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0:00Here's a fun question from Mani in Delhi. Mani asks: “We are changing a fairly large HTML site to CMS – that's Content Management System. What are the essentials to keep in mind so that we do not lose our search rankings?”.
0:14Very good question. I have seen a lot of people, a lot of websites, go through a two year redesign, only to launch with a completely new software underlying package – platform, CMS underneath it – and completely new HTML layout and suddenly their rankings aren't what they hoped they would be and they're stuck. They are like: “OK, was it because we changed the layout? Was it because we changed the CMS? Did we change the URL structure?”.
0:39So the one big piece of advice that I would give is: try not to launch all of this at once. For example, if your CMS means that your layout has to change, you can mock that up. You can try to make it so you change your HTML, so it looks like it would look like from your content management system and then make sure that your rankings don't change.
0:58They shouldn't change very much at all, but if you change a whole bunch of stuff on your page, that can affect how Google scores that page. So, instead of changing the CMS and changing the layout, see if can change only one at the time. Try not to change the URL structure. Another thing is, if you're really worried, you can change so that only one directory is powered by the CMS at first. So it's almost like you're dipping your foot in the water.
1:22But it's just like any other scientific thing, if you're going to change four things at once and then your rankings change, you don't know which of those four things it was. So, if at all possible, number one: try to change it, so that everything from your CMS generates identical HTML. And then number two: if you are going to go through a big redesign, try to put some mock-ups up relatively early. You can maybe do some testing, see how it goes with users, see how it goes in terms of searchengine rankings. But the main thing is: don't just work for two years without even trying it out in searchengines to see how it might be scored differently.
1:57That said, normally, if you're changing things around, it isn't a huge difference, it doesn't make a huge impact. It is possible, so do some trials if you can but it should be very doable to try to migrate between different content management systems without loosing your rankings.