Would Converting my 10year old DW site to cms effect ranking

[tessa]

Hi, I have a 10 year old ecommerce website built in dreamweaver but find it very difficut to update and add new products as I am self taught. I would really like to have a CMS site but worried the rankings may drop as my internal pages all rank quite well also I have no idea how to go about changing it.
thank you

[enigma1]

In this case look for an ecommerce application that can maintain the ranking links to your products or categories. And because the stock version likely won't cover it, check the available modules for it. Typically related seo links modules.

[tessa]

Thank you for your reply. Not sure what typically related seo links modules mean, sorry - are you able to explain in newbie style please. Would I be able to get a company to do it for me?
thanks again

[wheel]

I think he's talking about being able to define URLS's so that you don't lose your site structure.

i.e. if your web page is currently exampledotcom/widgets/redwidgets.html, then you want to make sure that your new software keeps that same url, and doesn't rename it to something else.

That way all google sees is a change of template, not a whole new site with structure to crawl, pages to re-rank, links to recalculate, etc.

[tessa]

I have looked at some CMS which convert the pages to 'product44' eg. How would I find one that keeps the same URL for each product
many thanks

[wheel]

See enigma's post, he's defined it for you.

[lorax]

You'll have to do some research in CMS' to find the right one to fit you but I know that both WordPress and Joomla can be setup to create the URLs you want.

[tessa]

Thanks lorax, I was also just looking at drupal. Not sure how these would work on my site as I produce personalised gifts and have a separate order form for customers to complete which emails the personalised details to me before going to the shopping cart. Each one is different for each product. If I went for Joomla or WordPress would I have to change hosts?

[Habtom]

... or you could keep the same website, layout and URL -- and find someone who can build you the "admin" features (update and add new products, orders ...) you are talking about.

[tessa]

Thanks Habtom. I have approached a company who can offer a CMS minibuilder site (with lots of features I would love to have), it also offers the option of having the same urls for the products but because the site would be moved to another server they would put a 301 on the old urls. Would this work or would google still see it as a new site?

[bwnbwn]

tessa if the url's remain the same there is no need to do a 301 all that would need to be done is change the nameservers on the domain to point at the new server.
Be sure and research moving site to a new server to keep it a smooth move.