Before you start — is this your problem?
- You’re moving a site from Wix, Shopify, or Squarespace to WordPress
- You have organic traffic you can’t afford to lose
- You’re not sure what actually transfers and what you’ll need to rebuild
If all three are true, this guide covers exactly what you need. If you’re starting a new site from scratch, most of this won’t apply.
More people are moving to WordPress from Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, and headless CMS setups than ever — chasing more control and lower costs. What they don’t chase, and what they usually get anyway, is a migration that quietly wipes out months of SEO equity. None of it is exotic, though — it’s a checklist problem, not a technical mystery. Failing to plan the redirect layer alone is the single most common reason sites collapse after a move.
Step 1: Audit Your URLs (This Is Your SEO Migration Checklist)
Before you export a single file, crawl your current site and get a full list of every URL that exists. Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free for up to 500 URLs) will generate this for you in minutes. Save it as a spreadsheet — this becomes your master checklist for the entire migration.
While you’re at it, pull two more reports from your current analytics:
- Top landing pages by organic traffic (last 3-6 months) from Google Search Console
- Pages with backlinks from whatever SEO tool you use
These are the URLs that matter most. If you’re moving off a platform that restricts exports — Wix in particular blocks direct database access, which routinely adds hours to a migration — this inventory is the only reliable map you’ll have of what needs to survive the move. An incomplete URL list is the most common root cause of post-migration traffic loss.
Step 2: Know What Actually Transfers and What Doesn’t
This is where most DIY migrations go wrong: people assume more comes over automatically than actually does.
- Blog posts usually export via RSS feed reasonably well.
- Static pages, navigation, forms, and galleries almost never transfer cleanly — expect to rebuild these manually in WordPress.
- Images often stay hosted on the old platform’s servers even after «migration» unless you specifically download and re-upload them. A plugin like Auto Upload Images can force WordPress to pull and save hotlinked images locally.
- Meta titles and descriptions set in Wix, Shopify, or Squarespace do not export. You’ll need to re-enter these in WordPress using an SEO plugin (RankMath or Yoast).
Budget for this rebuild work upfront — the honest summary is «less transfers than you think.»
Step 3: Wix vs Shopify vs Squarespace — What Actually Transfers
The generic checklist above applies to any CMS, but each platform has quirks that will break your migration if you don’t plan for them.
Wix. Wix blocks direct database access, so you can’t just export a SQL dump. Your RSS export of blog posts comes through, but without meta titles, descriptions, or featured images — you’ll re-enter those by hand. Worse, Wix assigns URLs to internal pages (/product-page, /blank-1) that don’t map to anything in WordPress. Every one of those needs a manual 301. And because Wix rewrites URLs when you edit page names, lock down your URL structure before you start. If the site was built with Velo (Wix’s dev platform), any custom-coded pages or dynamic collections won’t export at all — those get rebuilt from scratch as custom post types or a page builder in WordPress, so flag them early since they take the longest.
Shopify. Blog posts export through XML/RSS fairly cleanly, but if you’re moving a store, your product URLs (/products/my-product) won’t survive — Shopify ties them to each product’s handle, and that mapping is lost on export. Collection pages (/collections/summer-sale) have the same problem and are easy to forget since they don’t show up in a simple blog export. Product images also stay on Shopify’s CDN (cdn.shopify.com); you have to download them and re-upload to WordPress, or your new store will be hotlinking from Shopify indefinitely. Export your products via CSV and use an image-import tool to pull everything locally before you deactivate the old store. One more thing that gets missed: Shopify auto-generates product schema (price, availability, reviews) that powers rich results in Google. That schema doesn’t carry over — if you’re rebuilding in WooCommerce, confirm your theme or plugin (WooCommerce core plus Yoast/RankMath handles most of it) is outputting valid Product schema before launch, or you’ll lose those rich snippets even if the pages themselves rank fine. Customer accounts and order history also don’t migrate to WooCommerce automatically — that’s a separate data migration, not an SEO one, but budget time for it if you’re moving an active store.
Squarespace. Squarespace exports via WordPress’s built-in import format in some plans, which sounds great — until you see what it drops: most layout blocks, custom CSS, and again all meta titles. Squarespace’s built-in blog comments don’t come across either, so if a post has organic engagement or long comment threads that were adding fresh content signals, expect to lose that history. The pattern with Squarespace migrations is consistent: the content arrives, the SEO layer doesn’t.
Step 4: Map 301 Redirects Before You Launch
This is the single highest-leverage step in the entire process. For every URL in your Step 1 inventory, map where it will live on the new WordPress site — even if the new URL structure is identical, confirm it explicitly rather than assuming.
