Moving from Wix, Squarespace or WordPress to a custom website without losing rankings

Website builders are a sensible way to start a business site, and many businesses outgrow them. The move itself is where rankings get lost, usually because the new site is treated as a blank page rather than a replacement for one Google already knows. This guide covers the specific traps of leaving Wix, Squarespace and WordPress, and the order to handle them in.

Should you move at all?

Start with an honest reason. Wix and Squarespace sites can rank well, and a new platform will not fix weak content or a business that is hard to understand. Good reasons to move include:

• Design limits that stop the site from looking like the business you have become. When your website makes your business look cheap covers why that costs enquiries.
• Speed. Builder sites carry code for features you do not use. A custom site built for your pages alone can usually be made lighter and faster on a phone.
• Control over page code, structured data (labels that tell machines what your facts mean) and how pages are built.
• Ownership. A custom site is files you own and can host anywhere. A Wix site cannot be moved off Wix at all; it has to be rebuilt.
• Cost over time, once several paid apps and add-ons have stacked up on top of the subscription.

Weaker reasons: a sales pitch claiming builders are invisible to Google, or a sense that a new site will fix enquiries by itself. If your current site is not bringing enquiries, find out why first; the answer may be the content, not the platform.

What changes in your URLs when you leave?

Each platform shapes addresses in its own way, and a custom site lets you choose cleaner ones. That freedom is the reason most URLs change, and why every one needs planning.

If the new site can keep an old address exactly, keeping it is the safest option. Where a better address is worth having, the old one needs a 301 redirect (a permanent forward that tells Google the page has moved). The method is in the guide to 301 redirects when changing website.

How do you get your content out?

This varies more than people expect, and it affects how long the project takes.

• Wix: Wix states that sites cannot be transferred to other platforms and have to be recreated. Blog posts cannot be exported, and nor can the SEO titles and descriptions you set. Physical store products can be exported as a CSV file. In practice, someone copies each page's text, titles and descriptions out by hand.
• Squarespace: offers an export file in WordPress format, but with limits. It includes standard pages and one blog, and leaves out store pages, products and several other page types. Treat it as a head start, not a full copy.
• WordPress: the built-in export produces a file of posts, pages, categories and tags, and the media library can be downloaded from the server. It is the most complete of the three, though page builder layouts rarely survive the trip intact.

Whatever the platform, save each important page's title, description and full text before anything is switched off. The words that ranked are the one thing you cannot redesign your way back to.

Why must the redirects live on the new site?

Wix has a URL Redirect Manager, Squarespace has URL Mappings, and WordPress has redirect plugins. All three are useful while you are on the platform. None of them help after you leave, because a redirect is answered by whatever server your domain points at. Once your domain points at the new site, the old platform never sees the request.

So the redirect map, every old URL paired with its new equivalent, has to be built into the new site or its hosting. A developer who says "you can set the redirects up in Wix" for a move away from Wix has misunderstood how it works.

What about your domain and email?

Before anyone changes a setting, find out three things: where the domain is registered, where its DNS is managed (DNS is the set of records that points your domain at a website and at your email provider), and who has the login.

• If you bought the domain through Wix or Squarespace, you can either transfer it to an independent registrar or keep it there and point it at the new site. Transferring gives you more control; it is not required.
• If your email runs through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 on the same domain, its records live in the same DNS settings. Note them before the move and check they survive it, or the launch can take your inbox down.
• Keep the domain itself. Changing domain name at the same time as changing platform is the highest-risk combination there is, and Google's own site move guidance advises making changes one after the other.

What does "custom" actually mean, and who edits it?

A custom site can mean several things, and the right one depends on who will update it:

• A hand-built site of fast, simple files. Very quick and cheap to host; changes need someone who can edit code.
• A custom design on a content management system (software for editing pages without code), such as self-hosted WordPress or a headless CMS. You edit text yourself; the design is protected.
• Shopify or another commerce platform, if you sell products online. Shopify migration SEO covers its fixed URL structure.

Ask before you commit: who changes a price, adds a page or writes an article, and what does each change cost? A site you cannot update tends to go stale, and stale sites slowly lose ground.

What is the order of a safe move?

1. Record the old site: every URL, Search Console data, page titles, text and links. Google Search Console keeps 16 months of performance data, so export it while the old site is live.
2. Copy out content, titles and descriptions, by hand where the platform will not export them.
3. Decide each page's fate and build the redirect map.
4. Build the new site on a password-protected test address.
5. Test titles, speed, forms and every redirect before launch.
6. Point the domain at the new site, then run the full redirect list against the live site.
7. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and update your Google Business Profile and other listings.
8. Keep the old plan running until everything is confirmed, then cancel it.

The full sequence is in the website migration SEO checklist, and what the move is likely to cost is covered in how much a website redesign costs. For the principles behind every step, read the main guide on redesigning your website without losing Google rankings.