Moving from WordPress or WooCommerce to Shopify can make your life a lot easier: fewer updates, fewer plugins, a faster and more reliable store. But we've also seen what happens when a migration is rushed. Rankings that took years to build can disappear within weeks.

The reason is simple. Your URLs change. If Google can't find the new version of each page, it quietly drops the old one. The good news is that every part of this is preventable if you plan it properly.

Why rankings drop after a move

Nearly always, it's one of five things. Old URLs return "page not found" instead of redirecting. Titles, descriptions or page content get lost or cut down in the move. Blog posts get left behind. Internal links still point at old URLs. Or images lose their alt text.

Step 1: Write down where you are now

Before touching anything, record a baseline. Export your top pages by clicks from Google Search Console for the past twelve months, and your top landing pages from Google Analytics. Note your rankings for your most important keywords. Then crawl the old site with an SEO crawler to get a full list of URLs, titles and descriptions. You'll need all of this later.

Step 2: Map every old URL to its new home

Shopify uses fixed URL patterns: /products/ for products, /collections/ for categories, /pages/ for pages and /blogs/blog-name/ for posts. You can't change those prefixes, but you can usually keep the last part of each URL (the slug) the same.

Make a spreadsheet with the old URL in one column and the new one in the other. Every page that gets traffic or has links pointing at it needs a destination. This spreadsheet is the single most important document in the whole migration.

Step 3: Move the content carefully

Products need their descriptions, variants, images and alt text. Categories become collections, with their descriptions. Pages like About, Contact and FAQs move across. Blog posts need their images and original publish dates. Customers and order history come too, if you want them.

Migration apps handle products and customers reasonably well. Content almost always needs checking by a human.

Step 4: Bring the SEO details with you

Copy the meta title and description for every important page into Shopify's search engine listing fields. Don't let them fall back to whatever Shopify generates by default; that's how good listings quietly get worse.

Step 5: Set up your 301 redirects

In Shopify's admin, go to URL Redirects. You can import them all at once from a CSV. Redirect each old URL to its closest new equivalent, not everything to the homepage. Google treats a blanket homepage redirect much like a broken link.

This is the one situation where redirects are exactly what you want. Once they're in place, avoid changing URLs again.

Step 6: Update your internal links

Product descriptions and blog posts often contain links to old WordPress addresses. Update them to point straight at the new Shopify URLs, so neither visitors nor Google have to bounce through a redirect.

Step 7: Launch and watch closely

Switch the domain to Shopify. Test a sample of old URLs to confirm each one lands on the right new page. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console. For the first two weeks, check the Pages report and any "not found" errors every day, and compare traffic and rankings against your baseline.

Some wobble for a few weeks is normal. A steep drop that doesn't recover usually means missing redirects or missing content.

Mistakes to avoid

• Going live without a redirect map
• Deleting the old site before you've checked everything moved
• Renaming products and changing URLs at the same time as migrating
• Forgetting image and PDF URLs that other sites link to
• Leaving the new store password-protected

Quick answers

Will I lose rankings? With proper redirects and content, most sites see only small, short-lived changes.

Can I keep my blog on WordPress? You can, but moving it to Shopify keeps everything on one domain and is simpler to manage.

Not sure Shopify is the right move? Read Shopify vs WordPress first. If it is, we handle migrations as part of our Advanced Shopify Website build. Let's plan yours.