Moving your website to WordPress — from Wix, Squarespace, Shopify or an old custom site — can unlock better design, features and growth. But if it is done carelessly, you can lose search rankings that took years to build. Here is how to migrate safely.

1. Make a full list of your current URLs

Use a crawler or your sitemap to list every page, blog post, product and image URL. This becomes your migration checklist.

2. Record your current rankings and traffic

Take a snapshot from Google Analytics and Search Console. You will compare against it after launch.

3. Keep your URLs where possible

The safest URL is the one that doesn’t change. WordPress lets you set custom permalinks, so you can often keep the same addresses.

4. Set up 301 redirects for anything that changes

Every old URL that moves must point to its new home with a permanent 301 redirect. This passes most of the old page’s ranking value to the new one.

5. Move all your content — properly

Bring across page text, headings, images, alt text and internal links. Don’t trim content that is ranking well.

6. Copy your SEO settings

Transfer page titles, meta descriptions and structured data using an SEO plugin like Rank Math or Yoast.

7. Build and test on a staging site

Build the new site privately first. Check every page, form and redirect before going live.

8. Launch and submit your sitemap

Switch over, then submit the new XML sitemap in Google Search Console and request indexing for key pages.

9. Monitor for a few weeks

Watch for 404 errors, crawl issues and ranking changes. Fix problems quickly. Small dips can happen, but a well-planned migration usually recovers fast — and often improves.

The secret to a safe migration is planning. Most SEO losses come from missing redirects.

Our WordPress migration service follows this process for every project, so your rankings and traffic stay safe.

Further reading

• Site moves and migrations (Google)
• Google Search Console