Install a redirect plugin (Redirection or RankMath’s redirect manager) and set up 301 redirects for every URL on your list before you point your domain at the new site. A 301 tells Google and every visitor’s browser «this moved permanently,» preserving both link equity and user experience. Skipping this step is the single most common cause of traffic collapse after a migration, and it’s fully preventable in an afternoon.
Step 5: Never Migrate Directly on Your Live Domain
Set up the new WordPress site on a staging subdomain (staging.yoursite.com) first. Import content, rebuild pages, configure redirects, and test everything there — while your current site keeps running and keeps ranking.
While it’s live, make sure staging can’t get indexed by accident: enable your host’s staging password-protection if it offers one, and set the site visibility to «Discourage search engines» in WordPress (Settings → Reading), which adds a blanket noindex via robots meta tag. A password alone isn’t enough — plenty of staging sites still get crawled and indexed through a leaked or guessed URL. Just remember to turn that setting back off once you go live, since it will also block your real site from being indexed if left on.
Also verify your new domain (or a temporary property for the staging subdomain) in Google Search Console ahead of time, so you’re not setting that up for the first time on launch day — you’ll want it ready to submit your sitemap immediately.
Only point your actual domain at the new site once staging has passed a full review. Before going live, confirm:
- PHP 8.3 or higher on your new hosting (older versions cause timeout errors on large imports)
- Every page and post from your Step 1 inventory has a live counterpart
- Every redirect actually resolves to the correct destination (test a sample manually, don’t just trust the plugin)
- Forms, payment gateways, and any third-party integrations (CRM, email) work end to end
- The «Discourage search engines» setting is switched back off on the live site
Choosing a host that handles large imports well makes this step dramatically easier — our guide on Shared vs VPS vs Dedicated Hosting covers how to size it before you commit.
Step 6: The First 30 Days of WordPress SEO Monitoring
Migration risk doesn’t end at launch — it front-loads into the following month:
- Submit your new XML sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools immediately
- Monitor Search Console daily for crawl errors and 404s in the first two weeks
- Compare organic traffic week-over-week against your pre-migration baseline
- Fix any 404s you find by adding the missing redirect — don’t wait for a batch cleanup later
- Double-check your old platform isn’t still serving a competing sitemap somewhere (a stale Wix or Shopify sitemap left live can confuse crawlers about which version is canonical)
The sites that lose the least traffic aren’t the ones with the best WordPress setup — they’re the ones that watch the first month like a hawk.
The Bottom Line
Nearly every migration horror story traces back to one of two things: no complete URL inventory before starting, or no redirect map before going live. Both are fully preventable with an afternoon of preparation. The technical rebuild is the easy part — protecting the SEO equity you already earned is where the real work is. And if you’re moving from Wix, Shopify, or Squarespace specifically, plan for the platform quirks in Step 3 before anything else.
FAQ: Will I Lose SEO if I Migrate From Wix to WordPress?
No — you won’t lose SEO if you do the migration correctly. The two things that cause traffic loss are missing redirects and untransferred meta data. If you map every old URL to a new one with 301s (Step 4) and rebuild your meta titles and descriptions (Steps 2-3), Google treats the move as a change of address rather than a new site. The migrations that go badly almost always skipped the redirect map. Budget half a day for it and you’ll be fine.
If you skip the redirects, expect the traffic drop to show up within a couple of weeks — that’s how fast Google crawls and reassigns URLs. The good news is that recoveries are also fast once you fix the redirect layer, so it’s never too late to go back and add the missing 301s.
FAQ: Do Wix or Shopify Export My Meta Titles and Descriptions?
No. Wix, Shopify, and Squarespace keep your meta titles and descriptions in their own systems and don’t include them in RSS or XML exports. You’ll re-enter them manually in WordPress using RankMath or Yoast. If your site has hundreds of pages, don’t do this by hand — export a CSV with your current titles and descriptions from your SEO tool (or Screaming Frog) before you migrate, then re-import them after.
That’s the trick that separates a fast migration from a week of copy-pasting. Grab the CSV before you deactivate anything, because once the old platform is gone, that data is gone with it.
FAQ: How Long Does It Take for Google to Re-Index After a Migration?
Expect Google to start re-crawling your new URLs within days, and full re-indexation typically takes 2-4 weeks. You can speed it up: submit your sitemap to Search Console immediately, keep every old URL redirected (so Google follows the 301 trail instead of hitting 404s), and monitor for errors daily in the first two weeks.
The faster your redirects are clean, the faster Google converges on the new URLs. A messy 404 trail can delay re-indexation for months, which is why Step 6 treats the first 30 days as part of the migration itself, not something that happens after it.
Not sure you’ll get to all of this before your traffic dips?
Every step above is doable yourself — but between the URL audit, the redirect map, and rebuilding what doesn’t transfer, most people underestimate the hours. If you’d rather have someone handle the audit and the migration while you keep running your business, we can take it from here.