Hello all 
I've been building my pregnancy site on Site Build It, and have been pretty successful with the static site. Many of my keywords rank pretty well, and I make a modest income from it.
I have found wordpress in the meantime, and really love working with it. I've been re-building my site into wordpress and plan on moving it all there. I know that using WP will make life easier for me and I'll have more motivation to work on it. ( been a little lapse lately )
I am going to be presenting the site a "site" and not really a "blog"
I've used all of the same meta tags and kept the URL's the same ( except it now reads .com/pregnancy/ instead of pregnancy.html
My main concern is SEO. I have a competitor who is using WP with the same SEO plugin I am using and beats me with much less content.
I guess I'm just a little nervous not that it's getting closer. The navigation will be a different layout, but I'm trying to keep the user in mind and make it easy to navigate.
I think I'm just looking for some other input as to this move and tips or suggestions.
My current static site is http://www.hip-chick-pregnancy-guide.com/
And my wordpress site I'm working on before I change the nameservers is
http://www.umbilical-cord-blood-info.com/
This second is not totally done yet, I'm still working on the navigation structure.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or comments
Your wordpress website is more easy to use. The previous one was complicated and boring. But the new one is not boring at all. But you can make your new website more beautiful by changing some parts of template and colors of it. Its just an idea. WordPress is a killer CMS for a site like yours. Good luck. Heather, you installed some SEO plugins right? Don't worry about your competitor right now. Focus on finishing your blog and making it just perfect and focus on getting higher rankings in the search engines a little bit later on.
Have you took a look in our SEO tip of the day sticky thread yet? There are lot's of good resources in there to look at. Try to learn as much as you can about SEO in your spare time and put it to work on your blog. You'll beat out your competitors eventually but worry about getting your blog fully finished first.
Using wordpress was a great move. Quote: Originally Posted by HipChickHeather
I've used all of the same meta tags and kept the URL's the same ( except it now reads .com/pregnancy/ instead of pregnancy.html
My main concern is SEO. I have a competitor who is using WP with the same SEO plugin I am using and beats me with much less content. Before you go "live" with your new site you need to setup 301 permanent redirects so you don't have to start all over. With the structure of the links being different from your original structure this is a problem. It can be fixed with 301 permanent redirects. All your incoming links and the search results links will then be sent to the new page. Eventually the search engines will update their databases and show the correct url in the search results.
See:
Basic 301 Permanent Redirect
301 Permanent Redirect
You have complicated things a bit more by changing the domain name but it's doable. Thanks so much for all the input,, but @HTML, question, I will be using the same domain name, I am only working under this domain while I build the site. My current provider does not have FTP access so I have to do it all by hand, article by article and image by image. The only change in the url will be like this
from:
http://www.hip-chick-pregnancy-guide.com/online-childbirth-classes.html
to:
http://www.hip-chick-pregnancy-guide.com/online-childbirth-classes/
Would you still recommend 301's for this type of change? This is something I will do and I agree is very important! If need be...
@Snakeair Thanks for your input, yes I will be adding the plugins once I go live, don't want do to that until then, right? Yes you need to do the 301 permanent redirects. Those are 2 different urls just like if you had changed the site from a static one to one that used PHP (has .php at the end).
Now, you mentioned that your host doesn't let you FTP. Can you even access the .htaccess file to edit it? the one I will be moving to, YES it does. Just not the one I am moving away from.
Thanks for this info, I've never done re-directs, so I'll be sure to read and follow what you sent! Reading now,, will I need to put in the .htaccess file all of my url's that will be changing? Or maybe just the pages where I actually "rank" on the SE's?
And once I do them, I guess the only way to "test" is to actually type in my old URL and see if it re-directs to my new URL? Duh? right?
Again, thanks for the help
I've been building my pregnancy site on Site Build It, and have been pretty successful with the static site. Many of my keywords rank pretty well, and I make a modest income from it.
I have found wordpress in the meantime, and really love working with it. I've been re-building my site into wordpress and plan on moving it all there. I know that using WP will make life easier for me and I'll have more motivation to work on it. ( been a little lapse lately )
I am going to be presenting the site a "site" and not really a "blog"
I've used all of the same meta tags and kept the URL's the same ( except it now reads .com/pregnancy/ instead of pregnancy.html
My main concern is SEO. I have a competitor who is using WP with the same SEO plugin I am using and beats me with much less content.
I guess I'm just a little nervous not that it's getting closer. The navigation will be a different layout, but I'm trying to keep the user in mind and make it easy to navigate.
I think I'm just looking for some other input as to this move and tips or suggestions.
My current static site is http://www.hip-chick-pregnancy-guide.com/
And my wordpress site I'm working on before I change the nameservers is
http://www.umbilical-cord-blood-info.com/
This second is not totally done yet, I'm still working on the navigation structure.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or comments
Have you took a look in our SEO tip of the day sticky thread yet? There are lot's of good resources in there to look at. Try to learn as much as you can about SEO in your spare time and put it to work on your blog. You'll beat out your competitors eventually but worry about getting your blog fully finished first.
Using wordpress was a great move. Quote: Originally Posted by HipChickHeather
I've used all of the same meta tags and kept the URL's the same ( except it now reads .com/pregnancy/ instead of pregnancy.html My main concern is SEO. I have a competitor who is using WP with the same SEO plugin I am using and beats me with much less content. Before you go "live" with your new site you need to setup 301 permanent redirects so you don't have to start all over. With the structure of the links being different from your original structure this is a problem. It can be fixed with 301 permanent redirects. All your incoming links and the search results links will then be sent to the new page. Eventually the search engines will update their databases and show the correct url in the search results.
See:
Basic 301 Permanent Redirect
301 Permanent Redirect
You have complicated things a bit more by changing the domain name but it's doable. Thanks so much for all the input,, but @HTML, question, I will be using the same domain name, I am only working under this domain while I build the site. My current provider does not have FTP access so I have to do it all by hand, article by article and image by image. The only change in the url will be like this
from:
http://www.hip-chick-pregnancy-guide.com/online-childbirth-classes.html
to:
http://www.hip-chick-pregnancy-guide.com/online-childbirth-classes/
Would you still recommend 301's for this type of change? This is something I will do and I agree is very important! If need be...
@Snakeair Thanks for your input, yes I will be adding the plugins once I go live, don't want do to that until then, right? Yes you need to do the 301 permanent redirects. Those are 2 different urls just like if you had changed the site from a static one to one that used PHP (has .php at the end).
Now, you mentioned that your host doesn't let you FTP. Can you even access the .htaccess file to edit it? the one I will be moving to, YES it does. Just not the one I am moving away from.
Thanks for this info, I've never done re-directs, so I'll be sure to read and follow what you sent! Reading now,, will I need to put in the .htaccess file all of my url's that will be changing? Or maybe just the pages where I actually "rank" on the SE's?
And once I do them, I guess the only way to "test" is to actually type in my old URL and see if it re-directs to my new URL? Duh? right?
Again, thanks for the help