A quiet but real trend right now: people are moving back to WordPress from Wix, Shopify, and even headless CMS setups, chasing more control and lower long-term costs. What they’re not chasing — and what they usually get anyway — is a migration that quietly wipes out months or years of SEO equity. Failing to plan the redirect layer alone can cause organic traffic to collapse — documented cases show 50-70% losses within two weeks of launch. That’s not a rare worst-case; it’s what happens by default when URLs simply don’t match up.
None of this is exotic. It’s a checklist problem, not a technical mystery. Here’s how to do it properly.
Step 1: Inventory everything before you touch anything
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.
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 or Shopify 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 rather than discovering it mid-migration.
Step 3: Build the redirect map before launch, not after
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 the traffic collapse mentioned above.
Step 4: 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. 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
Step 5: The first 30 days after launch
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
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.
Every AXRGlobal hosting plan includes staging environments and migration support — so your next move is backed by a team that’s done it before.