SEO Best Practices After Moving Your Site from Wix to WordPress

Transitioning your website from Wix to WordPress is a big step towards gaining more control over your site’s functionality and improving its scalability. However, during this migration, maintaining your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) is critical. A poorly managed transition can lead to broken links, lost rankings, and decreased traffic. To avoid these issues, it’s essential to follow some SEO best practices after moving your site from Wix to WordPress.

In this blog, we’ll walk you through practical steps to ensure your SEO remains intact and even improves after the migration.

Audit Your Website Before and After Migration

Before moving from Wix to WordPress, perform a thorough SEO audit of your Wix site. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and third-party SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush can help you gather valuable insights, including:

• Top-performing pages
• Backlinks
• Keywords driving traffic
• URL structure

After completing the migration, perform another audit on your WordPress site. Compare metrics to ensure that:

• Your content has been successfully transferred.
• Your traffic and rankings remain consistent.
• No critical pages are missing or inaccessible.

Discover: How To Build A Sustainable Link Profile With Managed SEO

Set Up Proper 301 Redirects

One of the biggest risks when migrating platforms is broken links. If the URLs of your pages change during the migration, you’ll need to set up 301 redirects to ensure visitors and search engines can still find your content.

How to set up 301 redirects:

1. Identify old Wix URLs and their corresponding new WordPress URLs.
2. Use a WordPress plugin like Redirection or update your .htaccess file to implement the redirects.
3. Test your redirects to ensure they work properly.

Redirects preserve your link equity and prevent 404 errors, which can negatively impact your SEO.

Also Read: Why Page Size Matters For SEO & Unparalleled Performance?

Optimize Your Permalink Structure

WordPress offers more flexibility in creating clean, SEO-friendly URLs than Wix. Use this opportunity to optimize your permalink structure:

• Navigate to Settings > Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard.
• Choose the “Post Name” structure for cleaner URLs (e.g., www.yourdomain.com/sample-post).

Avoid overly complex URL structures, and keep your URLs short, descriptive, and keyword-rich.

Install an SEO Plugin

One of WordPress’s greatest strengths is its vast array of plugins. For SEO, plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math are must-haves. These tools help you:

• Optimize metadata (titles and descriptions).
• Set canonical tags to prevent duplicate content.
• Generate XML sitemaps.
• Analyze on-page SEO for keywords and readability.

Install one of these plugins and configure it to align with your SEO strategy.

Know: How To Do SEO For An Affiliate Website? 

Update Internal Links

During the migration, internal links may break or point to outdated Wix URLs. Use tools like Broken Link Checker or manual testing to identify and fix broken links.

Tips for updating internal links:

• Ensure they point to new WordPress URLs.
• Use descriptive anchor text for better SEO.
• Double-check navigation menus, sidebar widgets, and footer links.

Ensure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly

Mobile-friendliness is a key ranking factor for search engines. While Wix automatically handles mobile optimization, you have more control over it on WordPress.

Steps to improve mobile-friendliness:

1. Choose a responsive WordPress theme.
2. Test your site with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
3. Optimize images for faster loading times.
4. Use plugins like WP Rocket or Smush for performance enhancements.

Submit an Updated Sitemap to Google

After migrating your site, create a new XML sitemap using an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO or Rank Math. Submit the updated sitemap to Google Search Console to ensure search engines can crawl and index your site effectively.

Steps to submit your sitemap:

1. Log in to Google Search Console.
2. Navigate to “Sitemaps” and enter your new sitemap URL (e.g., www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml).
3. Monitor the status to confirm successful indexing.

Check for Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can harm your SEO by confusing search engines about which version of a page to rank. After migrating, ensure:

• No duplicate pages exist between your old Wix site and the new WordPress site.
• Canonical tags are correctly implemented.

Use tools like Copyscape or the duplication checker feature in SEO plugins to identify and resolve duplicate content issues.

Monitor Page Load Speeds

Site speed is a critical ranking factor and directly impacts user experience. WordPress offers more flexibility to optimize performance compared to Wix.

Steps to improve load times:

1. Use a reliable hosting provider optimized for WordPress.
2. Enable caching with plugins like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache.
3. Optimize images using tools like Smush or ShortPixel.
4. Minimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files.

Regularly test your site’s speed using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix.

Also Read: A Beginner’s SEO Guide To Boost Online Visibility

Leverage Schema Markup

Schema markup helps search engines understand your content better and display rich results in search engine result pages (SERPs). WordPress makes adding schema easier with plugins like Schema Pro or Yoast SEO.

Examples of schema types to use:

• Recipe schema for food blogs.
• Product schema for eCommerce.
• FAQ schema for common questions.
• Review schema to showcase customer testimonials.

Update Your Backlink Profile

Backlinks are vital for SEO, but broken links caused by the migration can harm your rankings. Use tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush to:

• Identify backlinks pointing to old Wix URLs.
• Reach out to website owners and request updates to the new WordPress URLs.

Preserving your backlink profile ensures you retain your site’s authority and ranking power.

Focus on Content Optimization

WordPress gives you more freedom to optimize your content. Take advantage of this by:

• Updating old blog posts with fresh keywords and relevant information.
• Improving content readability with subheadings, bullet points, and shorter paragraphs.
• Adding multimedia like images, videos, and infographics.

Ensure every page targets specific keywords and provides value to your audience.

Monitor SEO Performance

After the migration, keep a close eye on your site’s performance. Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to:

• Track traffic fluctuations.
• Identify and fix crawling or indexing errors.
• Monitor keyword rankings.

If you notice significant drops in traffic, address issues promptly to minimize their impact.

Further Reading: What Are Web Crawlers And How Are They Beneficial?

Final Thoughts

Moving your website from Wix to WordPress is an excellent decision for scalability and functionality. However, it’s essential to handle the migration carefully to avoid losing your hard-earned SEO rankings. By following these SEO best practices—from auditing your site to optimizing content and monitoring performance—you can ensure a smooth transition and even boost your rankings over time.

Take the time to implement these strategies, and your WordPress site will be well-positioned for long-term success in the competitive digital landscape.