Moving html site to WordPress and SEO Question

[meelosh]

I am in the process of migrating a fairly large site +/- 3000 pages from static html to WordPress and want to be sure I am on the right track. Also have a few SEO question to accompany. I will run through the process I am going to follow and would appreciate any input on whether I am moving in the right direction and if/or any other tips to help this all along.
The site itself is a static site that also has a blog which runs of wordpress from a /blog/ directory. I will be leaving the blog worpress install as is but will update the theme/style/css to mimic the new site.
The static html pages are the main "update" to wordpress.

Here is what I plan to do:

1. create a sub-directory on the current domain (example.com/jedi/) and install a fresh version of wordpress in it
2. Upload an already developed theme and activate aswell as discourage search engine indexing and also block /jedi/ in robots.txt
3. build all pages as per the html structure within this wordpress environment by manual copy and paste and image importing (all from current html pages)
4. Once all is built and navigation is complete then copy the index.php and .htaccess from /jedi/ and upload it to the root of the domain. The index.php will be updated with the /jedi/ sub-directory - ( dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/jedi/wp-blog-header.php' ).
5. login into wordpress admin and in settings update site address to root (example.com) and then update permalinks
6. If all is working as it should then remove the html pages.

Please any comments or advice on the above process will be appreciated.

An SEO question on the above:

There are at least about 1000 pages from the html site that I would like to loose as they are very old with thin content and not trafficked at all. Can I safely leave them out and have them 404 or should I take any other measures?

I would appreciate any help or input here please

thank you

[lorax]

I think you general process will be fine. As for the old content, why not keep it without links to it but link out to the new site. If traffic lands there, they can get the newer content and then those old pages won't generate a 404. When you see no traffic on them for months, then you could take them offline - or do it in small groups and use WMT to tell Google they're gone. At the very least 301 them and send the user to a legitimate page.

[meelosh]

Thanks lorax appreciate it. Will it affect anything running wordpress from a sub-directory with regards to url's as Im not sure how wordpress redirects things. I just want to be sure that when example.com/monkeys/ is linked to or trafficked to it will be fine....even though it really is located at example.com/jedi/monkeys/
I hope I am making sense I really just want to be sure I can keep my html sites page structures intact without any issues even though the wordpress install is in a sub-directory?

[lorax]

You can do it that way and it will work fine. Personally I prefer to move the WP install up to the top level. It can live quite fine among static HTML files. I'm just anal that way. Then as I whittle away the old pages (deleting or moving them into WordPress), the site is where it should be and I don't have to move anything.

[meelosh]

Thanks Lorax. Another question with regards to permalinks. The current site (html static) has extension-less urls and has no trailing slash. All has been setup in htaccess to resolve to no trailing slash (301). My question is that obviously I need to keep the urls the same in the new site as to maintain SEO. If i choose the /%postname%/ url structure then it will add a trailing slash to the urls but if I enter the same url without trailing slash it resolves to the trailing slash version and not both (a good thing). Can I assume that wordpress is then doing a 301 of all the urls to having a trailing slash and leave it that way or should I do a custom permalink as /%postname% as this will remove trailing slashes.
I would prefer to just do the /%postname%/ as it seems better this way moving forward but I want to be sure that all the old pages without trailing slash will now safely be redirected to ones with.

[lorax]

You can check the server response with this tool: [freetools.webmasterworld.com...]

[meelosh]

lorax I appreciate all the info.... another question. Is it ok to run the main site from one wordpress install and the blog on another...but on the same domain. They will be in different directories. Just want to be sure there will not be complications....It doesnt seem like it but if i could get the nod from you then I would feel better..tks

[lorax]

Shouldn't be an issue providing they use different databases though it could get tricky with permalinks and htaccess rules. NOTE: I've never tried this but in theory seems okay. But why not use the same install?