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Turning a Wordpress Blog into a Static Site

diamondstar
Posts: 4
Joined: 03 Dec 08
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Turning a Wordpress Blog into a Static Site

I'm an affilojetpak member and would appreciate help with adding a jetpak
to my existing site in a similar niche.

I want to turn my year old wordpress blog into an affilojetpak-style site.
My site is #5 on Google in broad and exact match, no. 2 in phrase match, and
is in a niche in which I have expertise.

If possible, I'd like to keep my current theme and try to make it operate as much
as possible like a static site. I'd like to build it out with articles and
set it up for email marketing. But, as mentioned, the site is currently a standard blog
with categories and posts and a right sidebar with Meta, Comments, Tag Cloud,
Pages, etc.

Please help someone -- and be specific -- I'm technically challenged!

1) Do I risk losing my ranking if I try to turn this blog into a static site?

2) How do I turn old posts into static pages? Should I?

3) What do I do about permalinks? The old posts have permalinks that include
domain/category/post title.

4) How do I eliminate the appearance and structure of a blog and set my site up for
single page articles?

Thank you.
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sonitin
Posts: 152
Joined: 26 Apr 07
Trust:
1) Do I risk losing my ranking if I try to turn this blog into a static site?
- Nopes, however search engines prefer dynamic sites that are regularly updated. Especially the last update was heavily biased towards regularly updated sites.

2) How do I turn old posts into static pages? Should I?
You can simply make them as pages and then later on you can go on and change the permalinks. Also make sure you do a 302 redirect. However, overall this is highly unadvisable.

3) What do I do about permalinks? The old posts have permalinks that include
domain/category/post title.
Do a 302 redirect.

4) How do I eliminate the appearance and structure of a blog and set my site up for
single page articles?
I am not sure what do you mean here, can you explain what you want?
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jmpruitt
Posts: 3918
Joined: 19 Jun 09
Trust:
well, sonitin did good, I will answer #4 for you. all you have to do to turn your posts iinto static pages like Marks trainng is to install the AFfilotheme 3.0. that will give your site the look and feel of a static site, but the convenience of wordpress. permalinks, you can install the platinum seo pack plugin, it will automatically redirect if you ever change your permalinks.
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diamondstar
Posts: 4
Joined: 03 Dec 08
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Thanks very much Sonitin and James,

I'm going to trust your recommendations and make what seem like big changes, so let me see if I understand you correctly:

- Changing themes to affilotheme at this late date will not hurt my ranking.

- Changing from blog structure to a static structure will not hurt my ranking.

- I should not try to turn my existing blog theme into static site but should use the affilotheme.

- I can keep existing permalink structure for affilotheme site if I want.
Question: Doesn't the permalink structure reflect site structure? How can I keep the current permalink structure without keeping the old blog "categories?"

- I can change permalinks with 302 redirect for old posts or use plat SEO pack plugin for automatic redirects.
Question: 1) Won't all these redirects slow down loading of my site?
2) What is a 302 redirect anyway :) and how do I do it manually?

Finally, Sonitin -- Please tell me why is it "highly unadvisable" to change my old posts to static article pages (with 302 redirects)? This puts my whole plan into question, doesn't it? Do you think I'd be better off starting a new site and not leveraging ranking and domain age?

Just a little more help, please.... Thanks, guys.
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sonitin
Posts: 152
Joined: 26 Apr 07
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@diamondstar

Firstly, none of what I said above is final or legal advice.. Google doesn't likes too many changes as far as links are concerned.

- Changing themes to affilotheme at this late date will not hurt my ranking.
Changing themes normally doesn't affects your ranking, however some themes have special features that may or may not be favorable for SEO.

- Changing from blog structure to a static structure will not hurt my ranking.
As I said before Google prefers site that are regularly updated and are in line with today's technology and visitor preferences. So blogs have an advantage there.

- I should not try to turn my existing blog theme into static site but should use the affilotheme.
Yes, thats better.
- I can keep existing permalink structure for affilotheme site if I want.
Question: Doesn't the permalink structure reflect site structure? How can I keep the current permalink structure without keeping the old blog "categories?"

Yes it does, infact categories etc act as silos and are very important as far as how Google sees your site is concerned. I am not sure about the second question.

- I can change permalinks with 302 redirect for old posts or use plat SEO pack plugin for automatic redirects.
Question: 1) Won't all these redirects slow down loading of my site?
2) What is a 302 redirect anyway :) and how do I do it manually?
I will suggest you to Google on that, the topic is pretty well discussed over internet and I am afraid my explanation won't be that detailed :(

"Finally, Sonitin -- Please tell me why is it "highly unadvisable" to change my old posts to static article pages (with 302 redirects)? This puts my whole plan into question, doesn't it? Do you think I'd be better off starting a new site and not leveraging ranking and domain age?"


The reason for that lies behind how Google reads and understands various CMS. Wordpress is designed for a blogging system, if you are using wordpress then you are inherently implying that you plan to blog. A blog will have blog posts containing its more important material and most of the pages are meant to be static, non-changing and often statuary pages.

Now there is no technical documentation for this, however I remember studying about it in html vs wordpress discussion on a very reputed seo blog and it made sense. If google's algorithm understand wordpress design correctly then they can index it way better as well. And wordpress has always been more favored in rankings. I am pretty sure if algorithms have not have been customized for wordpress then it would have resulted in lot of duplicate page penalty for such sites (think of tags pages or categorie pages that are nearly same).

As far as starting a new site is concerned, I prefer having lesser stronger better sites then spreading myself too thin. I have made that mistake. Plus with age comes trust rankings, they are more important.
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diamondstar
Posts: 4
Joined: 03 Dec 08
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Sonitin, thanks very much for your detailed response. No worries, I am not taking your advice as final or legal.

After everything that has been written, I'm feeling that keeping my blog as is and continuing to build out the existing silo structure along with adding the newsletter opt-in is better than trying to turn it into a static site. I still want to try Mark's system of using wp to build a static site, but I'll start a new site for that.

Thanks again for taking the time to help and good luck with your own marketing!
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sonitin
Posts: 152
Joined: 26 Apr 07
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You are welcome :)
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PM me for coupon codes!
 

This topic was started on Aug 14, 2010 and has been closed due to inactivity. If you want to discuss this topic further, please create a new forum topic.