How to Switch from WordPress to Squarespace Without Losing Your Rankings

This used to be a post about why you’d leave WordPress. I’ve since written the full Squarespace vs WordPress comparison, so this one is now the how: the steps I follow when I move a business’s site from WordPress to Squarespace, in the order I do them, including the two that protect your Google rankings.

It’s less dramatic than people fear. The last two I did were Meraki Studios, two fitness studios and a full class timetable, off WordPress in four weeks, and Waters Agency, rebuilt and migrated in three. The content comes across. What doesn’t come across is the plugins, which is usually the point.

Before you start: three things to grab from the old site

Do these while WordPress is still live. They take an hour and they’re the difference between a clean move and a month of “where did that page go?”.

1. A list of every URL. Open yoursite.com/sitemap.xml (or /wp-sitemap.xml) and copy every address into a spreadsheet. This is your redirect map later. If the sitemap is missing, Google Search Console’s Pages report lists everything Google knows about.
2. Your Search Console data. In Search Console, Performance, set the date range to 16 months and export the Pages tab. Now you know which pages actually earn traffic, which is where the redirect care goes.
3. Your logins. WordPress admin, the hosting account, and wherever your domain is registered. The domain one matters most and it’s the one people can never find.

Step 1: export your content from WordPress

In the WordPress dashboard go to Tools, then Export, choose “All content” and download the XML file. That file holds your pages, posts, categories, tags and the links to your images. It doesn’t hold your design, your theme settings or anything a plugin added, and it isn’t supposed to.

If your site is on WordPress.com rather than self-hosted, the export is under Tools there too. If a page builder like Elementor or Divi built your pages, expect the exported page content to be a soup of shortcodes; you’ll be copying that text by hand in step 3, so don’t panic when you see it.

Step 2: import into Squarespace

Start a Squarespace trial, pick any template (you’re going to design over it anyway), and use the WordPress importer in Settings. Point it at the XML file. Squarespace brings in your blog posts, pages, images, categories and tags.

Be realistic about what arrives. Blog posts come across well, which is the thing that matters most, because they’re usually the bulk of your URLs and your rankings. Pages arrive as text and images with no layout. Treat the import as moving the furniture into the new house; you still have to decide where it goes.

Check the images. The importer fetches them from your live WordPress site, so it has to still be up. Anything it misses, download from the WordPress media library and upload again. This is also the moment to compress them, because a WordPress media library is usually full of 4MB photos that have been slowing the site down for years.

Step 3: rebuild the pages, don’t recreate them

This is where the time goes and where the move pays off. You’re not trying to copy the old site page for page. You’re building the site you’d build today, with the content you already have. Fewer pages, usually. Clearer navigation, always.

• Keep the page slugs where you can. If /about-us ranked, make the new page /about-us. Every slug you keep is a redirect you don’t need.
• Carry the page titles and meta descriptions over before you improve them. Squarespace has a field for both under each page’s SEO settings.
• Replace plugin features with built-in ones. Forms, galleries, bookings, newsletter sign-ups and basic shops are all native in Squarespace. For anything that was a membership or course plugin, read my comparison first; Squarespace’s own Member Sites and Courses cover more than people expect.
• Leave the blog design until last. Posts are already in; style the blog list and post layout once, and every post takes it.

Step 4: the redirects (this is the step that protects your rankings)

Every old address that no longer exists at the same path needs a 301 redirect to its new home. Not a “page not found”, not a redirect to the homepage. A 301 tells Google the page has moved and passes its ranking across. Skip this and your traffic drops the week you launch, then you spend six months earning it back.

Take the spreadsheet from before you started. For each old URL, write the new URL next to it. Then in Squarespace, under Settings, open URL Mappings and enter one line per redirect in this format:

/old-page -> /new-page 301

A few rules I follow:

• Redirect every old URL that had any impressions in Search Console, even small ones. The long tail adds up.
• Redirect like to like: an old service page goes to the matching new service page, not to the homepage. Google treats mass redirects to the homepage as soft 404s.
• WordPress often had several addresses for one post (with and without the date, with a trailing slash, category archives). Map the ones Google actually indexed; the Pages export tells you which.
• Old image URLs don’t need redirects. Old PDF links do, if anyone links to them.

Step 5: connect the domain and go live

Point your domain at Squarespace from wherever it’s registered, or transfer it to Squarespace if you’d rather have one bill. Squarespace walks you through the DNS records to change. Do this at a quiet time of day; the switch itself takes minutes to a few hours.

Before you flip it, run through my website redesign checklist. The short version: every form tested, every redirect clicked, Google Analytics connected, and the site set to allow search engines (trial sites are hidden from Google until you say otherwise, and people forget).

Step 6: the week after launch

1. Add the new site to Search Console if the address changed, and submit the Squarespace sitemap at /sitemap.xml.
2. Request indexing for your five most important pages.
3. Watch Search Console’s Pages report for a fortnight. Any “Not found (404)” that used to be a real page gets a redirect added.
4. Keep WordPress hosting running for 30 days with the site set to private, in case you need to grab something you missed. Then cancel it, along with every plugin subscription, the premium theme and the security service. That’s normally where the monthly saving shows up.

What it costs and how long it takes

Squarespace itself is £12 to £29 a month depending on the plan. If you do the move yourself, budget two to four weekends for a small business site, most of it in step 3. If I do it, a WordPress-to-Squarespace move is a redesign project: I handle the export, import, rebuild, redirects and launch, and you keep the site and run it afterwards. Custom builds start from £3,000, or the Managed-For-You plan from £150 a month includes the build and then looks after the site for you.

Questions people ask

Will I lose my Google rankings switching from WordPress to Squarespace?

Not if the redirects are done properly. The platform doesn’t matter to Google; the URLs do. A one-to-one redirect map from every old address to its new one carries the rankings across, and the sites I’ve moved have typically held or improved within a few weeks, partly because the new site is faster.

Does Squarespace import WordPress sites?

It imports the content: blog posts, pages, images, categories and tags, from the standard WordPress export file. It doesn’t import your theme, layout or plugins. Pages need rebuilding; posts mostly just need styling.

How long does it take to move from WordPress to Squarespace?

Three to four weeks for a typical small business site when I do it, including design. Longer if there are hundreds of blog posts to tidy or a shop with a big catalogue to migrate.

Can I move a WooCommerce shop to Squarespace?

Yes, for most shops. Squarespace imports products from a CSV, and its commerce handles physical and digital products, subscriptions and local delivery. Very large catalogues or heavily customised checkouts are the exception, and I’ll tell you on the first call if yours is one.

See how I handle the move