How to Migrate Your Website to WordPress Without Losing Traffic

You can move a website to WordPress without losing your Google rankings, but only if you treat it as a move, not a rebuild. Copy your content, keep every old web address working (or point it to its new home), test everything before the switch, and flip the site over in one clean step. Most of the damage owners see afterward comes from skipping one of those four things, not from WordPress itself.

Here is a picture that makes it concrete. Imagine your business moves from one Hamilton storefront to another, and nobody updates the sign, the phone book or the map pin. Customers show up at an empty unit. A website migration without redirects does the same thing to your search listings.

TL;DR

• Back up everything and list every page, form, plugin and integration before you touch anything.
• Wix and Squarespace only export part of your site. Expect to rebuild layouts, forms, stores and design by hand.
• Keep your old URLs working. Where a URL changes, set up a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one.
• Build and test on a staging copy, then switch the whole site at once during your quietest traffic period.
• After launch, check redirects, forms, speed and Search Console for the first few weeks.

Table of Contents

• Why owners move to WordPress in the first place
• Step 1: Plan the move before you move anything
• Step 2: Choose your migration method
• Step 3: Moving from Squarespace
• Step 4: Moving from Wix
• Step 5: Protect your Google rankings
• Step 6: Test before and after you switch
• Common problems and how to fix them
• Our perspective: rebuild on purpose, don’t just copy
• Want us to handle the move?
• FAQ
• Sources

Why owners move to WordPress in the first place

The usual reasons we hear from Ontario owner-operators are simple. The site builder’s monthly fee keeps climbing, the design can’t do what the business needs (a booking flow, a quote form, a service-area page for every town), or the site is slow and hard to rank. WordPress gives you ownership of your files and content, a huge plugin library, and the freedom to change hosts or developers without starting over.

The trade-off is responsibility. On a hosted builder, updates and security are bundled in. On WordPress, someone has to handle them. If you want a sense of what that costs, see our starter website maintenance plan and the WordPress security basics every small site should cover.

Step 1: Plan the move before you move anything

WP Engine’s migration guidance for small businesses starts in the same place we do: back up your files, databases and email, then audit your pages, plugins, forms, integrations and custom code. It sounds boring. It is also where most surprises show up.

Build a simple spreadsheet with one row per page and these columns:

• Current URL
• Page title and main purpose (does it bring calls, quotes, bookings?)
• Monthly visits (from your analytics)
• Forms, embeds or integrations on the page (booking widget, payment button, map, chat)
• New URL on WordPress
• Keep, merge or drop

That spreadsheet becomes your redirect map later. It also tells you which pages actually earn their keep. A plumber with 60 pages might find that eight of them bring nearly all the calls. Those eight get the most care.

If your site connects to Microsoft 365 email, a booking system or a payment processor, include those in the audit too. A managed IT team can help here, and this cloud migration checklist shows how an audit of systems and dependencies is structured before any move.

Pick hosting that fits the site

WP Engine’s same guidance says the new host should support your site’s PHP version, database type and server resources. For a Canadian local business, also consider where the servers sit. A host with a Canadian or nearby data centre usually serves local visitors faster, which helps with the speed fixes we cover in our guide to small business website speed improvement.

Set up staging

Staging is a private copy of the new site. The same guidance notes that it can catch plugin conflicts and broken themes before launch. Build and test there, never on the live address.

Step 2: Choose your migration method

There are three realistic routes. Which one fits depends on your current platform and how complicated the site is.

Bluehost’s guide for Wix users makes the same split: small sites can be moved manually, RSS suits blog content, and larger or business-critical sites may call for migration tools or professional help. In our experience, most small service-business sites are 10 to 40 pages. That is small enough to rebuild properly, and a rebuild is a good moment to fix the things that were never working.

Step 3: Moving from Squarespace

Squarespace gives you the clearest export of the big builders, but it is not a full copy. According to the Squarespace Help Center, you publish the site and export selected content as a WordPress-format XML file, then import it into WordPress.

What comes across: layout pages, one blog with its posts and comments, and text and image blocks.

What does not: many page types, additional blogs, headers, footers, sidebars, dropdowns, product blocks, audio and video blocks, drafts, styles and custom CSS. The same page notes that images on self-hosted imports may still point back to Squarespace, so you may need to download them and upload them to your WordPress media library by hand.

That last point catches people. If you cancel Squarespace while your new site still pulls images from it, the pictures vanish overnight. Re-upload them, then check a few pages by viewing where each image loads from.

A practical Squarespace order of work

1. Publish your site and run the export from the Squarespace settings.
2. Install WordPress on your staging area and import the XML file through the WordPress importer.
3. Download your images and add them to the media library; fix any that still point to the old host.
4. Rebuild the header, footer, menus, forms and any store pages.
5. Rebuild the design with your chosen theme.

Step 4: Moving from Wix

Wix is the harder one. It has no one-click export that produces a full WordPress-ready file. Guides from WordPress backup specialists describe the process as largely manual: blog posts can come over through the blog’s RSS feed, while pages are recreated by hand.

