Knowledge · Website Redesign
Migrating from Wix to WordPress: 301 Strategy + Content Export
Wix-to-WordPress is the migration we see most often from mid-market Tampa businesses that outgrew the DIY platform. Wix locks you in — URL structure, schema, content export are all hostile. Here’s the process for getting out cleanly with rankings intact.
№ 01Why Wix exports are unusable
Wix offers no native content export. The platform’s ‘data export’ produces a backup that only Wix can import. There’s no XML, no clean HTML, no CSV of pages. The community workarounds (Wix2WP plugins, scraping tools) work partially.
Our process: HTML-scrape every public URL on the Wix site using a tool like Screaming Frog or a custom crawler. Extract the rendered HTML, strip Wix-specific markup and inline styles, parse into Gutenberg blocks. The output is clean WordPress content. The bottleneck is the manual review pass on every page — Wix’s rendered HTML has quirks (nested divs, anchor mismatches) that need human attention.
№ 02The Wix URL structure problem
Wix uses URL patterns like /services/web-design on premium plans but ?page=12345-style URLs on legacy or free plans. Either way, the URL structure rarely maps 1:1 to WordPress conventions.
The 301 map: pull every Wix URL from GSC + GA4, map each to a new WordPress URL using slug conventions that match the buyer’s intent (/services/web-design/ as a canonical pattern). Configure the redirects in WordPress before launch, test 20 random redirects with curl, verify in GSC during the first week post-launch.
№ 03Schema rebuilds from scratch
Wix’s schema markup is platform-controlled. You can’t see the JSON-LD it generates, you can’t modify it, and you can’t port it. Every Wix migration is a schema rebuild from scratch.
Our standard: LocalBusiness schema on the homepage and contact page, Service schema on every service page, FAQPage schema on every page with a FAQ section, BreadcrumbList schema sitewide, Organization schema in the global footer. This typically adds 2-4 referenced rich-snippet types to the migrated site that Wix never produced.
№ 04Timeline: 14 days for Standard, 21 days for Authority
Day 1-3: Discovery + Wix audit + URL inventory. Day 4-6: HTML scraping + content cleanup. Day 7-10: Custom theme build + 301 mapping. Day 11-13: Page rebuild on staging + schema implementation. Day 14: QA + launch.
For Authority-tier scope (40-70 pages on the new site, often expanding from a 15-page Wix base), timeline extends to 21 days. The content expansion is where the extra time goes — we’re writing pages that didn’t exist on Wix.
№ 05The recovery curve after a Wix-to-WordPress switch
Wix-to-WordPress migrations show a steeper initial dip than WordPress-to-WordPress migrations because the entire URL structure is changing. Expect:
- Week 1: 3-5 spot drop on primary keywords. Normal.
- Week 2-3: Recovery begins as Google reindexes the new URLs.
- Week 4-6: Back to baseline or close to it.
- Week 8-10: Surpass baseline. The CWV improvement (Wix LCP ~3.5s vs WordPress custom ~1.3s) starts compounding.
Across the 15+ Wix migrations we’ve done in the last 18 months, 100% surpassed pre-migration organic baseline within 10 weeks.
⚠What to avoid
- Using a ‘Wix to WordPress’ migration plugin from the WordPress plugin directory. They scrape badly, miss schema, and produce content riddled with Wix-leftover markup. Hand-roll the extraction.
- Keeping the Wix subdomain (yoursite.wixsite.com) live as a fallback. Search engines will index both. Decommission Wix at launch — the 301 map is the only thing that needs to survive.
- Skipping the Schema rebuild because ‘Wix had schema.’ Wix had schema you can’t see, can’t edit, and can’t verify. Rebuild from scratch in WordPress with explicit JSON-LD.
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