You may need to keep the old site with redirection (301) if you don’t want to lose incoming links, if any. If that is not a problem, and only care about what is indexed by Google, you may wait for some time and then delete.
Congratulations on your new site for Sacred Roots. You did a really nice job for them, I am sure they are pleased.
Redirects from old links to new ones is smart. Do you need help setting them up?
Here is a list of files and directories that come with WordPress, so you need to keep all these:
index.php
license.txt
readme.html
wp-activate.php
wp-admin
wp-blog-header.php
wp-comments-post.php
wp-config-sample.php
wp-config.php
wp-content
wp-cron.php
wp-includes
wp-links-opml.php
wp-load.php
wp-login.php
wp-mail.php
wp-settings.php
wp-signup.php
wp-trackback.php
xmlrpc.php
Of course, before deleting anything, make a copy of everything in your WordPress directory. Then, as long as you keep the files and directories listed above, you can delete the html files used by the old site.
Nothing should go wrong, but if something does go wrong, just copy your backup back into the directory, returning it to the state it was in prior to any deletions.
Thanks for the replies!
So, if I delete the html files what happens? Will Google still have them indexed?
And, if a good option is redirecting, how would I do that given the various pages? about.html, contact.html, etc etc
I am browsing this article for 301 info: http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
Please advise!
Review the same link:
http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-redirect-a-webpage.php
You have to setup redirect at your old HTML site where the requests from back links and search results are directed to. I do not know what CMS/ HTML you are using and your URL structure. So, look at the above link and decide what suits you. If your old site has some odd link/ directory structure, you have to setup redirect for each such link manually. If it is at a site like WordPress, you can use plugins.