Moving off WordPress without losing your Google rankings
A new website can lose half its search traffic overnight, or keep all of it. The difference is a careful redirect plan.
· Sandeep Mittal
Moving a website to a new platform is a good chance to make it faster and easier to manage. It is also the moment many sites lose their Google traffic, because addresses change and nobody tells the search engine where the old pages went.
Before the move
- List every address: pages, posts, categories, images and PDFs that receive visits or links. Search Console and your analytics show which ones matter.
- Map old to new: each old address gets one new page that covers the same topic. Avoid sending everything to the home page.
- Keep what ranks: titles, headings and the main content of pages that rank well should move across largely unchanged.
On the day
- Set up permanent (301) redirects for every mapped address.
- Check that the new site has a sitemap, sensible titles and descriptions, and structured data.
- Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Change the platform, not the domain, at the same time if you can. Doing both at once makes problems harder to trace.
After the move
- Watch Search Console for "not found" pages over the next few weeks and redirect any you missed.
- Compare clicks and impressions for your top pages with the weeks before the move.
- Keep the redirects in place permanently.
Our Facet platform records redirects automatically whenever a page moves, and imports old addresses during a migration. SEO and site moves · Plan your move with us