Moving from Wix or WordPress without losing Google rankings

The short answer: Google ranks URLs, not platforms

Google does not care whether your site runs on Wix, WordPress or anything else. It ranks individual pages, each one at a specific address, with specific content. When you migrate, rankings are lost for three reasons only: the old addresses stop working, the content on them changes a lot, or the site is slow or offline during the switch.

So the whole job is protecting those three things. Keep every URL that matters (or redirect it with a 301), keep the content and the titles, and switch the domain without a gap. Everything below is how to do that in practice.

Step 1: inventory every URL before you change anything

This is the step people skip and regret. Before you rebuild a single page, write down every address the old site has.

• Search Console: under Pages, export the list of indexed URLs. These are the ones that bring traffic.
• Sitemap: open yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml and copy every URL. WordPress and Wix both generate one.
• Analytics: export your top landing pages for the last 12 months, so you know which pages actually earn visits.
• Backlinks: if you know other sites link to specific pages (a local newspaper, a supplier, a directory), add those URLs too.

Put everything in one sheet with three columns: old URL, new URL, status. That sheet is your migration plan.

Step 2: decide what changes and what stays

Wix and WordPress build URLs differently. Wix often uses addresses like /about or /post/my-title. WordPress uses whatever permalink setting you picked, for example /2024/05/my-title/ or /my-title/.

The safest migration keeps the exact same paths. When that is not possible (or you want cleaner addresses), every old URL gets a 301 redirect to the closest new page. A 301 tells Google the page moved permanently and passes its history along.

Rules I follow:

• Never redirect everything to the home page. Google treats that as a removed page.
• Pages with no traffic and no links can be merged into a related page, with a redirect.
• Keep one version of the domain (with or without www, always https) and redirect the others.

Step 3: rebuild with the same content and metadata

The new site can look better, but each important page should say the same thing it said before, at least at launch. For each page in your sheet, copy:

• The title tag and meta description
• The main heading and body text
• Image alt text and, ideally, the same image file names
• Structured data, if you had any (business info, reviews, products)

Save the big content rewrite for a few weeks after the move. If you change the platform and the content at the same time and traffic drops, you will not know which one caused it.

From Wix: there is no file export, so you copy text and images by hand or with a crawler, then rebuild the layout. From WordPress: you can export posts and pages under Tools, Export, and the media library holds every image. Plugins do not move; list what each one did (forms, SEO fields, redirects) so you can replace the function.

Step 4: switch the domain without downtime or broken email

Prepare the new site completely on a temporary address first. Click every page. Test every form. Then:

1. Copy the current DNS zone, especially MX, SPF, DKIM and any TXT verification records. Email lives here.
2. Lower the TTL of the records you will change a day before, so the switch spreads faster.
3. Point the domain (A record or name servers) to the new host and make sure SSL is active before you announce anything.
4. Keep the old plan active for a couple of weeks as a fallback. Do not cancel Wix or the old hosting on day one.

If the domain is registered at Wix, you do not need to transfer it right away. Pointing DNS is enough. A transfer can come later, calmly.

Step 5: the checks after launch

• Test a sample of old URLs from your sheet. Each should land on the right new page with a 301, not a 404.
• Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and use URL Inspection on your top pages.
• Watch the Pages report and the Crawl stats for errors over the next four weeks.
• Compare traffic for your top landing pages week by week, not the site total.
• Update your Google Business Profile and important directory listings if any URL changed.

How to do this with Basely today

Being direct about where we are: Migrations at Basely is coming soon, and it is not something you can switch on yet. What you can do today is rebuild your site by talking to the AI Builder.

In practice that looks like this. You take your URL sheet and the text of each page, describe the business and paste the content in, and ask the agent to recreate the pages with the same titles, headings and addresses. The agent writes the site, opens it in a real browser to check it, and you adjust by chatting or clicking on the page. Forms save to the site's own database and responses show up in the panel, so you do not need a form plugin. The code is kept in a repository, so you are not locked in the way you were on Wix.

Then you connect the domain: registered with us or kept where it is, with DNS and SSL linked to the site automatically when the zone is on Basely. If you also want email on the same domain, mailboxes get MX and SPF configured for you when the zone is with us.

The part I would still do by hand, whatever platform you use: the URL sheet and the post-launch checks. No tool knows which of your pages your customers actually find on Google better than your own Search Console data.

If you want to see how your site would look rebuilt, start with a free first site on a confirmed account and compare it page by page before you move anything.