Wix or Squarespace to WordPress: An SEO-Safe Migration Guide

Moving from Wix or Squarespace to WordPress is worth it when you need more control over content, SEO, integrations or custom features than a hosted builder allows, and it is not worth it if the current site already does its job and nobody will maintain WordPress. Neither platform hands you a complete, ready-to-import copy of your site: Squarespace offers a limited WordPress-format export, and Wix does not offer a site export at all, so most of the work is rebuilding. The SEO risk is manageable if you redirect every old URL to its new equivalent, carry over titles, descriptions and structured data, and watch Search Console closely after launch.

This guide is for small businesses, professional-service firms and content-led brands in the US, UK and EU that have outgrown a website builder. It covers the decision, the export reality on each platform, rebuilding, redirect mapping, metadata, Search Console and monitoring.

When moving is worth it, and when it isn't

Good reasons to move

• Content and SEO control. You want full control over URL structure, templates, internal linking, schema markup and publishing workflows.
• Integrations and custom features. You need CRM, booking, membership, multilingual or custom post types that a builder handles poorly or only through workarounds.
• Ownership and portability. You want a site you can move between hosts and developers, built on open-source software.
• E-commerce growth. You want WooCommerce's flexibility for products, subscriptions or B2B pricing.
• Performance tuning. You want control over hosting, caching and front-end code.

Reasons to stay

• The site is a small brochure site that already ranks and converts, and the main complaint is the design. A redesign within the same platform may be cheaper and lower risk.
• No one will own WordPress maintenance. WordPress core, themes and plugins need regular updates, backups and security monitoring; a hosted builder does that for you.
• The team is comfortable in the builder and would lose publishing speed in WordPress.
• The move is driven by a single missing feature that an app or embed could solve.

A builder-to-WordPress migration changes platform, URLs and templates at once, which is exactly the combination Google's documentation flags as needing care. If the benefits above are vague, that risk is not worth taking. The Next.js vs WordPress comparison may also help if you are unsure WordPress is the right destination.

What Wix and Squarespace actually let you export

Squarespace

Squarespace offers a WordPress-format export from its settings. According to Squarespace's export documentation, the export includes layout pages, one blog page with its posts (and up to 1,000 comments per post), text blocks, image blocks, and limited text from some other blocks. It does not include:

• Other page types, including store pages, album, index, portfolio and calendar pages
• More than one blog page (only one can be exported)
• Product, video, audio and dropdown blocks
• Page-specific headers, footers and sidebars
• Drafts, style settings and custom CSS

Products can be exported separately. Squarespace's product CSV export produces an editable file (up to 10,000 products) that can be reformatted for WooCommerce's importer. Commerce orders have their own export.

The WordPress export file can be loaded with the WordPress Importer (Tools, then Import). After import, check whether images were copied into the WordPress media library or still point to Squarespace's servers, and fix any that did not transfer before you close the Squarespace account.

Wix

Wix states plainly in its help centre that you cannot export a Wix site to another host, because the site depends on Wix's proprietary platform. Your content belongs to you, but there is no file that recreates the site elsewhere. What you can export includes:

• Products: Wix Stores can export your product list to CSV (digital products are not supported for import or export).
• Contacts: site contacts can be exported to CSV.
• CMS collections: content stored in Wix CMS collections can be exported to CSV.
• Orders: store orders can be exported.

Pages and blog posts usually have to be copied manually or pulled with third-party tools or feeds, then cleaned up. Budget for this as content work, not a technical import.

A quick export inventory

Rebuilding pages, blog, forms and products

Pages and templates

Rebuild from a content inventory, not from memory. Crawl the old site, list every indexable URL, and decide for each: keep as is, rewrite, merge or retire. Build templates in WordPress for the page types you actually have (service page, location page, blog post, case study, product) so that content is structured and consistent. Keep headings, key copy and internal links on important pages close to the originals at launch; large content rewrites are safer after the move has settled, so you can tell what caused any ranking change.

Blog

Keep post slugs where you can. Squarespace blog posts commonly live under a path like /blog/post-slug; Wix blog posts often use /post/post-slug. WordPress permalinks can be configured to match some of these patterns, which reduces the number of redirects, but a clean structure you will keep for years matters more than avoiding redirects.

Carry over publish dates, authors, categories, featured images and alt text.

Forms

Every contact, quote and booking form needs rebuilding with a WordPress form plugin or a connected CRM form. While you are at it:

• Collect only the fields you need (data minimisation under GDPR and UK GDPR).
• Add a separate, unticked opt-in for marketing email where EU or UK visitors are involved, and honour CAN-SPAM requirements for US commercial email.
• Link the privacy notice at the point of collection, and put a processor agreement in place with any form, email or CRM provider that stores submissions.
• Test that notifications arrive and that submissions reach the CRM.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Products

If you sell, WooCommerce is the natural destination. Reformat the exported product CSV to match WooCommerce's importer columns, map options to attributes and variations, and rebuild shipping, tax and payment settings rather than trying to import them. Test checkout end to end, including 3-D Secure for EU/EEA cards under PSD2 Strong Customer Authentication.

