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WordPress migration

WordPress migration without losing your SEO

If you are moving your website to WordPress from Wix, Joomla, Drupal or a custom build, I prepare the migration so that the pages bringing you visits today keep appearing on Google. I work from Valencia with businesses all over Spain.

Tell me which website you're migrating

I move every page of your website to its place in WordPress.

What’s specific to WordPress

What you need to know about WordPress before migrating

WordPress lets you decide almost everything about your URLs, as long as you do it before loading the content.

Permalinks start out as Plain: A fresh installation publishes pages as ?p=123. The structure is changed under Settings, Permalinks, and I have it decided before loading the content.
You can keep a good share of your URLs: with a custom structure, for example /%postname%/, many pages can keep their current address. Every URL you keep is one redirect fewer.
Categories and tags have a prefix: their archives sit under /category/ and /tag/. That prefix can be changed but not removed, so those URLs usually need a redirect.
WordPress only redirects its own changes: if you change a post’s slug inside WordPress, the old address redirects automatically. WordPress knows nothing about your previous website’s URLs, and for those you need to load the map on the server or in a redirect plugin.
One checkbox can hide your website from Google: under Settings, Reading, the Search engine visibility option adds a noindex tag to the whole website and disables the sitemap. It is useful while the site is being built and a serious problem if it is still ticked on switchover day.
The sitemap comes built in: since version 5.5, WordPress publishes one at /wp-sitemap.xml with the public pages, posts and taxonomies. Before submitting it to Search Console I check that it doesn’t contain anything it shouldn’t.

How I work

The three phases of the migration

I start with the permalinks and finish weeks after the switchover, comparing against the starting point.

Before the migration

Defining the scope: moving to WordPress usually comes with a new design and sometimes with a different domain. Each change carries its own risks, and together they get more complicated, so I first put in writing what changes and what doesn’t.
Benchmark of the current situation: I analyse Search Console with at least 12 to 16 months of performance by page and by query, Analytics, the rankings of the keywords that bring you customers, Core Web Vitals and inbound links. This is the snapshot we will compare everything against afterwards.
Full crawl of the current website: with Screaming Frog or a similar tool I extract every URL, status code, title, meta description, canonical, hreflang, internal link and click depth. On a website that has been around for years, old pages, PDFs and duplicate versions turn up that nobody remembered.
Redirect map: old URL and new URL, one by one, starting with those that bring in traffic or have links. Nothing gets sent to the home page wholesale. Anything without an equivalent goes to the nearest page or is marked as removed with a 410. The map is tested before the switchover day and loaded on the server or in a redirect plugin.
Review before opening: while it is being built, the new website is kept out of Google’s reach, either password protected or with the visibility checkbox ticked. I review the templates, permalinks, canonicals, structured data and speed, check that no internal links point to old addresses and make sure the sitemap lists the new ones.
Plan and timeline: I choose a date outside your busiest season, with developers available on the switchover day and the days after, and with a rollback plan in case something goes wrong.

Migration day

I check in production that the 301s work, with no chains or loops, using a large sample of the map before and after the switch. On WordPress I also check that the visibility checkbox is unticked and that no page is served with noindex.
I crawl the new website and the list of old URLs to confirm their status codes.
I submit the new sitemap to Search Console. If the domain changes, I verify the new property and use the Change of Address tool.

After the migration

Daily monitoring for the first two weeks: indexing in Search Console, 404 and 5xx errors, rankings for the benchmark keywords and organic traffic by page type (services, blog and contact). To see what Googlebot is crawling I use the Crawl Stats report in Search Console.
I update the external links you control, such as profiles, directories or partners, and request changes to the most important links pointing to your website.
I compare against the benchmark at 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks. A temporary drop is normal, but if it still hasn’t recovered after two months, the cause needs to be found.

Before we start

What I can’t guarantee

That your traffic will stay untouched. It always fluctuates for a few weeks, and my job is to shorten the drop and prevent content or links from being lost.
An exact recovery date. It depends on how many URLs change, the size of the website and how quickly Google recrawls it.
That WordPress will rank better on its own. It gives you control over URLs, templates and content, but the result depends on how you configure it.

Questions

Frequently asked questions about migrating to WordPress

In many cases, yes. With a custom permalink structure you can reproduce a good share of your current addresses. Those that don’t fit, such as category archives, need a redirect.

WordPress only redirects slug changes made within WordPress itself. For your previous website’s URLs you need to load the map, on the server or with a plugin, and I test it before the switchover day.

Google removes pages with noindex from its results when it recrawls them. That’s why it’s the first thing I check on switchover day.

Yes. As an SEO consultant in Valencia I coordinate with your agency or developer so that SEO arrives in time, especially for the URL structure, the templates and the switchover date.

While you are still deciding the structure of the new website, because that is when the permalinks are set, and changing them later means redirecting all over again.

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