Hi Guys and Gals, I've been building websites for a few years now, but recently noticed something. When I first started my audio engineer site (which is primarily a forum) I read lots of information that suggested that I put up a HTML page with a few images and several links to pages within the forum to act as the forums home page. This was supposed to confuse the search engines into thinking my forum was a regular website. And this seemed to work. Every few days I updated quotes and tid-bits of information on the HTML page. I got decent traffic and new members all the time. I also had a PR of 1. It seemed that the home page was working, but for some reason I wanted more stuff on the home page. I got a wild hair and wanted more freedom, and because I wasn't that good a creating my own HTML pages, I decided to use a CMS. I became pretty proficient at Joomla. The site looked attractive and busy, with ads and articles everywhere, but the only problem is that it seems like the search engines don't like the Joomla script. My traffic decreased, (as well as the number of new members) and my adsense dropped drastically. It seemed like visitors were clicking on all the links within the Joomla part of the site, but no one seemed interested in the forum anymore. Here is a link to how my original home page looked before I updated it to Joomla. (FYI-the image rotator is not working because I moved it to a new directory) Maybe it's me, but it seems like the less I give folks on my home/intro page to click, the more interested they were in my site. I also got better clicks on my ads before I went with Joomla. Any suggestions on sticking with the CMS or going back to HTML and why?
I took a peek at your before&after shots and ... well... you're comparing apples to oranges right now. The truth is, you haven't filled in your Joomla version and it simply looks unfinished and bare compared to your previous version. The reduction in content on homepage means that you also have a reduction in keywords, so yeah, your serps suffered. You reduced the number of ads as well. Less clicks resulted. You also reduced the number of links to your forum and now you're getting less forum visits. <<---Fix these things and I bet you'll see the results you're looking for. Your original site looked great --- why not simply copy that same format using Joomla? Done correctly, your visitors probably won't even be able to tell. And if you add a page title module, you'll get an added SEO boost. Good Luck!