Okay, I’m totally ignorant to wordpress benefits. But I would like to know what would be the benefits to converting a 50+ page HTML site to wordpress? The site I have already ranks well for several key words and I don’t want to lose this. What benefits could transfering an established site to wordpress have, and what should I be careful with i.e. rankings (what can go wrong).
Very keen to hear from others who have the same experience or are knowledgeable in this
my personal opinion, definately!!! It should not make a difference on ou keywords since you keep your keywords in your tags and content etc. The benifit are really that it is easily managable, easily to update, easy to make interactive, it has loads of add on features that you can just add as plugins for registers, ecommerce, gallery, scroller, you just find a template and either just add your content or completely hack to template so that it is fully customised for your brand. The templates are already set up with php, css, html, java script, you just edit to your needs.
there are also seo plug ins to increase ranking etc
Thanks for the reply and comments - I will take that on board. Out of interest,what are the SEO plugins?
The wordpress benefits are that you can easily add, delete or modify your content, without needing a lot of HTML or CSS training. You can also easily change the look and feel of your site by switching in new themes. Finally, you can easily update your WordPress install to the latest version, without having to mess with your content and theme.
You may have noticed the word “easily” several times in that last paragraph. Also, you’ll note that your content, theme and CMS (Content Management System) engine are separate and independent. So changing one does not affect the others.
In addition, there are thousands of plugins, most free, which allow you to add all manner of functionality to your site.
Finally, if you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for, you can create your own plugins or themes, or hire someone to do it for you.
Now, about your existing site. From what you’ve said, it sounds like you have over 50 pages of straight HTML. If you want to change anything on your page you have to go into an editor and change it manually. If you want to change aspects of the page template, you’ll have to change it in each of the 50+ pages. A CMS is much more efficient and convenient for that sort of work.
And now a caveat. You’re concerned about your Google juice, and rightly so. Moving your content to any CMS will undoubtedly affect your URL’s, in that they won’t be the same, and Google will think you’ve gone away. Luckily there’s a technique to maintain your pull with Google, and other search engines: it’s called HTTP return codes.
For each of your old pages you redirect the request to the new CMS page, and you give a return code of 301, which means “Moved permanently”. This indicates to the search engine that the content is still available, but at a new URL.
So, with all this in mind, My recommendation would be: it depends. Switching to WordPress is going to cost a certain amount of money. Only you can decide whether it’s worth it form a business perspective.
If your site is done, if it isn’t going to change much, then it probably doesn’t make sense to spend money on it. If, on the other hand, it is an evolving thing, if you’re constantly adding content, and you envisage needing changes to the template, and it’s making money for you, then it sounds like it may be a good idea to streamline those processes, and WordPress can do that for you.
I hope this helped.
there are a few, perhaps you can check some out here:
There are several threads here regarding SEO plugins for WordPress so there is no need to list them in this thread too.
If interested, Please Search using the vBulletin Advanced Search and SitePoint’s [URL=“http://search.sitepoint.com/”]Advanced Search
Thank you all - this has given me a fair bit to think about. I need a strong coffee now and make a decession !