Decide that WordPress is the right landing pad
Editors and content volume argue for WordPress. A tiny brochure that never changes might go static. A productised site might go Next.js. Platform chooser: how to choose.
Migrating to WordPress to “be like everyone” and then never updating is how you buy malware. Read maintenance before you cut DNS.
Stores are a fork
Wix Stores → Shopify is a different map than Wix brochure → WordPress. Do not collapse them into one weekend.
Inventory what Google actually knows
Search Console pages, sitemap.xml, a crawler export, and Analytics landing pages. You are protecting URLs with impressions, not every hidden Wix lightbox.
Download titles and meta descriptions. Screenshot the top 20 pages. After launch, you will forget what “used to rank.”
GSC property and domain
Know whether you verify by DNS or meta tag. Losing the property during DNS change is avoidable. Plan verification on the new host on cutover day.
The URL map is the migration
Spreadsheet: old path, new path, 301 vs gone, notes. Homepage, services, blog posts, category indexes, and trailing-slash variants. Wix sometimes ships ugly parameters — decide if they were indexed.
Where content dies, 301 to the closest living parent, not to Home for everything. Homepage dumps look like soft 404s.
WWW, HTTPS, and naked domain
Pick one host canonical before launch. Mixed www and non-www plus a new CMS is a self-inflicted split.
Content move: words, media, and what Wix will not give you
Copy is copy. Bring it. Images need re-upload, compression, and new filenames if Wix CDNs them. Alt text often dies — restore it on money pages.
Forms, bookings, and stores do not “export.” Rebuild with the stack you chose. Clinics: WordPress vs booking SaaS.
Technical SEO on the new WordPress
XML sitemap, robots.txt that does not noindex by accident, canonicals, title patterns, and schema that matches. Speed should improve if you leave builder soup — CWV.
Multilingual Wix needs per-locale 301s — Tamil/Hindi/English. Dropping a locale without redirects donates that graph.
Noindex leftovers
Staging noindex that ships to production is a classic. Check headers on cutover morning, not a week later.
Redirects: where they live and how you test
Server or WordPress redirect plugin — one system of record, not both fighting. Test a sample of 50 URLs including files (PDFs) if they ranked.
Chains (Wix → old WP → new WP) waste crawl budget. Flatten. Preserve query strings only if they mattered.
Hit the important URLs in an incognito crawl
Do not trust a spreadsheet colour. Fetch as Google or at least curl status codes. 302 by accident is a gift to nobody.
Analytics, pixels, and ads Quality Score
GA4/gtag and Meta pixels must fire on the new domain with the same events you care about. Ads landing on 404s is how CPA explodes the week you “went live.”
Update Google Business Profile website if it pointed at a Wix URL. NAP must still match — local pack is unforgiving.
Campaign landings
If ads used Wix landing URLs, 301 them or rebuild as Landing Pages from ₹7,500 with the same promise. Do not send festival traffic to a WIP theme.
DNS cutover, email, and the weekend myth
Lower TTL in advance. Cutover when someone can watch GSC and forms. Friday 6 p.m. cutovers are how Monday inboxes fill with “website down” — often it is email DNS you forgot.
Domain email (Google Workspace/Microsoft 365) must keep MX while you change A/CNAME. See domain and business email.
Do not cancel Wix the same hour
Keep Wix billed until redirects on the domain are fully on the new host and you no longer need Wix as a fallback screenshot machine. Then cancel. Paying two weeks overlap is cheaper than a missing asset.
The two-week SEO watch
Coverage, 404 spikes, a handful of money queries, and form tests. A dip can be normal; a cliff with 404s is a map failure. SEO retainer is useful here if you already rank.
Internal links on the new theme should not still point at Wix CDN URLs. Crawl yourself.
Do not “refresh all copy” in the same week
You will not know whether the drop was migration or a rewrite. Change URLs first, copy second, or copy first on the old URLs. Not both in 48 hours unless the old copy is harmful.
What Brevia needs on the kickoff call
Wix owner access, domain registrar, GSC, analytics, a wish-list of what the Wix site never did, and honesty about Woo vs Shopify if there is a cart. Quote against website cost.
We will refuse a “same design pixel perfect” plus “new IA plus new branding plus 80 pages this fortnight.” Pick a primary job. Contact Us from Thousand Lights.
Success is indexed 301s, not a Dribbble shot
Celebrate when money URLs return 200 on the new host and old paths 301. The theme can iterate. Equity cannot if you already 404’d it.
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