Will changing content managment systems affect rankings?
-
We're considering changing our content management system. This would probably change our url structure (keep root domain name, but specific product pages and what not would have different full urls). Will our rankings be affected if we use different urls for current pages? I know we can do 401 redirects, but anything else I should consider?
Thanks,
Dan
-
Thank you very much.
-
Thanks for the response. My main concern was the loss of rankings. I thought the change in URL's may negatively affect rankings.
-
When you move to a new CMS there could be changes in your.....
-- page URLs
-- title tags
-- onpage optimization markup
-- persistent navigation
-- anchor text on persistent navigation links
-- category, page, tag, etc treatment
-- other changes
If you are planning to move to a new CMS your goal should be to kick your SEO up a notch instead of worrying if you are going to lose something. If you are in fear of loss then that is the call for more study or to have a professional CMS and SEO expert review your plans for moving the site or even do the move for you. The price might not be as high as you think.
Don't move your site thinking that you are taking a risk. Move your site with a plan if upping your game.
-
Hi Dan,
Changing your content management system is among the most common processes to affect search visibility. However, there are definitely ways to change your CMS while minimizing the chance of losing ranking. 301 redirects need to be used to change your old URLs to new ones, while top referring link sources should be analyzed and perhaps contacted for notification of the new URL, so your inbound links won’t be affected. Pages which cannot be mapped need custom 404 error pages, preferably with a user-friendly message to let visitors know the status of the page. Once your new CMS system is in place, make sure you pay close attention to your analytics for broken links and 404 errors so these can be dealt with immediately. Keeping all this in mind, and referring to TopRank’s blog post for further understanding, will help keep your rankings secure while you update your website.
-
I think you mean 301 redirects. The best way to not lose any rankings at all is making sure each URL has a 301 redirect to the new URL. Otherwise, all your links will just return an error.
Usually this is the best way to ensure link juice is being passed to your new URLs. It is tedious but needs to be done.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Changing Platforms & HTTPS Same Time
Hi Everyone, We know this is a bad idea. Our owner purchased another website/company and we plan on moving it to Shopify. The site is a very old (not been updated in 4 years) Able Commerce site. My developer whom has been doing this for years with me couldn't get the current host to work with us in order to move the site to https. Looks like we would actually have to spend a lot of money to update the site in order to. So my question is this. If we move the site over to Shopify, they make it https right away. I am out of luck trying to redirect http pages to specific https pages? Jeff
Web Design | | vetofunk0 -
Footer links on my site... bad for passing page rank?
i've been told that it is possible that google discounts the weight or page rank passed in footer links of websites and my website has the navigation to many of my pages in the footer of each page. My whole website is about 20 pages so each page has links to the 5 most popular pages at the top and the rest of the links are in the footer of each page. Am i losing page rank by having these links in the footer? Should i make my navigation different? I have lots of articles on my site so i thought it might be not only helpful to my readers but give my pages an seo boost if i placed in context links in the body of my articles to other pages of my site. Does this sound like a good idea? Thanks mozzers! Thanks mozzers!
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Content thin for new home page been told to change it? any suggestions?
Hi guys, I'm newbie.... I have been told that my home page is content thin, and if I want to rank really well in the search i need to have more relevant content on my homepage - the site is only new 2months and I can see we are now at 39th place in the search, if i make changes to the home page design and add more content will this effect this current ranking?
Web Design | | edward-may0 -
Managing website content/keywords for wordpress site
We are in the midst of redesigning our website and have been working with freelance blog/content writers to increase the unique content on our site. We are finding it increasingly difficult to manage the topics/keywords as we continue to expand. Googledrive and google spreadsheets have been our primary tools thus far. Can anyone recommend a good tool that would allow us to manage content and blog posts for our site?
Web Design | | Tom_Carc0 -
Is it important to keep your website home index page simple to rank better?
My website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ markets holiday cottages and it's grown from my own singular cottage into a small letting agency and I used to rank at best number 3 for the short tailed keywords like Whitby holiday cottages with its drop-down to position 10 on Google.co.uk. So this week I was looking for a UK business to help me improve my rankings and the first thing they said was my home page is detrimental with the listing too many conflicting info with it advertising all 12 properties on it. They suggested a door entry page into the site keeping it simple but when I run it through the analysing tool here on Moz for "Whitby holiday cottages" as an example it came out looking okay. I do the usual things of title tags and meta descriptions for my keywords etc any suggestions or advice would be very welcome thank you Alan
Web Design | | WhitbyHolidayCottages0 -
My site build in HTML has been badly hit this recent update and I have been toying on the idea of changing it to Wordpress
My site build in HTML has been badly hit this recent update and I have been toying on the idea of changing it to Wordpress. Would this help in my rankings? It seems the hit came only that last 2-4 days when business become much quieter. Frankly i have no idea on why the site fell in ranking all of a sudden. Been comparing to competitors and even a friend in the same industry and nothing makes sense so far (link profile, DA, PA etc) This site has been ranking well for 3 years prior to this. 2. My site has loads of content and visitors arrive from various landpages. But by changing it wordpress, the url of most of them would probably change. What should i do? 301 redirect all of them or is there a better method?
Web Design | | rester0 -
Changing Links that Show Up when I Google Brand (Site) Name
Hi SEOmoz Community, A quick question for you all. I've added an attachment for reference. When I google my brand name, say for example, Applied StemCell, I see six links as well below the description. Oddly though, these links seem to be chosen at random, or at least I'm not sure how Google decides on them. When I click on one of the links that is the company's name, Applied StemCell it brings me to a PDF document! Is there any way I can choose which ones to display there? Thanks! OF2oVVN.png
Web Design | | swzhai0 -
Minimising duplicate content
From a minimising duplicate content perspective is it best to create all blog posts with a single tag so google doesn't think the same post being returned via a different tag search is duplicate content. I.e. the urls below return the same blog post; or doesn't it matter. for example http://www.ukholidayplaces.co.uk/blog/?tag=/stay+in+Margate http://www.ukholidayplaces.co.uk/blog/?tag=/Margate+on+a+budget are the same posts... thanks
Web Design | | JonAcourt0