How Converting a Website to Use WP Block Editor Improved its Ranking

As I’m sure many of you are well aware of how determined I have been in NOT converting my WordPress websites to using the Block Editor… well, I was FORCED to convert recently.

On June 6, I tested my MMO website only to discover that it was no longer mobile friendly due to how long it was taking to load.

The site had obviously lost a substantial ranking lately, and THAT is why my traffic was slooooowly fading away.

Once the site was fully analyzed, it was a simple determination that there were far too many plugins… again!

This time, it was the addition to the following plugins:

Classic Editor
Classic Widget
…plus a few others that were slowing the site’s loading time down.

The following is what I decided to do…

I STOPPED creating content.

I know… FRIGHTENING, right?

Without content, ohhh no!

But here’s the thing…

All the great content in the world will do a website NO GOOD, if the site won’t load, FAST.

Using a newly created backup copy of this site, using the All-In-One WP Migration plugin, I created a brand-new website on the SiteRubix server, as one of my FREE sites.

Once the newly created SiteRubix website was created, and my backup file used to fully “restore” it, I went to the Settings > Reading section and check marked the Discourage search engines from indexing this site.

This was done to prevent a duplicated content punishment from Google, plus to prevent any potential visitors coming to that site while I was working on making the necessary changes.

Then I got to work, straight away, deactivating the Classic Editor and Classic Widget plugins so the conversion could easily begin.

First off, it was recommended to me that I use Rank Math as my SEO plugin

Though a little reluctant, I went ahead and installed Rank Math, and I have to say… WOW!

Has this SEO plugin EVER improved!

Because I installed Rank Math BEFORE doing any deleting of other plugins, Rank Math gave me the option to allow it to take the necessary information from the All In One SEO Pack plugin, my Sitemap plugin and even offered me the option to connect it to my Google Analytics account for this website.

WOW!

Done!

3 more plugins no longer necessary!

Then I moved my favourite landing pagebuilder offsite to another website that is exclusively used for landing pages only, which I can EASILY connect to which ever website I want to add a new landing page to… all without slowing the site down.

Yeaaaah!

That removed the need for 3 less plugins.

(Boy, did I ever get sloppy with this site!)

Then I got to work, converting the LARGEST website that I now tend to.

It is the largest when it comes to the number of posts and pages, and I originally dreaded having to do this.

BUT…

It was not as difficult as I had thought it would be.

Especially my review posts…

Having the luxury of having 2 large monitors to work on at a desktop computer, I had the “live” version of my site open on my left monitor ready for comparison, while the SiteRubix version was on my right monitor, ready to work with.

Starting with the pages, once they were all converted and double checked with the live version, thankfully they converted relatively easily, and quickly.

Then I started on my posts, beginning with the VERY first post and working backwards.

Making sure to ALWAYS keep notes as to where I stopped at when interrupted, and focusing on the site with every minute of my days that I could spare… I was shocked at how easily the conversions were… once I had a “system”.

My system was to start at the very bottom of the posts and work upwards.

Many of my images were no longer on the line they were supposed to be.

Having already become familiar with the WordPress Block Editor when rebuilding another website last year, I simply selected the up and down arrows used in having images move back down the page to their proper position

My subtitle headers previously used only BOLD text, I then converted to H2 tags.

Especially now that Google has been successful at breaking the original HTML rules, and allowed more than one H2 tag on any given post or page.

I even corrected:

• Paragraphs that I could EASILY determine were too long for comfortable reading.
• Replaced YouTube videos that I had been unaware were changed to Private or simply deleted.
• Added the proper Jump Links needed in the Block Editor to the relative text.
• And even fixed two posts that became corrupted during the conversion and had to be recreated from scratch.

This was followed by converting my new site’s widgets and double-checking the footer menu.

This took me about two weeks to complete.

Once the SiteRubix site was fully tested for operating perfectly, I backed the site up and used that backup file to “restore” the “live” site.

Doing this late at night, I was sure there would be less chance of any interruption from ANY potential website visitors.

I lost sleep that night, but it was worth it!

Once the LIVE site was fully restored with the revised version backup file, I went back to the Settings > Reading section and UNCHECKED the Discourage search engines from indexing this site.

VOILA!

And yes, now I am behind in creating content, but… I will get caught back up again.

It’ll be like one of my posts failed to schedule properly… if I play my cards right and get back at creating reviews that is.

In the meantime, Google has become aware of my changes due to Rank Math now being connected to my Google Analytics for that website, and the mobile speed is back up to a more than acceptable high!

Given these changes, I KNOW this site will have an improvement in its ranking.

Hope you've found this post encouraging when considering to convert your Classic Editor to the Block Editor.