Changing the platform on which your website is built is a huge undertaking, there are a mass of tasks to get to grips with and unless you’re being guided then you’ll likely miss something out at some point. Missing a task isn’t the end of the world, generally, but I guess it’s where this question really has it’s base as missing a task could affect SEO & conversions.
Todays questions came from Christa
My question to you is, if I switch my website company, will my SEO be affected? I currently use Moonfruit.com, but have had some issues lately. I’m thinking about switching to squarespace. Do you have any insight on this? Thank you!
So let’s start with a basic idea that changing pretty much anything on any website could, at least in theory, have an impact on SEO. So, yes changing your platform could have an affect on your search rankings, traffic base etc. However, this impact could be amazing, it may be bad or it may not make that much difference – generally it’s hard to tell with most websites… however let’s unpack this a little.
Moonfruit, like many other platforms, is a ‘starter for ten’ it’s a way of building a website quickly and easily, they tend to look OK and give you a taste of what you could achieve. But in my experience the limitations of such platforms are huge and are often the reason for people outgrowing them quickly and moving to other more “feature rich” platforms, such as Squarespace. By feature rich I mean that there is more advanced functionality and options within the system, less constraints if you will – of course this comes at a higher cost usually.
Functionality aside for a second, what we also tend to find is that the more advanced a system to better it is for SEO purposes. For example many platforms (starter platforms) use systems of flash or javascript to load in content, this can be slow and unfriendly to certain device types but it can also be bad for SEO. More advanced solutions from Squarespace to building your own site with WordPress are seen to be much more SEO friendly.
Now, putting that aside, I said there are a bunch of tasks you need to undertake to make a move a success… here’s a quick run down of tasks for rebuilding a website.
You can download this presentation via SEOAndy.net here.
Original SEO Content by SEO Andy @ Does Changing Website Platform Affect SEO?
