Leaving Wix without losing your search ranking

Wix lets you launch a site quickly. One day, you may need something else: a specific feature, a link with your other tools, or simply a site that is entirely in your name. One fear always comes up: losing the place you have earned in Google. This guide sets out the steps, in order, so that your visitors and search engines find every page in its new place. It applies to Wix, and largely to any other platform.

First: what leaves, what stays

A Wix site runs on Wix technology. The site itself cannot be exported and hosted elsewhere: it gets rebuilt. What comes with you:

• your text, images, videos and documents;
• your domain name;
• depending on the modules you use, your contacts, products or form responses, which the dashboard often lets you export as CSV;
• your positions in Google, provided every URL is properly redirected.

Before you start, check in your dashboard what each module lets you export, and note what will have to be copied by hand.

Step 1: take an inventory

List everything that exists, not just what appears in the menu.

• Pages: the sitemap, often at /sitemap.xml, lists the URLs that search engines know about.
• Pages that matter: in Google Search Console, the Performance report shows which pages get clicks. Export it: these are the pages that need the most care.
• Inbound links: the Links report in Search Console shows the pages other sites point to.
• Everything else: blog posts, product pages, PDFs, important images, forms, pages left out of the menu.

If you do not have Search Console yet, set it up now and verify your domain. That way you will have baseline data from before the switchover to compare against later.

Step 2: draw up the URL map

The URL map is a two-column table: the old URL and the new one. Every row counts. For example:

• /about-us → /about
• /post/our-summer-hours → /blog/summer-hours
• /product-page/amber-candle → /shop/amber-candle

By default, Wix uses prefixes such as /post/ for blog posts or /product-page/ for products. You can keep them or simplify them; either way, every old URL must point to the page that replaces it.

The rules to follow

• One old URL, one equivalent new page.
• No bulk redirects to the home page: Google often treats them as a missing page.
• No redirect chains (A to B, then B to C).
• If a page no longer has a purpose, redirect it to the closest page. If it has neither visits nor links, it can simply go.

Step 3: set up the 301 redirects

A 301 redirect tells browsers and search engines that a page has moved for good. It passes most of the old URL's signals on to the new one.

Redirects are set up on the new site, meaning the server that will receive the domain. They must be ready and tested before the switchover: on the day, every old URL must answer straight away with its redirect.

Test a few URLs by hand first, then the whole list with a crawler. Every row should return a 301 code, then a 200 code on the new page.

Step 4: carry over the metadata

Visible content is not enough. For every important page, carry over:

• the title tag and the meta description;
• the section headings (H1, H2);
• the alt text of images;
• structured data, if your site had any: local business, products, articles;
• hreflang tags, if the site exists in several languages.

Take the chance to fix what needs fixing, but do not rewrite everything on the same day. Changing a page's URL, title and content all at once makes it impossible to measure the effect of each change.

Step 5: images, files and forms

• Images: retrieve the originals in good quality, give them readable names (amber-candle.webp rather than IMG_2041.webp) and compress them. An image that gets visits from Google Images deserves its own redirect too.
• Documents: PDFs linked from other sites keep their URL, or get a redirect.
• Forms: rebuild them on the new site, test every submission and check who receives the messages. Export the responses you have already received before the switchover.

Step 6: switch the DNS with no downtime

The domain connects your address to the server. There are two cases:

• the domain is registered with Wix: you can transfer it to a registrar, on an account in your name;
• the domain is registered elsewhere: you only need to change its DNS records so they point to the new server.

To avoid any downtime:

1. lower the cache time (TTL) of the DNS records a few days ahead;
2. write down the email records (MX, SPF, DKIM) and recreate them exactly;
3. switch at a quiet time, with the new site already tested;
4. leave the old site online during propagation.

Be careful: a domain registered or transferred less than 60 days ago usually cannot be transferred again. Check the date before you plan.

Step 7: check in Search Console

On switchover day:

• submit the new sitemap in Search Console;
• inspect a few key URLs with the URL Inspection tool;
• make sure the site is no longer blocked by a "noindex" tag or by the robots.txt file, a classic oversight after a test phase.

In the weeks that follow:

• watch the Pages report, its 404 errors and its excluded pages;
• compare clicks and impressions for important pages with the previous period;
• fix every missing redirect as soon as it shows up.

Ranking movement is common in the first weeks, while Google recrawls the site. No one can guarantee a position; a careful migration mainly limits the risk of a lasting loss.

The most common mistakes

• Forgetting URLs that are not in the menu.
• Redirecting every old page to the home page.
• Launching a site still marked "noindex" from the test phase.
• Forgetting the MX records and cutting off email.
• Cancelling the subscription before everything has been exported.

If you would like help

This is the method we follow for every migration, with the site rebuilt on a server and accounts in your name. The process is described on the Migration page. To look at your current site together, book a free 30-minute call.