Changing static site to Wordpress - SEO?

[comatose]

I have a site with top rankings for many keywords and I dont want to lose them.
The site is just static now (php pages) but i want to change it over to wordpress.

I plan to use the same page names in wordpress through permalinks.

But will this still affect my rankings?

Since the pages are going to be the same redirects aren't an option i assume.

In short, will porting my whole site to Wordpress have an effect on my SE rankings?

 

[BrianL]

There are several factors in play, but to simplify the answer:

If you do not change the design, URLs, and content, there's a 99.99% chance that you'll be perfectly fine. You just need to remember to block the ?p= urls with your robots.txt file to avoid duplicate content.

If you change the design or content in the process of moving it over, it could go either way.

 

[jerxs]

Dude chances are if your converting to Wordpress there is no way your going to actually keep the same file structure and folder or directory structure, just make sure you 301 redirect all old to new, I recently did the same with a site of mine, but all pages were .html, I redirected all html to Mydomain.com and havent lost any traffic or ranking.

 

[comatose]

The design will be changed of course. It will be a wordpress theme.

It will appear to be the same file structure to the se's.

At the moment its simple:
domain.com/page.php

All my pages are like that. I'll be using permalinks to keep that exact same format (ie I'll be using %postname% and the post name will be the same as the old page file name).

I just dont want to jump into this if theres a big chance of losing the rankings.

Hmm so how can i redirect from the current domain.com/page.php to the new domain.com/page.php ?
As far as i know thats not possible (or necessary).. ?

 

[NoelKuhl]

If they're the exact same name: domain.com/page.php
there's no need to redirect

 

[domokun]

Agree with everyone else.

If you're current site is like

example.com/page-name.php

and you'll be setting up the wordpress site to output like

example.com/page-name.php

then you don't need to worry about redirects.

if, however, your wordpress site will output like

example.com/category/page-name.php

then you need to redirect the old page (example.com/page-name.php) to your new wordpres page (example.com/category/page-name.php)

As for page content, thats quite tricky. Wordpress doesn't naturally support mets descriptions/keywords (and there titles aren't always great either). If you're using them on your current site then be sure to look for some meta plugins.

similarly, if you're using headers and bold tags etc make sure you continue to use them in your new design.

Content palcement (ie. where the content actually sites in the code) isn't that important unless it sits at the top in your current design and will be at the bottom in your new design. If they're both somewhere around the middle (most likely) then you need not worry.

The only other thing I would suggest is, having switched over, try to build some more links to your site. These should help counter any minor seo mistakes.

 

[comatose]

Thanks domokun, good advice.
I still haven't taken the plunge..