Migrating from a site builder to WordPress without losing rankings

The usual reason to move is a subscription that has outgrown the cost of building the site, plus a ceiling on what the platform allows.

The order this is done in

1. Take a full inventory of URLs. Export every URL from the old site plus Search Console data on which pages earn impressions and clicks. Those are the critical ones; the rest is background.

2. Design the new structure. Here comes the temptation to “redo everything while we are at it”. Do it deliberately: every changed URL is another redirect, and every redirect loses a little authority.

3. Write the redirect map. A table of old URL to new URL, one to one. Do not dump every unmatched URL onto the home page: Google treats that as a soft 404 and drops the page.

4. Move the content. Text, images, meta tags, alt attributes. The detail people forget: page titles and descriptions must move too, otherwise your search snippets change and click-through falls.

5. Launch and verify immediately. Sitemap into Search Console, spot-check the redirects, watch the indexing report for two weeks.

What does not transfer

• Builder markup. The export produces heavy code that is expensive to maintain. We carry the design across and write the markup fresh.
• The platform’s built-in analytics. The history stays on the old service — screenshot the key reports before you switch it off.
• Forms and their stored submissions. Export those contacts in advance.

What to expect from traffic

For the first fortnight the search engine recrawls and follows redirects. A dip during that window is normal. By the end of the first month the numbers usually recover, and then growth starts — from the things the builder never allowed: a proper structure, speed, and the ability to keep adding pages.

If traffic has not returned after two months, it is almost always the redirects. Check those first.