Hi, I'm new to forums but my plain old boring HTML site is a bout 4 years old, very well index page rank of 3 flirted with 4. 98% of the content I wrote my self, and I've got pretty decent ranking for some of the keywords related to my site. I'm really tired of the long process it takes to updated content and add content, when I first built the site I was not smart enough to design I way so that I can do that, and after 4 years I believe the site needs a face lift. I have two other Joomla sites which I love, and I would like to remove all the content from my HTML site and slap it on a Joomla site. The domain will not change and most of the content will not change. So my questions is: How do I do that with out loosing page rank and SERP. I guess what I mean is I don't want users finding my site through Google then clicking on the results page and getting a page not found because the actual page has been moved. Should I set up 301 permanent redirects for all of my pages to so the searchers will go to the new page on the new site? And then when can I final delete my old pages? Should I also set up a redirect for my home page? Or should I just let Google find it and index it? I'm kinda of lost on what to do exactly, I would be very thank full any help that I can get.
I've done this several times, going from a static site to a CMS and although painful at first it's much easier to manage long term. My method basically follows this pattern:- 1. Install and Setup CMS 2. Copy existing content into CMS 3. 301 redirect all old page URLs to new content 4. Use Google Webmaster tools to see who is linking to your old content, ask them to change the link to your new content Obviously point 4 is the biggest headache but from earlier experience I found that the 301 redirect whilst great for redirecting traffic didn't always work great in SEO terms. Asking for those links to be changed is a better bet. Goog luck and I hope it works out for you. Paul B (ps assuming you are using all the SEO friendly plugins for Joomla, especially URL re-writing?)
When you switch over, you should definitely use something like an htaccess file to redirect any old URLs to new URLs. This will prevent most loss of page rank or SERP. Also, set up a sitemap for your site and submit it to the search engines to get your site re-indexed.
If you don't have a large complex site you maybe better of with WordPress. But know this, open source software has security problem by its very nature. So be prepared to update on a regular basis. Having said that a CMS site has huge advantages over a static site.
I have a very similar problem, and don't want to change to Joomla/wordpress because the risks seem too high - the site is established and successful as it is and I don't want to risk losing it all. Contacting everyone who has linked to the site over the last 3 years would be impractical, and I'm not sure 301 redirects alone will completely protect all the SERPS for the site - I really don't want it to be down even for a month or two. Although certainly 301 redirects will stop your visitors seeing 'page missing' and 404 pages. So what I've done is change to a 'homemade' CMS - keeping all the existing individual pages, but now incorporating PHP/MySQL and widespread use of 'php include' files to manage content and files that are common to lots of pages. Also style sheets/CSS etc Not as efficient as Joomla etc of course, but much more easy to maintain than my original 'page by page' HTML site. Good luck!
I am in a similar situation. I have a fairly well established site, but the design is basic old html...it would look much better in joomla. Fortunately all the external links pointing to my site are pointing to the front page which woulden't have to be changed if i switched to joomla. Still, the indexed pages would need to be redirected and that would be a project. You've just got to ask yourself, how much of an increase in revenue can you expect to gain from switching and does it outweigh all the hassles? Ofcourse you could create a sort of 'homemade' joomla site using php inserts and CSS (like the previous poster mentioned), which is practically what i have done. Ofcourse those things can only help you so much with your site cosmetically, but can really make a diffrence in how efficiently you can change your site's content. If you are unfamiliar with php includes, you should really look into them. They make life really easy for site owners that just use plain old html coding (no CMS). You can read about them here: http://www.wdzine.com/?p=6
I have upgraded my basic HTML site using php for the head, footer, comments... but I would really like to switch to Joomla so each section could have a rss feed, have a better membership sign up, newsletter etc... I really can't contact the over 9,000 sites that have links to my site to get them to change the links. Has anyone tried just adding joomla "ontop" of a site and leaving the old html pages in place with links to them from the sections pages in joomla?
Yes joomla is a good choice, you have a tough task ahead, but it will pay off. You should look into hiring some helping hands, Make sure they unerstand joomla first a lot of amateurs will struggle with Joomla i consider myself an advanced joomla user now, but it didn't happen over night. Anyway good luck, but might pay to get a few people helping you to rewrite pages, joomla supports multiple users so you can cut down your PR & traffic losses. You can use the wrapper mode, but these pages will lack the search engine optimization and also you may get penalized for have duped content, as you will have 2 lots of meta tags, and description and also pages names, ive always avoided that. best to play it safe. Good luck