A few months ago a manufacturer of roof trusses in South Africa asked me to redesign his site in Joomla! as he wanted a site that he can maintain easily. As he didn't want to lose current traffic we decided to create a site on a new domain.

Using the information on the old site, including the keywords, I virtually duplicated the content of the site using Joomla! 1.5. Apart from SEO and listings in my niche directories no further promotion was done on the new site. The old site had a limited Adwords campaign that was kept up.

Now, after four months the new site's traffic exceeds that of the old site, both in unique visitors as well as visitors will the page views far outstrip the old site. Page view web stats for Joomla! sites aren't very accurate as they takes into account take a lot of the sub php pages into account.

http://kelbrick.com (HTML site - the stats is only for Sept as I only took over the hosting in September)
This site runs a small Adwords campaign

http://kelbrick.co.za (Joomla 1.5 site)
This is only from generic search engine and directory traffic

(Keep in mind that though the numbers are low these sites target a ticht local niche market in South Africa. Both sites generate a number of leads a week)

As the old site has reasonable basic SEO the indication does seem that Joomla!'s SEO works, apart from the other benefits that Joomla! brings to the table.

The moral of the story is: if you, or a client, has an old site that needs redevelopment, redevelop the site in Joomla! rather than try to redesign the old HTML pages - it is probably quicker, less work and, if the above is any indication, more effective.

Our marketing divisions, DirectoriesPro Marketing (International) and Phoenix Business Solutions (South Africa), focus on providing niche market Joomla sites for small businesses