Moving from WordPress to a custom website without losing your Google rankings

You can move from WordPress to a custom website without losing your Google rankings, but it doesn't happen on its own. Three things need protecting: every old address has to lead to its equivalent on the new site, the copy that already ranks has to stay, and nothing that works today (forms, email, photos, your Google Business Profile) can get lost along the way.

This post isn't here to talk you out of WordPress. It's for owners who've already decided to switch, so you know what to ask for and what to ask about, and the move doesn't cost you the customers who find you today.

Why owners leave WordPress

WordPress works for a huge number of businesses. The owners who come to me wanting to leave usually have one of these reasons: the site needs something that's hard to do there (a quote tool, bookings, a catalog with its own rules), every update breaks something, the admin area filled up with options nobody understands, or the person who built it is gone and nobody knows what's under the hood.

If any of those sounds familiar, switching makes sense. If your only reason is that it “looks dated,” first read when to redesign your website. A few fixes might be enough without moving at all.

Take inventory before you move

Before touching anything, you need to know what you have. I put this list together with every client:

• Every address on your current site: pages, products, blog posts, categories. Including ones you didn't know existed.
• Which ones get visits from Google, and from which searches. Those are the ones you can't lose.
• The copy, titles and descriptions on those pages. They can be improved, but not stripped of what makes Google show them.
• Photos and files people download: catalogs, price lists, spec sheets.
• Forms and where they send messages, email on your domain, message buttons and anything else hooked up.
• Where other sites link to yours: your Google Business Profile, social accounts, directories, press mentions.

Every old address has to lead to the new one

This is the most important step and the one that gets forgotten most. Google knows your site by its addresses, say “yourbusiness.com/services/emergency-plumbing.” If that page gets a different address on the new site and nobody tells Google, it hits an error page and the ranking that page earned is gone. Same for anyone who bookmarked it or has the link in an old email.

The fix is a table listing each old address and its new equivalent, with the new site automatically sending visitors from one to the other and telling Google the move is permanent. If an old page has no direct equivalent, it goes to the closest match, not the homepage. It's detail work, no question, and it's what separates a clean move from one that sinks you.

What you lose if you're not careful

What to ask your developer before you start

• How will you list the old addresses, and what happens to each one?
• Which copy stays and which changes? Can I see it first?
• What happens to my email on launch day?
• How do I try the new site before it replaces the old one?
• What will we check in the weeks after launch to make sure Google is picking it up?
• Who owns the site when it's done? (I covered that in who owns your website code.)

The weeks after the switch

Launch isn't the finish line. For the first few weeks, use the free tools Google gives site owners to check for pages that can't be found, whether your key searches are holding, and whether inquiries keep coming in. Some movement is normal. A sharp, lasting drop means something slipped through, and the sooner you catch it, the easier it is to fix.

I work remotely from Buenos Aires, Argentina (UTC−3). I quote each move separately, because a five-page site and one with hundreds of products are very different jobs. More on what I do in services.

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