Website Migration Checklist: Moving Off Wix or WordPress

Moving a Wix or WordPress site to a new platform keeps your Google rankings when every old page address leads to its new page. rankr does the whole move for Singapore businesses as a one-off website migration, with every page rebuilt in code and every old address redirected, and this checklist lays out the same steps for anyone doing it themselves.

The work is four jobs: list every address the old site has, rebuild the pages, set a permanent redirect from each old address to its new page, and move the domain without cutting off your email. Google's site move guide (updated 20 August 2026) says Google frequently sees people redirecting to wrong or non-existent pages on the new site.

Steps 1 to 6 cover the work before and during the switch, the ten-minute check covers the day after, and the last section helps you decide whether to do it yourself.

What can you take with you when you leave Wix or WordPress?

Wix. A Wix site cannot move to another host. Wix's help page on exporting says a Wix site has to stay on Wix's servers, so leaving means rebuilding each page on the new platform. The page carries no date; we read it on 11 October 2026. What does come with you: your contact list as a CSV file from Contacts, your bookings as a CSV from the Booking List, and your domain.

Rebuilding the pages is most of the work in leaving Wix, and it is the part our website migration takes off your hands: each page is captured from your live site and rebuilt in code, with every old address redirected.

Wix Bookings itself stays behind. The new site needs a booking tool that can be embedded anywhere, or a developer to connect Wix Bookings to it through Wix Headless. Check any text you placed in Wix's Embed HTML element too. Wix shows that code inside a sandboxed iFrame, and on the new site it should become ordinary text on the page.

WordPress. Tools, Export downloads your posts, pages, comments and menus as one XML file. The theme, plugins and site settings are not in it, so the design gets rebuilt, and anything a plugin did for you, such as contact forms, redirects, SEO titles or schema, needs a replacement on the new site.

A web host's free migration is a different job. It copies a WordPress site onto the host's servers with the same addresses, which suits a change of host and does nothing for a site leaving Wix.

Step 1: Record what already brings you customers

Open Performance in Google Search Console, set the dates to the last three months and export the Pages and Queries tabs. Those pages are the ones the move must not lose. If nobody set up Search Console for the site, add it now and export what it shows.

Note the pages that bring enquiries as well, from your contact form, WhatsApp or call log. A page can bring customers without much search traffic, and it needs the same care in step 3.

Step 2: List every address on the old site

Every page address needs a decision, so build the list from more than one source:

the sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, which Wix publishes automatically (WordPress puts its built-in sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml);
the Pages export from step 1;
the Top linked pages list in Search Console's Links report, which shows the pages other sites link to;
addresses printed on name cards, flyers and QR codes.

Watch for Wix blog posts. Wix puts them at /post/your-post-title by default, so if the new site uses /blog/your-post-title, every post needs its own redirect.

Step 3: Point each old address at its new page

Put the list from step 2 in a spreadsheet with two columns, old address and new address, and fill in every row.

Old page	What to do
Same content at a new address	301 redirect to the new address
Two overlapping pages merged	Both 301 to the merged page
Removed, with a close replacement	301 to the replacement
Removed, with nothing equivalent	Let it return 404 or 410

Make each redirect permanent. Google's redirects guide (updated 14 April 2026) says a permanent redirect shows the new address in search results, while a temporary one keeps the old address there. Send each old address straight to its final page in one hop. And do not send everything to the homepage: Google's site move guide says many old addresses redirected to one irrelevant page "might be treated as a soft 404 error".

Keep the redirects for at least a year, which is the site move guide's advice. Old addresses keep turning up long after a move. On our first client's site, Search Console was still recording impressions on 1 October 2026 for a guide address that had redirected since late July.

Step 4: Rebuild the pages and test them on a preview link

Rebuild each page with the words that rank today: the title, the main heading, the body text, FAQs, prices, opening hours and contact details. A cleaner design that drops the paragraphs Google was reading can cost a page its ranking even with every redirect in place.

Reconnect everything a customer taps: WhatsApp and call buttons, the contact form, booking and payment links. If a form collects names, emails or phone numbers, carry its purpose statement across, because the PDPA's Notification Obligation requires you to tell people why you collect their data on or before collecting it.

Build on a preview address Google cannot reach. A password or login is the safe block, because a robots.txt block alone does not stop indexing when the address leaks through a link. If a preview copy already shows up in Google, our guide to unwanted pages in Google covers removing it.

Step 5: Move the domain without cutting off your email

Your domain carries your website and your email, so copy every DNS record before you change anything: the MX records that route email, and the TXT and CNAME records that verify Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, Search Console and other tools.

There are two ways to point the domain at the new site:

Change the website records only. Where your DNS is managed, at your registrar or at Wix if you bought the domain there, replace the records that point the domain at the old site with the new host's, and leave the MX records alone. Email keeps working.
Transfer the domain away from Wix. Wix's transfer guide says business email stops working until the MX records are added again at the new provider, that a transfer usually takes up to 7 days, and that a domain cannot be transferred within 60 days of purchase. Add the MX records at the new provider on the day, from the copy you made.

Step 6: Switch over in this order

Stop editing the old site, so nothing new is written there after the copy.
Put the new site live with the redirect list from step 3 switched on.
Point the domain at it, as in step 5.
Remove the preview password or noindex from the live site.
Submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
Open five old addresses from your list and check each lands on its new page.
Send a test enquiry through every form, make a test booking and send yourself an email.
In Search Console, inspect your most important pages and request indexing for them.

Keep the old site's account open until the checks below pass, so you can compare pages if something is missing.

