A Place For Stephen

Have you got an existing content site that needs more attention from search engines? Or one that you really need to update more frequently but can’t be bothered going back into the HTML code to do it?

Then migrating your old site over to a WordPress installation may just breathe a new lease of life into it, and make life a lot easier for you too!

And there’s a (relatively) simple way of doing it so you DON’T lose any link love you’ve already worked hard at getting!

If you are not already familiar with WordPress, then very briefly…

WordPress is a free blog publishing system which, through careful selection of various plugins, can become (almost) a full blown CMS (Content Management System). That allows you to easily add and maintain a variety of content on web sites of any size, without the need to know too much techno stuff at all. And… by its nature, WordPress is very search engine friendly, enabling your new content to be picked up and indexed very quickly.

So how do you teach your old site some new tricks?

Well, I’ve outlined the steps on how to do this from within WordPress a little further down, but first an explanation…

Hint calgary loan payday,calgary payday loanten dollar payday loanloan payday yahooadvance loan payday quickloan oneclickcash paydaycanada in loan paydaycash til payday loanguaranteed payday loanbad credit payday loan,bad credit payday personal loan,payday loan for people with bad creditadvance loan online paydayquick payday advance loanfast cash advance payday loanpayday loan on line,line loan paydayinternet payday loanguaranteed no fax payday loancash loan payday tillez money payday loanloan till paydaycash america payday loan,america cash loan paydaypayday loan storehour in loan one payday,faxless hour loan one payday,hour loan one paydaycash international loan payday servicesfaxless loan online paydayfaxing loan no payday,cash faxing loan no payday,payday loan savings account no faxingadvance? cash loan online payday ?faxless instant loan paydayno checking account payday loanno credit check payday loan1000 easy payday loan,easy loan payday,quick easy payday loanonline payday loan instant approvalez loan payday,ez money payday loanonline no fax payday loanpayday loan applicationfast loan payday,fast fax loan no payday,fast faxing loan no paydaydefault loan paydayadvance cash check credit no,cash advance no credit check,advance cash check credit no onlinefast cash advance payday loanbad credit cash advance,advance bad cash credit services,advance bad cash credit loan paydaycash advance payday loanloan oneclickcash paydaycash advance loan washington,advance cash loan term,cash in advance loanadvance cash fast loan online,cash advance loan online,advance cash fast loan online paydaycash international loan payday servicescash advance until pay day,advance cash day payadvance america cashadvance cash loan onlinecash loan payday tilladvance cash loan payday softwareadvance cash loan online paydaynational cash advance - DON’T DO ANYTHING YET until you get to Step 1 below!

The technique of migrating an old set of existing web addresses (or URLs) to a new set of URLs, involves playing around with your .htaccess file. This file usually lives at the top (www) level of your web server. You’ll make some changes there, to do what they call a “301 redirect”.

The “301 redirect” tells the search engines that the page has been permanently moved, so they will update their index with the new URL. That way there will be:

• no duplicate content problems
  
• no dropping of existing links from search engines etc., and
  
• no reduction in the number of visitors you are getting (which would happen with lost links)

And by putting the old content into the WordPress format… you should improve your standings for all your content in the search engines, because it’ll be more SEO friendly, especially if you are more careful about the NEW file names you are creating in the blog!

You should also install “The All in One SEO Pack” plugin as well… That page has some great info on other tweaks you can make to your blog to improve that aspect of it!

Back to the 301 Redirects and .htaccess…

Basically the format of each 301 redirect line in your .htaccess file is:
redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/my-new-page/

where

/old/old.htm

is the now outdated file (the leading / says to start right at the top of the domain/www root to find the file)
and

http://www.you.com/my-new-page/

if the full URL to the new location.

Notice there is a SPACE between each of the four components, and the line ends with a return.

Important:
NEVER type this type of stuff in MS Word or similar - it MUST be done in a plain text editor type of program!

So… you just repeat that line for EVERY old page that you wanted to redirect - e.g.

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/my-new-page/
redirect 301 /old/old1.htm http://www.you.com/another-new-page/
redirect 301 /old/old2.htm http://www.you.com/an-even-better-page/
redirect 301 /old/old3.htm http://www.you.com/and-so-on/
redirect 301 /old4.htm http://www.you.com/and-this-time-with-html.html
redirect 301 /older/a-subfolder-deeper/old5.htm http://www.you.com/new-section/more-and-better-keywords/

or perhaps:

redirect 301 /old/pdffile.pdf http://www.you.com/pdfs/a-better-filename.pdf

or even

redirect 301 /old/ancient.htm http://www.adifferentdomain.com/this-is-a-total-move.html

etc…

Notice the TOTAL CHANGE in the final (new) file names.

If you are going to go to this much trouble, you might as well make the new pages more search engine friendly with the careful selection of appropriate keywords!

Now… with WordPress set up on your site…

The Actual Steps Involved Are:

Step 1. Firstly get the Options/Permalinks structure right!

