From Wordpress to CMS

Hi guys,

I posted something similar about this issue before, but now it's a bit more focused and relevant.

I hired a designer and programmer for my website and am about to drop wordpress and move to a new cms system (still not sure which one).

The new site will have a totally different setting arrangements, as far as buttons, menu, pages etc.

What can I do narrow down the SEO damages that will follow from that? I already have some rankings for keywords and it would be a shame to lose them - although it is inevitable, I know.

Your tips are appreciated as always :)

Sorry, don't really have any answers here, but wanted to say that i'm working on my first joomla site and have similar questions.

In lieu of an answer: I've always felt google's algorithm gave more weight to stuff/ideas that are the latest hot thing. First blogs, then RSS, now social networks, video, etc. seem to help improve a site's rankings. These open source CMS packages have a simliar possibility. I will add the same affect could be/become a negative, where the filter says "oh, it's another joomla site, spammers use those" (yes the filter speaks, has a personality and speaks to me at night :O )

That's a good question. I tried out the CMS JOOMLA, and then abandoned it. Not because I could not carry over the previous already indexed pages, but because it is easier for me to continue to use dreamweaver. However, I did find a solution for your problem!

Out of the different CMS I tried I liked Joomla the best. they have a plugin that allows you to make 301 redirects to your new pages in the back end administration. That makes you not lose the Link juice from your previously indexed pages. There are also plugins to allow both WP and JOOMLA. That might be an option you want.

Good luck, please post your results and url so we can se how you did.

If you are thinking of using Joomla! and are worried about SEO then a SEO plugin will help a lot. sh404SEF is one of the better ones but check out others - just search using the keyword SEO on the joomla extensions site.

I would give you a link but as this is my first post it won't let me!

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Ray

Interesting thread.

I've been using Wordpress for about a year now and am quite happy with it. My biggest concern is that my traffic seems to have plateau'd. I'm not sure if there are inherent limitations to using wordpress so would be interested in your reasoning for moving to an alternative CMS?

There is no holy grail for a good SEO site, especially when you intend to use a blogging software like Wordpress or a CMS like Joomla. First of all: A static HTML site which is developed carefully and with SEO in mind can't be hardly beaten regarding SEO and code efficiency. But when your site is growing or if you have a lot of site updates or many new pages on a regular basis then you may want to use Wordpress or a CMS. Wordpress has grown over the last years into a system, which is doing quite a good SEO job out of the box. I am working since three years with Mambo (what is a sort of dead now) and Joomla and it took a while until Joomla started to support good SEO practices. Where Wordpress is offering several nice out of the box features is the Joomla way to good SEO still a challange. It will take you months if not years until you fully understand how to tweak all relevant settings and components. A little mistake and everything is ruined. If you are NOT able to develop your own CMS templates don't go that way. All commercial templates and most of the freely available templates will not do the job in a perfect manner. Developing a SEO optimized Joomla template requires and solid knowledge of CSS and PHP and a good knowledge of Joomla components which are required to optimize your site. Calculate a development time of many months for a site which is SEO optimized. Once that is done you will love it. Using Wordpress is a reasonable first step away from static HTML and won't create so much headache. Joomla is quite popular but not the only CMS. Systems like Drupal and Typo3 seem to be much better for good SEO results but the learning curve is steep. I have developed some sites with Joomla on basis of a commercial template (I had no time for do it from the scratch) and the SEO results seem to be fine. See casinoberater.com. When I have one week free I will convert the site to my own template and then the results will be much better. I experienced that with some other websites (see casinoji.com, Google rank 1). Using AJAX and a little bit PHP can help you to develop an easy to maintain static website. Take a look to jQuery and use PHP include to modularize your content. That way you get some comfort of a CMS without having to deal with the disadvantages and inflexibility.