How to move from Wix to WordPress without losing rankings

Moving from Wix to WordPress is a rebuild, not an export. Wix does not let you move a site to another host, so the pages are recreated in WordPress, blog posts come across by RSS import or by hand, store products leave as a CSV file, and every Wix URL that changes is redirected on the new WordPress server. Done in that order, with the redirects tested before Wix is switched off, the move keeps your search traffic.

Wix's own help centre is clear on the first point: a Wix site runs only on Wix's servers and cannot be exported. Everything below follows from that. It is the process we use for Wix moves as part of our website redesign and migration work.

Should you move from Wix at all?

Wix is a reasonable home for a small site that its owner edits, with hosting, security and updates included in one bill. If that describes yours and the site does its job, stay.

Moving makes sense when you need things Wix does not do well: full control over the code and hosting, plugins for bookings, memberships or multilingual content, integrations with your CRM, or a site that has grown beyond what the editor handles comfortably. Wix vs WordPress compares the two in detail, and WordPress for business websites is honest about what WordPress costs you in return. The main one: someone has to keep WordPress updated, which Wix did for you.

What can you take out of Wix, and what has to be rebuilt?

Two things to know about the blog route. Wix's RSS feed lists at most 20 posts, so a blog with more than that needs the rest copied by hand. And imported posts often lose formatting and keep images hotlinked from Wix's servers, so check each post against the original.

How do you move from Wix to WordPress, step by step?

Step 1: List every Wix URL and record a baseline

Download the sitemap at /sitemap.xml on your domain, export the Performance report from Search Console, and combine them into one list. Add twelve months of clicks per page. These are the URLs the new site must account for. How to audit your current website explains the spreadsheet.

Step 2: Set up WordPress on a staging address

Install WordPress on your new host at a temporary address. Protect it with a password, or at minimum tick "Discourage search engines from indexing this site" in Settings, Reading. Untick it at launch. Staging sites explains why the password is the safer choice.

Step 3: Rebuild the pages

Recreate each page from the live Wix site. This is the natural moment for a redesign, but keep the headings and body text of pages that rank unless you have a reason to change them. Download original images from the Wix Media Manager rather than saving them from the page, which gives you resized copies.

Step 4: Import blog posts and products

For the blog, the RSS Importer plugin reads a saved copy of the Wix feed. Check every imported post for missing images and broken formatting. For a store, export products to CSV from the Wix Stores dashboard and use WooCommerce's built-in product importer. The column names differ between the two, so map them field by field and test with five products before importing the rest.

Step 5: Copy titles, descriptions and alt text

Wix keeps each page's SEO title and meta description in its SEO settings, and none of it comes across automatically. Copy them for every page with search traffic into your SEO plugin, and check lengths with the meta length checker. Copy image alt text at the same time.

Step 6: Redirect every URL that changes

Wix uses fixed path prefixes by default: /post/ for blog posts and /product-page/ for products. You can keep the blog paths in WordPress with a custom permalink structure of /post/%postname%/. WooCommerce puts products under /product/, so product URLs usually change and need redirects.

Wix's own redirect manager stops working the moment your domain points elsewhere. The redirects must live on the WordPress server: in .htaccess, in the server config, or in a plugin such as Redirection. Build the list with the template in redirect mapping, then paste it into the redirect generator to get the rules.

One detail: Wix URLs have no trailing slash and WordPress URLs do. WordPress adds the slash with a permanent redirect of its own. Point your redirects straight at the final URL, slash included, so no visitor goes through two hops.

Step 7: Move the domain and email

If your email runs on the domain, copy its MX, SPF and DKIM records before you touch the nameservers. Losing email on launch day is a common, avoidable mistake. Then either point the domain's DNS at your new host or transfer the domain away from Wix. A transfer is usually blocked for 60 days after registration or a previous transfer, so check the date before you set a launch day.

Step 8: Launch, test and keep Wix for a month

Remove the staging password or noindex setting. Test every redirect in your list. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and request indexing for the homepage and top pages. Send a test enquiry through every form.

Keep the Wix plan active for at least a month after launch. You will need it to check a page's wording or find an image nobody downloaded. Cancelling it early also breaks any image still hotlinked from Wix's servers.

What should you watch after the move?

Watch Search Console's Pages report for "Not found (404)" entries, which are Wix URLs you missed, and the Performance report for clicks on your top pages compared with the weeks before. A small dip for two to four weeks is normal. The week after a migration has the daily checks, and the website redesign process covers the rest of the project around the move.