Once you have built a new version of your website in Word Press, there are a few things that need to be taken care of to ensure that your SEO is not negatively affected, and the following Word Press Plugins do just that.
Simple 301 redirects
The first issue should be addressed before the new site goes live. We need to make sure that all of the old web pages, for example .html pages, are redirected to the comparable page of the new site using 301 Redirects. Thankfully, we have a plugin at our disposal that makes this incredibly easy. With the Simple 301 redirects plugin, you simply have to input the old URL (excluding the domain name) and match it up with the full URL of the comparable page on the new site.
Example:
/contact.html = https://www.example.com/contact
/services.html = https://www.example.com/services
Google XML Sitemaps
Once the new site is live, we need to let Google, Bing, and Yahoo know that we have all knew pages that need to be indexed. In order to do that we need to replace the old xml sitemap with one that contains the new URLs. The Google XML sitemaps plugin will automatically build and continually update the xml sitemap. Once it has been built we can then go to Google and Bing webmaster tools and resubmit the sitemap.
Velvet Blues Update URLs
In some cases the new web site may have been transferred over from a temporary or test server. In this situation, once the transfer is complete, we need to make sure that all the URLs and links within the site are updated to match the permanent domain name, in order to ensure that all the links within the site are in proper working order. This includes internal links and image URLs. With the Velvet Blues Update URLs plugin, we can change all the URLs within the site with one click.
Example:
https://testserver.com Update To: https://newsite.com
