Website migrations are one of the highest-risk SEO events. This guide covers how to migrate to a Wix website safely, preserving your existing rankings while gaining all the benefits of the Wix platform.
Key Takeaways
- Never migrate to Wix without a complete redirect map, every old URL must redirect to its new Wix equivalent
- Pre-migration baseline data is essential, record all current rankings and traffic before making any changes
- Wix's redirect manager handles 301 redirects natively, use it for every changed URL
- Expect a temporary ranking fluctuation during migration, this is normal and usually resolves within 4–8 weeks
- The new Wix site should match or exceed the old site's technical SEO standards before going live
AI Summary
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Migrating a website to Wix is one of the most common scenarios I encounter as a Wix SEO specialist. Done correctly, it is a smooth process that maintains existing rankings and opens new SEO opportunities. Done incorrectly, it can cause significant and long-lasting ranking drops. This guide ensures you do it right.
Pre-Migration Preparation: Record Your Baselines
- Export all organic keyword rankings from Ahrefs or Semrush (date-stamped)
- Export 6 months of organic traffic data from Google Analytics 4
- Export all pages and their URLs from your current website
- Note your current domain rating/authority score
- Screenshot top-performing page rankings for key target keywords
- Export your XML sitemap to use as a crawl reference
Create Your URL Redirect Map
The redirect map is the most critical migration document. Every URL on your current website that has any SEO value (organic traffic, backlinks, or ranking positions) must be mapped to a corresponding new Wix URL.
- Old URL: wordpress-site.com/services/seo → New Wix URL: wixsite.com/seo-services
- Old blog: wordpress-site.com/blog/keyword-research-guide → New: wixsite.com/blog/keyword-research-guide
- Every URL in your XML sitemap should appear in the redirect map
- Prioritise URLs with backlinks first (check Ahrefs Link Intersect for referring domains)
- 1:1 redirects where possible, avoid redirecting all old URLs to the homepage
Setting Up Wix Redirects Before Going Live
Before switching your domain to the new Wix site, set up all redirects in Wix's Redirect Manager. Go to Marketing & SEO > SEO > Redirects. Add each old URL → new URL pair as a 301 permanent redirect.
Common Mistake
Never go live with a new Wix website without first setting up all required 301 redirects. Every day without redirects is a day Google is crawling broken old URLs and not passing authority to your new Wix pages.
Post-Migration Monitoring (Critical First 4 Weeks)
- Submit new Wix sitemap to Google Search Console immediately after go-live
- Monitor Google Search Console daily for crawl errors (Coverage report)
- Check that redirects are working using Screaming Frog redirect checker
- Monitor keyword rankings weekly, expect some fluctuation but watch for major drops
- Check that Google has begun indexing the new Wix URLs (URL Inspection tool)
Frequently Asked Questions
With a correctly executed migration (proper 301 redirects, equivalent or better on-page SEO, maintained content quality), ranking loss should be minimal. Some temporary fluctuation (10–20% traffic drop) for 2–4 weeks is normal as Google processes the change. Rankings should recover and often improve within 4–8 weeks. Significant lasting ranking drops are almost always due to missed redirects, lost content, or degraded on-page optimisation during the migration.
Yes, but it requires careful URL mapping. Each WordPress blog post URL must have a corresponding 301 redirect set up in Wix's Redirect Manager before you switch domains. Wix blog URLs typically follow the format yoursite.com/post/article-slug, while WordPress often uses yoursite.com/blog/article-slug or yoursite.com/year/month/article-slug. Map every WordPress article URL to its Wix equivalent and test all redirects before going live. Also replicate all on-page SEO elements (title tags, meta descriptions, header structure, internal links) in the Wix versions. Keep all existing content, do not take the opportunity to prune articles during migration unless they were already performing poorly.
A properly executed migration to Wix typically sees a recovery of any temporary ranking drops within 4–8 weeks. The first 2 weeks are the highest-risk period, monitor Search Console daily for crawl errors and redirect failures. Weeks 3–6 usually see stabilisation as Google reprocesses the new URLs. Weeks 6–12 often see improvement over pre-migration baselines if the new Wix site has better on-page SEO than the old site. Migrations that were executed poorly (missing redirects, changed content, degraded on-page SEO) can take 3–6 months to recover and may never fully regain lost rankings without significant remedial work.
In the first 48 hours after a Wix migration go-live, prioritise: (1) verifying all 301 redirects are working correctly by testing key URLs with a browser redirect checker, (2) submitting your new Wix XML sitemap to Google Search Console immediately, (3) using Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool to request indexing of your most important pages, (4) checking for any DNS propagation issues that might be causing the site to be unreachable in some locations, and (5) setting up daily rank tracking for your top 20 keywords to catch any significant drops within hours rather than days.
Planning a migration to Wix and want to protect your rankings? Get expert Wix migration SEO planning from Michael Andrews.
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