301 redirect mapping

Google's guide to site moves with URL changes recommends server-side permanent redirects (301 or 308) from each old URL to its most relevant new URL, and keeping them in place for as long as possible, generally at least one year. Because you normally keep the same domain in a builder-to-WordPress move, the redirects live on the new WordPress host.

Build the map

Pull old URLs from a crawl, the builder's sitemap, Search Console's performance and links reports, and analytics landing pages. Then map each one:

Verify the actual URL patterns on your own site; builders' defaults vary by template and version.

Avoid redirecting retired pages to the homepage. Google may treat that as a soft 404; a relevant replacement or an honest 404 is better.

Implement the redirects

A redirect plugin is fine for small sites. For larger or permanent maps, server rules are faster and do not depend on a plugin staying installed. On Apache (common on shared WordPress hosting), rules go in .htaccess above the WordPress block so they run first:

`apache

# Builder-to-WordPress redirects (mod_alias)

RedirectMatch 301 ^/services$ /services/

RedirectMatch 301 ^/product-page/oak-table/?$ /product/oak-table/

RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop/p/linen-throw/?$ /product/linen-throw/

RedirectMatch 301 ^/post/([a-z0-9-]+)/?$ /blog/$1/

# BEGIN WordPress

# ... WordPress rewrite rules ...

# END WordPress

`

Each pattern is anchored with ^ and $ so it matches only the intended path. That matters: the simpler Redirect directive matches by path prefix, so a rule like "Redirect 301 /services /services/" would also match /services/ itself and loop. The last rule sends every Wix-style /post/slug URL to /blog/slug/ in one line, which only works if you kept the slugs. See Apache's mod_alias documentation for matching rules, and test the order carefully if you also use mod_rewrite rules for the same URLs.

Test every row after deployment: one hop, correct status code, destination returns 200. The website redirects guide covers chains, loops and testing in more detail.

Keeping metadata and structured data

Redirects preserve the path; metadata preserves relevance. Export or scrape, for every indexable page:

• Title tag and meta description
• H1 and heading structure
• Canonical URL (update to the new URL)
• Open Graph and social images
• Image alt text
• Noindex settings for pages that should stay out of search

Load these into WordPress through your SEO plugin's fields, and check that templates do not overwrite them with defaults.

Structured data usually needs rebuilding. Builders generate some schema automatically; WordPress SEO plugins generate their own. After launch, compare old and new pages for Organization or LocalBusiness, Article/BlogPosting, Product and BreadcrumbList markup, then test key templates with Google's Rich Results Test. If Search Console reports issues, the guide to fixing schema markup errors in Search Console walks through common causes.

Rebuild analytics and tags too. EU and UK visitors must give prior consent for non-essential cookies under ePrivacy rules and PECR, with rejecting as easy as accepting, and Google Consent Mode v2 is required for ad measurement in the EEA and UK.

Search Console steps

1. 1Keep or add verification. If you verified the domain property through DNS, verification survives the platform change. If you used an HTML tag or file on the builder, re-verify on WordPress before launch, or add a DNS-verified Domain property. The Search Console setup and verification guide explains the options.
2. 2Submit the new sitemap. WordPress core and SEO plugins generate XML sitemaps. Submit the new sitemap URL in the Sitemaps report and remove the builder's old sitemap once it no longer resolves.
3. 3Watch the Page indexing report. The Page indexing report shows which URLs are indexed and why others are not. Expect old URLs to move into "Page with redirect" and new URLs to appear as indexed over the following weeks.
4. 4Inspect key URLs. Use URL Inspection on the homepage, top service pages and top posts to confirm Google sees the new content and canonical.
5. 5Do not use the Change of Address tool unless the domain itself changes. Google's documentation is explicit that the tool is only for moves from one domain or subdomain to another. A platform change on the same domain does not need it.

Post-launch monitoring

For the first days, check daily; after that, weekly for at least two to three months.

• 404s and redirect errors: server logs, a crawler and Search Console. Add redirects for anything missed.
• Indexing: Page indexing report trends for old and new URLs.
• Search performance: clicks and impressions by page, compared against a baseline taken before launch. Some fluctuation during a site move is normal; sustained drops on specific pages point to specific problems.
• Conversions: form submissions, calls, bookings and orders against the pre-launch baseline. A broken form costs more than a ranking dip.
• Core Web Vitals: field data in Search Console and PageSpeed Insights once enough data exists.
• Maintenance: updates, backups and uptime monitoring on the WordPress side, now that you own them.

Keep the old builder subscription active, unpublished or behind a password, until you are sure nothing is missing, then cancel it.

Planning your move

A Wix or Squarespace to WordPress migration is mostly careful rebuilding: an honest look at what can be exported, a complete URL inventory, a redirect map that covers every page with value, and metadata carried over intact. Done that way, you gain a site you control without gambling the search visibility you built.

If you want help scoping the rebuild, mapping redirects or setting up WordPress properly from the start, see our website development services or contact us to discuss your site.