Moving Off Wix or Squarespace Without Losing Your Google Rankings

Rankings belong to pages, and pages have addresses

Wix and Squarespace sites can rank perfectly well, so moving is not an SEO requirement on its own. Owners usually move because they've hit a limit on speed, structure, integrations or design, which we cover in custom-built vs. website builder. The worry is always the same: will the move throw away the Google visibility the old site earned?

It doesn't have to. Google ranks individual pages, and it knows them by their URLs. When a new site launches with different URLs and nothing connecting old to new, every page Google knew about suddenly returns "not found," along with any links other sites pointed at them. When each old URL permanently redirects to its new equivalent, Google follows the redirect and passes the old page's standing to the new one. The whole job is making sure nothing falls through that gap.

Step one: list every URL the old site has

You can't redirect pages you don't know exist. Build one spreadsheet with every URL from these sources, then remove duplicates.

• The XML sitemap. Both Wix and Squarespace generate one automatically at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, often split into several smaller sitemaps for pages, blog posts and products.
• Search Console's Performance report. Export the Pages tab for the last 12 months (or as far back as you can). Every page with clicks or impressions here is a page with something to lose.
• Search Console's Links report. The top linked pages list shows which URLs other websites point to. These matter even if they get little traffic.
• Google Analytics landing pages, for pages that get visits from ads, email or social that search data won't show.
• Your own memory and materials. Old URLs printed on flyers, in email signatures, on vehicle wraps or in directory listings.

Watch for the platforms' built-in URL patterns. Depending on your settings, Wix blog posts often sit under /post/ and store products under /product-page/, while Squarespace nests posts and products under the URL of the blog or shop page that holds them. Those patterns will almost certainly change on a new site, so every one needs a row.

Step two: get your content out before you need it

Neither platform is built to hand you a ready-to-run copy of your site, so plan for some manual work. What each one offers, in general terms:

For both, also save each page's title tag, meta description, headings and image alt text. A crawling tool can pull these into a spreadsheet in one pass. Export form submissions, customer lists, bookings and anything else stored in the platform's apps, because once you cancel the plan, that data may be gone.

Step three: map every old URL to its new home

Add a second column to your spreadsheet: the new URL each old one should go to. This redirect map is the single most important document in the migration.

• Send each old page to its closest equivalent, not the homepage. Google tends to treat a pile of redirects to the homepage like missing pages.
• Keep the same URL wherever the new structure allows it. A URL that doesn't change doesn't need a redirect.
• If you are merging several thin pages into one stronger page, redirect all of them to the new page.
• If a page is truly gone with no equivalent, it's acceptable to let it return a 404. Do this deliberately, not by accident.
• Avoid chains. If an old page was already redirected once, point the original straight to the final destination.
• Include blog posts, product pages, PDFs and any old URLs you found in print or listings.

Step four: build the redirects on the new site

This is the step people get wrong. Redirects you set up inside Wix or Squarespace live on their servers. Once your domain points to the new host, those servers no longer receive the traffic, and the redirects stop working. The 301 redirects have to be configured on the new website or its hosting, before launch.

Use 301 (or 308) permanent redirects, which tell Google the move is permanent. Then test every row of your map on the staging site and again after launch. A simple script or crawler can check that each old URL returns a permanent redirect to the right new page in one hop.

Step five: carry over what already ranks

Redirects pass the old page's standing to the new one, but Google still evaluates the new page on its own. If a page ranks well today, keep its core content, its main heading and a close version of its title tag. Improve it, yes. Strip it down to a headline and a photo, and you may lose rankings that the redirect was meant to protect.

Changing URLs, design and content all at once makes it hard to tell what caused any dip. Where you can, move first and then rewrite the pages that need it in a second pass. Also check the technical basics before launch: the staging site's "noindex" setting is removed, robots.txt doesn't block anything important, each page has a self-referencing canonical tag, and internal links point to new URLs directly rather than through redirects.

Launch day: DNS, Search Console and the sitemap

Keep launch day boring by working from a checklist.

1. Point the domain to the new host by changing only the website records (usually the A and CNAME records). Leave the email (MX) records and verification (TXT) records alone, or your email can stop working. This applies whether the domain is registered with Wix, Squarespace or a separate registrar.
2. Test a sample of old URLs from your map, including the ones with the most traffic and links.
3. Confirm your Search Console property still works. A domain property verified by DNS carries over as long as that TXT record stays in place.
4. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console, and remove the old platform's sitemap if its address is different.
5. Use URL Inspection on your most important pages and request indexing.
6. Submit a test form and tap the phone number to confirm leads are still tracked.
7. Update the website link on your Google Business Profile if the URL it points to changed.

One common mix-up: Search Console's Change of Address tool is only for moving to a new domain (for example, oldname.com to newname.com). If your domain stays the same and only the platform changes, you don't use it. Redirects and a new sitemap do the work.

Don't cancel the old plan until you've confirmed all content and data is saved and the domain no longer depends on it.

What to watch in the first weeks

Some movement in rankings and impressions right after a migration is normal while Google recrawls. What you are looking for is anything that doesn't settle.

• Search Console Pages report: watch for growing "Not found (404)" errors, which usually point to a missing redirect. "Page with redirect" entries for old URLs are expected.
• Performance report: compare clicks and impressions by page against the same period before launch, and look closely at any important page that drops.
• Leads: calls, forms and bookings matter more than rankings. Compare them week to week.
• Outside links: update the URLs on your listings, social profiles and ads so they point to new pages directly.

We handle migrations as part of every brand and web project: the URL inventory, the redirect map, the launch checklist and the weeks of monitoring after. You own the domain and every account throughout (here's how to check who owns yours today). If you're on Wix or Squarespace and thinking about moving, tell us what you're working with and we'll tell you honestly whether it's worth it.

Frequently asked questions