So plan on this:

1. Blog posts: Use your blog’s RSS feed and the WordPress RSS importer (Tools, then Import). Check each post afterward for broken formatting and missing images.
2. Pages: Copy text and images across into new WordPress pages. Do not expect the layout to survive.
3. Forms and bookings: Rebuild with a WordPress form plugin or booking tool, and send a test submission to your real inbox.
4. Online store: Treat it as a separate project. Products, shipping rules, taxes (GST/HST in Ontario) and payment settings need to be rebuilt and tested with a real order.
5. Domain: Keep the domain registered and working through the whole process; point it to the new host only when staging is approved.

Because so much is rebuilt by hand, the Wix move is the best chance you will get to clean up. Merge thin pages, fix titles, and give every service its own page with the town names your customers search.

Step 5: Protect your Google rankings

This is where the traffic is won or lost. Three habits matter most.

Keep URLs the same where you can

If your old page was /plumbing-services and the new one is also /plumbing-services, Google sees continuity. Wix and Squarespace use their own URL patterns (for example, blog posts often sit under a /blog or /post folder), so set your WordPress permalink structure to match where possible.

Redirect everything that changes

For every URL in your spreadsheet that changes, set up a permanent (301) redirect from old to new. Send each old page to its closest equivalent, not everything to the home page. Google’s site move documentation covers how redirects and URL mapping work when addresses change.

Move everything at once, at a quiet time

The same Google guidance recommends that small and medium-sized sites move all URLs at the same time rather than in sections, which helps Google detect the move and update its index faster. It also advises timing the migration for a period of lower traffic. For a snow-removal company, that’s summer. For a restaurant, probably a Tuesday morning rather than the Friday before a long weekend.

For a deeper walk-through of this part, see our website migration checklist, and if you are redesigning at the same time, our website redesign timeline shows how to sequence the work.

Step 6: Test before and after you switch

On staging, before launch:

• Click every menu item and button on phone and desktop.
• Submit every form and confirm the message arrives in the right inbox, not spam.
• Check that your phone number is tap-to-call on mobile.
• Confirm every old URL in your spreadsheet lands on the right new page.
• Make sure staging is hidden from search engines, then switch that setting off at launch. Forgetting this is the classic mistake: the new site goes live telling Google to ignore it.

After launch, in the first days:

• Re-test forms, bookings and payments with real submissions.
• Run the old URL list again and look for 404 errors.
• Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console and watch the coverage report.
• Check page speed on mobile.
• Confirm your analytics tag is firing.
• Keep the old platform’s account active for a short while as a safety net, but do not let images or files load from it.

Expect small ranking wobbles for a few weeks. A sharp, lasting drop usually points to missing redirects, blocked indexing or pages that lost their content.

Common problems and how to fix them

Our perspective: rebuild on purpose, don’t just copy

Most owners ask us to “move the site.” What they actually want is a site that brings in more calls. A pixel-perfect copy of a site that wasn’t generating leads gives you a new site that doesn’t generate leads.

We do everything in-house, with no outsourcing, so the person who audits your old pages is the same team that builds and tests the new ones. That matters on a migration, because the details that decide your rankings (redirect maps, titles, forms, speed) live in the handoffs between specialists. Fewer handoffs means fewer things dropped.

Our advice: use the move to cut pages nobody visits, strengthen the ones that bring calls, and set up monthly maintenance so WordPress stays secure. And don’t sign anything that locks you in. A site you own should not come with a contract that traps you.

— Cristo

Want us to handle the move?

If you would rather not rebuild forms and redirect maps on a weekend, we can do it. We start with a free trial that includes a full digital audit of your current site, so you see what will transfer and what needs rebuilding before you commit. Our plans run month to month with no lock-in: Sprout is $300 per month, Grow is $600 per month and Scale is $1,200 per month, with one-off setup fees listed on the pricing page. Project work such as a website build has no published price, so tell us about your site and we will scope it.

You can also see what we build on our website development page.

FAQ

Can I move my Wix site to WordPress automatically?

Not completely. Wix has no export that produces a ready-to-import WordPress site, so blog posts can come across through the RSS feed while pages, forms and design are rebuilt manually. Small sites take a few days of focused work; larger or store sites take longer.

Will I lose my Google rankings if I migrate?

You should not lose them permanently if URLs are preserved or redirected with 301s, the whole site moves at once, and indexing isn’t blocked. Short-term fluctuation is normal. Watch Search Console for errors in the first weeks.

What doesn’t transfer from Squarespace to WordPress?

According to Squarespace’s own export documentation, many page types, extra blogs, headers, footers, product blocks, drafts, styles and custom CSS are left out. Images may also need to be downloaded and re-uploaded manually.

Should I cancel my old plan right after launch?

Wait until you have confirmed that images, forms and redirects all work from the new site. Also check that your domain and email are running independently of the old platform. Then cancel.

Sources

• Website Migration Tips for Small Businesses, WP Engine
• Export your site content, Squarespace Help Center
• Migrate from Wix to WordPress in Simple Steps, Bluehost
• Wix to WordPress: Move Your Site in 5 Easy Steps, BlogVault
• Site Moves and Migrations, Google Search Central

Recommended

• Protect Your Traffic: Website Migration Checklist for Small Businesses
• Prioritized Fixes for Small Business Website Speed Improvement