Experiment - Migrating from Wordpress to a static site (SEO hit or am I doing something wrong)

Preface - I have a basic understanding of SEO (at best) and am very much a noobie. Advice/guidance much appreciated.

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I converted a client website that was using Wordpress into a static site (specifically, using Gatsby JS). Reasoning:

• Vastly improved speed/performance (important to the client)
• Website was static in nature. I.e. - Last updates made to it were 2-3 years ago.

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Steps to convert:

1. Go through each page (approx 15 pages in all, not many) and hard code all of it using vanilla js and html (via React)
2. In addition to React (and Gatsby to run the build), the only third party packages being used on the site are:

• `slick-carousel` - a React component for a home page slider (client's choice to have said carousel)
• `tailwind-css` - which compiles down to plain css

1. Ensure that the old-site sitemap has a corresponding route on the new site. There were a few entries on there (e.g. every image seems to have its own 'page' so to speak), that I ensured had proper 301 redirects to an appropriate page.

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Fairly basic stuff, and the final output is simple html/javascript.

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From what I read prior, I went in with the hypothesis that doing this conversion would maintain (if not improve) the SEO metrics of the site (even though I know that Wordpress has some SEO voodoo magic under the hood). While there is a lot of hype around static sites, I found it difficult to find real world examples of the before/after conversion of 'traditional' sites into static sites (specifically GatsbyJS sites) with regards to SEO. I therefore tracked some basic keywords for this site.

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The Google Lighthouse scores, before and after:

Before: https://file-fpvgusqsle.now.sh

After: https://file-qgyegsowal.now.sh

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Keyword rank tracking as per Nightwatch.io (the change-over from Wordpress to the live Gatsby site happened on the 14th of March).

https://file-lccgnnhntl.now.sh

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Overall the change seems to have been clearly negative with regards to SEO. My questions - does this sub have any guidance as to why? Is it just Wordpress being an SEO beast? Have I missed critical steps in my process up above when transitioning from Wordpress?

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Does anyone have any experiments they could suggest I run? More than happy to guinea pig this, plus a couple of other client sites (all with their permission of course) to get some real world tests on all of this.

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Ps - The client site name currently blurred out, I'm seeing them in a couple of days and should have permission to give you the exact URL by DM if you wish

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Big thanks in advance!

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from Search Engine Optimization: The Latest SEO News https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/b801eg/experiment_migrating_from_wordpress_to_a_static/>