What is the impact on SEO of deleting all content on a site and starting over with a new content management system?

Question

I am thinking of hitting the refresh button on my custom asp.net website by moving to WordPress install. Since the website is a couple of years old, there is a lot of content that is already indexed by Google, and a lot more ignored (don't know why Google has done that).

The current portal has a tiresome process to add new content and maintain, along with irregular SEO optimizations. Since WordPress is completely different from my current scheme, I plan to dump everything and just use the domain for the new project.

But, before I do that, I thought it's worth knowing the impact of dumping all the indexed pages on SEO and rankings. I guess I will be using the 301 redirect to the homepage for all those URLs.

Just let me know if everything will settle down or it's far better to go with a new domain altogether (I am mulling this option too).

Answer 1

In late 2016 I switched platforms on a website and started anew. I 301 redirected all of the indexed URLs from example.com/directory1/ to example.com and I put up the new platform on example.com/directory2/ . I went from about 4k daily organic search traffic in late 2016 to 35k daily organic search traffic in early 2017. The new platform and 301 redirect to the homepage worked for me.

However there are some things worth mentioning. If you can retain the pages in /directory1/ without 301 redirecting to the homepage it will likely be much better. Those pages are already indexed and are receiving traffic. By 301 redirecting them, Google will eventually deindex those pages. However, by 301 redirecting you will retain 99-100% of your link juice. It will just take a while for Google to crawl and index the new pages it discovers.