Migrating from wordpress.com to wordpress.org

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  gustoweb · Member · Jul 2, 2014 at 8:33 am

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  Hi,

  I run my wife’s business website through wordpress.com, but as the business grows so to do the requirements of the website. With this in mind I am considering an assisted migration over to wordpress.org. This will allow us to make more

  I work in the web industry, but I’m a content/SEO specialist rather than developer so I have a few concerns with the migration:

  1) Is the WordPress.org interface similar to wordpress.com i.e. would I be able to update content, add new pages with relative ease?

  2) In terms of SEO, our site performs very well. Will the switch be seamless or could this take a beating?

  3) Can the design we use on wordpress.com be carried across or would we have to re-do everything?

  I am sure there’s more questions but I don’t want to take up too much of your time.

  Much appreciated,

  Gus

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  gustoweb · Member · Jul 2, 2014 at 8:34 am

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  *This will allow us to make more finesse changes

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  raincoaster · Member · Jul 2, 2014 at 8:56 am

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  1) so similar it’s hard to tell the difference. From a user point of view, it’s just as easy to add posts etc.

  2) you will dip, because any blog on a smaller host has less SEO than the same blog on a BIG website. It burns at first, but in time you grow past it. It’s not more than a third of your hits that are affected, in my experience.

  3) Unless the same theme is available for WordPress.org, you will have to re-do everything. And if it is, and it costs money, you’ll have to buy it again and reconfigure it.

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  gustoweb · Member · Jul 2, 2014 at 9:09 am

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  Many thanks for your swift response raincoaster.

  RE:

  ‘2) you will dip, because any blog on a smaller host has less SEO than the same blog on a BIG website. It burns at first, but in time you grow past it. It’s not more than a third of your hits that are affected, in my experience.’

  So what you are saying is that taking our site off of wordpress.com (the large website) and putting it on a smaller host, could hit our SEO in the short term by about a third?

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  raincoaster · Member · Jul 2, 2014 at 9:30 am

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  Yes, a third at MAXIMUM. I have never seen it do worse to a site. And of course you being an SEO guy can hook the site up with the good plugins and keywording, etc, to minimize this. I don’t think you should worry too much about it; your site is hyperlocal, and with good SEO should be on the front page of google for searches in that industry in that location.

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  gustoweb · Member · Jul 2, 2014 at 9:55 am

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  Ok great, that’s very informative.

  Cheers for taking the time to respond, much appreciated.