The ten-minute check after launch

Run these the day after the switch, or now if someone else moved your site. You need a browser and owner access to Search Console. If a designer set it up under their own account, ask them to add you as an owner, because Google's Search Console help says only property owners can grant access to other users.

The shortcut is our free SEO visibility checker. Paste in your homepage and it reports whether robots.txt lets Google and the AI search crawlers in, whether the site has a sitemap and whether the page carries a canonical tag. It reads one page, so the redirect and dead-link checks still need you.

1. Is anything telling Google to stay away?

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. The lines to worry about are User-agent: * with Disallow: / under it, which tell every crawler to stay off the whole site. They belong on a preview site, and Google's site move guide reminds whoever moves a site to remove blocks "that were only needed for the migration". A Disallow: line with nothing after it blocks nothing, and having no robots.txt at all is fine too, because Google then "assumes that there are no crawl restrictions", according to its robots.txt rules.

For ChatGPT search, the file must not block OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's crawler page says sites that opt out of it "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers". Once ChatGPT can read your site, you can check what ChatGPT says about your business.

Then view the source of your homepage and two or three key pages (Ctrl+U in Chrome on Windows, Command+Option+U on a Mac) and search for noindex. It should not appear on a page you want found, because Google's noindex guide says Google drops such a page from its results.

2. Do the old addresses still lead to the right pages?

Paste five old addresses from your step 2 list into the browser. Each should land on its matching new page, and landing on the homepage counts as a miss. To see whether a redirect is permanent, press F12 in Chrome (Command+Option+I on a Mac), open the Network tab, tick Preserve log and load an old address. The first line should show 301 or 308; a 302 or 307 is temporary.

When we renamed our first client's product pages in August 2026, each old address got its own 301. On 3 October 2026, lullaflex.com/products/lullaflex-mattress still landed on /products/cooling-mattress-singapore in one step. If your domain changed, update the website link on your Google Business Profile as well. Our guide to a suspended Google Business Profile covers what to save before you edit it.

3. Has Google read the new sitemap?

Open yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml and check that the addresses start with https and your live domain, because Google "will attempt to crawl your URLs exactly as listed", according to its sitemap guide. Then open the Sitemaps report in Search Console. You want the status Success and a recent Last read date.

4. Does each page name itself as the main copy?

Search the page source for canonical. Each page should name its own full address. Watch for pages naming the homepage, the preview site or an old address. Google's canonical guide calls the tag "a strong signal", and URL Inspection in Search Console shows the canonical a page declares next to the one Google chose.

5. Does any link lead to a dead end?

Click every menu and footer link and every button that brings enquiries, on a phone and on a computer. Then load a made-up address such as yourdomain.com/test-123. You should see a "page not found" page and a 404 in the Network tab. A normal-looking page means missing pages are not returning 404, and Google can report them as soft 404s.

What to watch in the weeks after the move

Google's site move guide says most pages of a small or medium site take a few weeks to move, and visibility can fluctuate in the meantime. Once a week, open the Page indexing report in Search Console and look for new Not found (404) rows, which usually mean a missing redirect, and compare clicks on the pages from step 1 against the same weeks before the move. Fix a missing redirect the day you find it, and give rankings a few weeks before reading anything into them. If the pages are found and enquiries still do not come, read why a good-looking website can still get no customers.

Should you move it yourself?

If the site has a few pages, the domain was bought outside Wix and there are no bookings or payments to reconnect, this checklist covers it. The two mistakes that show no error on launch day are a missed address in step 2 and a lost MX record in step 5. They surface later, as a page that stops getting visits or an email that bounces.

You may not need to move at all. A well-built Wix or WordPress site can rank. Owners move when they hit a limit, such as text stuck in Wix's Embed HTML iFrame, a WordPress site slowed by its plugins, or wanting a site whose code they own.

If you would rather hand it over, we do the whole move as a one-off project: website migration in Singapore. We rebuild every page in code from your live site, map and test every redirect and keep bookings, payments and email working. You approve the new site on a preview link before anything changes. The price is on that page, and it is lower if you also start an SEO plan, which then covers every edit after launch.

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Frequently asked questions

Can I move my Wix website to another host?

No. Wix says a Wix site has to stay on Wix's servers. Moving off Wix means rebuilding the pages on the new platform, redirecting the old addresses and pointing or transferring the domain. Your contacts and bookings can be exported as CSV files first.

Will I lose my Google rankings if I move my website?

Not if every old address has a permanent redirect to its closest new page and the new pages keep the content that ranked. Google's site move guide says most pages of a small or medium site take a few weeks to move, and rankings can fluctuate while they do.

Will my email stop working when I move my website?

Not if the MX records stay in place. Pointing the domain at a new host leaves them untouched. Transferring a domain away from Wix does not: Wix says the MX records have to be added again at the new provider for business email to work.

How long should 301 redirects stay live?

Google's site move guide says "generally at least 1 year", so that every signal, including links from other sites, moves to the new addresses.

Should every old URL redirect to the homepage?

No. Redirect each one to its closest equivalent. Google's site move guide says sending many old URLs to one irrelevant page such as the homepage "might be treated as a soft 404 error". When nothing equivalent exists, a 404 or 410 is clearer.

Can I do a website migration myself?

Yes, for a small site whose domain you control. The work is listing every address, rebuilding the pages, redirecting each old address and moving the domain with its email records intact. Bookings, payment tools and a domain bought through Wix add the most work.

Website Migration Checklist: Moving Off Wix or WordPress in Singapore

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