Better to go for the “custom” option of just

/%postname%/

and save the permalink change.

DON’T leave this as the default WordPress ?p=3 option… it’s not good enough for keywords/SEO purposes.

When you update the permalink structure, that should create and/or modify your .htaccess file to include all the necessary WordPress stuff to get the permalinks working. Hopefully you’ll get an “Update successful” message at the top of screen.

THEN

Step 2. for EACH OLD file you want to replace… write a new “post” or “page” using WordPress (don’t forget, you can modify the file name using the “slug” option on the right hand side of the post screen), and then write down the final URL for each new page/post created.

Obviously, this will take a while as you copy and paste (and format) the old material into the new post fields… but it’s gonna be worth it! (see the caveat below about leaving any in-page images in the original “images” folder… just to make it a bit easier).

So your first new page/post url might be:

http://yourdomain.com/welcome/

Now… the REDIRECT statement for this would be

redirect 301 /welcome.html http://yourdomain.com/welcome/

Step 3. Finally - go into WordPress Admin and from the Manage/Files menu, click on the link for

.htaccess (for rewrite rules)

that’s over on the right hand side…

That brings up the .htaccess file in a big box allowing you to PASTE your list of 301 lines into it AFTER the WordPress stuff. Save it and you should be done.

BE VERY CAREFUL with any changes you make to this file! You could lock up your server if you do something wrong, so make a copy/paste of the original file contents into Notepad FIRST just in case, so you can restore it!

Now… I did JUST that with a new site I’m working on, so it does work. My final .htaccess file is:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

# START list of 301 redirects

redirect 301 /subscribe.html http://onlinemarketingfundamentals.com/subscribe/

# END list of 301 redirects

So that’s the final file with the WP rewrite rules at the top… and the 301 redirects under it.

Just rinse and repeat the above process for EACH old page you want to replace.

Example

Look here for this sample I just set up to test this to make sure it worked
Note - this is a brand new site I am working on right now - not launched yet but will be soon I hope LOL - so there’s so minimal stuff to play around with in there at the moment… but based on what I heard today… I have HIGH HOPES for it!!!!

So if you click on…
http://onlinemarketingfundamentals.com/subscribe.html (this page does NOT exist)
then the redirect statement in the .htaccess file - i.e.
redirect 301 /subscribe.html http://onlinemarketingfundamentals.com/subscribe/
means that you end up here:
http://onlinemarketingfundamentals.com/subscribe/

Caveats

1. If you have a LOT of OLD pages to replace, then you need to be VERY methodical about all of this… Do one page at a time and copy the old and new URL’s and make a 301 redirect statement (use Notepad) as you go!

   If you have old pages that link to one another from within the content, then do each NEW page as you discover the links, because you’ll need to new URL to go into the linking page. Don’t be surprised if you have several windows open at once here…

   When you’ve done ALL of the new pages, you can make your blog “live” by pasting the complete (final) list of redirects into your .htaccess file (as described above in Step3).

   Make sure EACH redirect works as you intended by TESTING the old URL.

   Unfortunately, there’s probably no easy way to do this if you have hundreds of old pages you want to update. It’s not very likely that you can automate copying an old file into a new WP blog (changing the links and images in each file as you go) AND also find a way of updating the .htaccess file as you go.

   It’s simpler to just do it as described above and create some SEO advantage by improving your keywords in the file names with the new pages!

2. DON’T actually remove/delete the OLD pages until you are certain that everything is 100% correct and tested, otherwise people will end up at the 404 page in your blog (which you WILL have a nice “helpful message” on I hope).

   If you already have your OLD images collected together in an /images/ folder - i.e. http://www.you.com/images/ - then leave them there! It’ll be easier, as you are creating your new pages, to refer to the pics in the old /images/picname.gif format than it will be in the /wp-content/themes/themename/images/ or wp-content/uploads/ etc formats.

3. If your server has a different 404 error page programmed to come up… then make sure you REMOVE that option so the new WordPress 404 page can be displayed instead (hint - you should be able to do that from within your web server admin somewhere).

4. If you nest WP “pages” under “parents” remember that the final permalink/URL will be something like:
   http://you.com/parent-page-name/nested-page-name/

5. DON’T EVER change the slug for a page or post (or their parents) after you’ve done all this and the search engines have picked it up… or you’ll need to do ANOTHER 301 redirect to point the old WP url to the new one.

6. AND MOST DEFINITELY…
   DON’T make ANY further changes to your permalink structure, or else those redirects will just not work at all!

7. Again… don’t forget to actually test EVERY old URL to make sure it works!

   According to Google it will take 6-8 weeks to see the changes reflected on your pages, so if you leave the old pages in place for a while it won’t matter.

   And what you can do in four to eight weeks is to check your log files every now and then to see if any of the OLD pages are still showing up. It may be that you missed one.

Clear as mud?

I hope so
Cheers
Stephen

Popularity: 86% [?]