well with URL's like the above and I'm hesitant to move to the new CMS due to the URL changes -- and the added article ID that would be present in the URL. Would a potential workaround be to create static HTML pages? Outside of not changing my current CMS, what would be the best way to retain my URL's and my rankings.
You may want to give some indication of what CMS you are considering in order to get a better answer. You can 301 redirect the old page/directory to any new URL you need to one you know which CMS you are using. You may take a short term hit but the indexing should continue. Static might be an option depending on what you are moving from and to.
I currently use a WordPress component within Joomla. The pages I'm referencing were created in Joomla. I'm thinking of moving to vBulletin 4's CMS.
I don't know much about either of those. I just converted from static site to DB and mod-rewrite for one of my sites. I had less than 50 indexed pages. Start by compiling a list of all your indexed pages. Save that list in notepad. The next step is best done on your local machine using a local web server. Install your new script and move everything over to the new format. Create a list of all the new urls by browsing to each page and store them in a different notepad file. Make a back up copy of each of the files. Then working in a third file get each old url and the new one on the same line. Then write a RedirectMatch permanent for each of those URLS into the .htaccess file for the new script. There might be a quicker way using regex line but I can't tell you how. After about 6 months online those redirects will not be needed unless you have links from other sites going to one of the old pages. The .htaccess file you use on your local machine will be different from the one you upload because the destination URL (new one) must always be in full http:// sitename/directory/filename format
Thanks for your reply, but I think you misunderstood my post. I am aware of setting up 301's through .htaccess. My concern is whether or not changing the underlying code of a page from Wordpress to static HTML will affect rankings. The new CMS would append an ID to the URL, so I'm not keen on modifying a very SEO friendly title, despite a 301. Hence, my thought was to create static HTML pages for those highly ranked, pages.
Right. I did misunderstand. Keep the new static name exactly the same as whatever it was. As long as the page is found on the same domain with the same name and content you should see no changes. I don't do much WP so I really don't recall which rewrite method it uses. The only place you might get into a problem is if your old urls have no file extension. Then you might have to use rewrite to change fileneame.html to /filename/