Joomla! and SEO

[Chaky]

'm considering migrating my current site (static web pages) into Joomla!. I rank pretty high in all 3 major search engines and do not want to lose these rankings, what do you suggest? Should I go for Joomla!? Should I redirect the highly ranked pages? I'm a bit worried but my site's growing and I need some kind of CMS. Any other option?

[ryanhellyer]

Welcome to the forum Chaky.

You should definitely redirect the highly ranked pages. However if you are literally just going to create another static site, Joomla is probably a bit over the top. You could use a much simpler CMS for the same task. I use WordPress for this myself, but there are many other options as well.

If are requiring the extra functionality of a full blown (bloated) CMS like Joomla, then go right ahead. But if you don't need all those extra functions, then a simpler one will likely be easier to theme, easier to use, will run faster and have less potential security holes.

[BigAlReturns]

I would personally leave the high ranking pages alone, and if you want to integrate Joomla, or any other CMS, then use that to create/manage new content. I'd imagine older content doesn't need too much management really anyway. As a general rule, I try and leave well ranked pages alone, but if it does have to be changed, then 301 redirects are definitely a must.