Question
I have a SEO question. My brother and 2 partners have bought a 2 year old company from some other guys. I’m working on a new eCommerce site for them (based on Wordpress, Astra, WooCommerce, and Elementor).
Since the original/current website is build using Drupal, we want to move from Drupal to Wordpress, from one hosting provider to another and change the language on the website (from Danish to English and then use the WPML plugin for translation).
While I’m ok experienced in onpage SEO and building a website, I have only moved domains a few time, and never a domain, where SEO was worth focusing on.
Based on below SEO stats, I’m looking for a bullet-list, regarding what to do, and understanding if actions would be ‘worth the effort’.
According to Website Auditor the current domain has 129 indexed pages by Google
Domain strength is listed to 3,76 of 10
It has 22 backlinks, and 6 linking domains (18 of them are ‘DoFollow’)
It has a lot of signals from Facebook and some from Instagram
It has no relevant ranking keywords, other than it’s brand-name, and a 10-15relevant retailer names on page 3-10 in Google. All keywords with low traffic (SE-ranking estimates as little as 137 organic clicks per month)
Serpstat indicates a pagerank of 27% and a trustrank of 11%
Based on the number of indexed pages, and some pages, that has been linked to or from, I guess the site was hacked in the past. If I remember correct, you can tell Google in ‘Google Webmaster Tool’, what links you approve, and what should be listed as spammy.
I have the new hosting provider in place, and I more or less have a draft site ready, for when the domain has been moved. However, I try to understand, what needs to be done before the move, IF SEO is worth taking into consideration. While I have some ideas and thoughts regarding redirects, sitemaps and indexing, I know some of you guys are more experienced in this area, so I hope you might have a list or a few pieces of advice.
***Based on a response in another place let me emphasise, I move from Drupal to Wordpress, and launch 100% new content, and a 90% new URL structure - but on an existing domain, that currently run a Drupal site, that needs to be moved and replaced with a WooCommerce site. My guess is, I should let all old pages be redirected to a relevant url on the new website or the root domain? Afterwards I guess I should make sure the new site get indexed as fast as possible. I guess most of the work should be done in the Google Webmaster tool?
Thanks for your help in advance
Rasmus
Answer
Moving a domain and hosting providers does not affect SEO, unless there is an issue with the previous or new server being blacklisted.
That being said, it doesn't look like their current site has a lot of SEO juice anyway. Changing all the URLs WILL hurt their SEO if those are the URLs in their backlinks. I recommend looking at their backlinks to see which ones you should redirect, testing the site for broken links AFTER your restructuring is complete, and making a new sitemap.
I could give you a more specific checklist or help with your sitemap, but I would definitely need more specifics.
