I am a terminal novice developer who builds sites for my own fly fishing business and a few others. I am getting ready to rebuild my WordPress site, using both a new custom theme, a lot of new content, and some changes to the overall structure. I think I’m up to speed on what I need to do to replace the site top to bottom on the same host, but I have one specific question about how to preserve SEO.
I intend to rebuild the site from the ground up, with no content unchanged, so I am not actually intending to migrate over any posts/pages. As needed I will cut and paste text from the old posts/pages on the live site into the development site.
THAT SAID, I want to keep some of the linking structure and URLs the same for SEO purposes. Basically, I intend to have some of the most important pages have the same names and linking structure in the live site.
**My question is this:**
**As long as I am careful to keep the displayed html identical to the current site using linking structure, slugs, etc., will I preserve my SEO?**
Here’s a code example. My nav as written looks like this:
<li><a class=”dropdown-item” href=”<?php echo get_permalink(17) ?>”>Guide Service Intro</a></li>
This returns the link/page [`https://flyfishmontana.biz/montana-fly-fishing-trips/`]).
My new nav will be something like this:
<li><a class=”dropdown-item” href=”<?php echo get_permalink(NEW PERMALINK HERE) ?>”>Guide Service Intro</a></li>
But will return the same html.
**My concern is whether or not the new permalink id (so** `get_permalink(X)` **instead of 17) will hurt my SEO even if the new permalink creates the same returned html.**
I’m Just trying to get an answer on this before I actually set up a new dev environment for the site rather than exporting what’s already up and changing it locally.
Sorry if the above doesn’t make sense… self taught here.
(Site is at [https://flyfishmontana.biz]). I am redoing it mostly to make it more mobile friendly. It’s responsive, but not very pleasant to browse on a phone.)
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