How to Migrate from WordPress to Squarespace
Are you migrating from WordPress to Squarespace? Moving a website from any content management system to another platform is similar in terms of overall steps involved, but here we walk you through the specifics of how to move your business from WordPress to Squarespace—and keep your rankings at the same time.
The most important thing when transferring a website to Squarespace is to maintain search engine rankings. Anytime you change website platforms you may experience an initial dip in analytics and ranking—that said, you can also improve your standings if you approach the process correctly.
Note, if you are researching the option of moving from WordPress, see our resource on the pros and cons of Squarespace.
Considerations for Established Sites
If you’re planning to migrate an existing business with a well-established online presence, it is a wise choice to seek expert assistance. Established sites can require more complex steps with deeper research and analysis to ensure a smooth transfer. Existing businesses that opt for a DIY approach—whether through interns, inexperienced in-house staff, or junior marketers—often realize about 4 to 6 months down the line that they’re facing unforeseen issues with SEO rankings.
Hiring an SEO specialist can offer peace of mind. A professional has the expertise to manage a more complex migration, ensuring no data is lost and that your site retains its functionality and SEO rankings. A migration expert can foresee and avoid common pitfalls to help mitigate risks that occur during website moves. The expert will also provide post-migration support, helping to troubleshoot any issues that might arise, to ensure the transition is seamless and successful.
Learn more about website migrations and redesigns.
How to Migrate from WordPress to Squarespace
Step 1: Compile a list of your current URLs
While your old site is still online, make a list of your current URLs in a spreadsheet. You will revisit the spreadsheet in Step 6 when you create 301 redirects for any changed URLs. If you are migrating a larger site, you can use a tool like Screaming Frog SEO Spider to generate a list of your current URLs. Screaming Frog will also capture your page titles and meta descriptions.
Below is an example URL spreadsheet. The column of new URLs will be filled in after you are finished building a website in Squarespace. If a URL structure does not change, then a redirect is not needed. Note, if your current WordPress permalink structure for blog posts uses a subfolder, you can use the same folder name on Squarespace and avoid redirects. Learn more about Squarespace redirects.
Important: Wait to cancel WP hosting until the move to Squarespace is complete.
Step 2: Setup Squarespace
If you haven’t already done so, open a Squarespace trial by selecting a template. To do this, visit Squarespace and click “Get Started.” The first set of templates displayed are all built on the master 7.1 template. Or you can scroll to the bottom of the list and click “templates from an earlier version” to see 7.0 templates. Learn more about the history of Squarespace versions.
After answering a few getting-started questions, you can begin customizing the site by adding your business name, logo, and connecting social media accounts.
Related Reading: Which Squarespace pricing plan is right for your business?
Step 3: Password protect the new website
After walking through the initial Squarespace setup, we recommend locking the site with a site-wide password. Trial sites are automatically locked, but setting a password is a good safety measure to prevent built-in Squarespace URLs from being crawled. You will remove the password after you finish migrating over.
Note, Squarespace has improved the functionality around locking new sites, so now there are fewer user errors. But it is important to prevent the site from being crawled by search engines until you are ready to launch a custom domain.
Step 4: Export and import your WordPress site
Squarespace offers a detailed, step-by-step guide that walks you through how to export and import WordPress content.
Key things to know:
The “Advanced” option in the guide is what most website owners will use
WordPress 3.2 or higher is required
Disable any WordPress plugins before starting
Step 5: Organize, design, and optimize content
You are now ready to address your site content.
Organize. Use the Squarespace Pages panel to organize your site and add any new content. This is also the time to remove, improve, or merge underperforming pages—use Google Search Console and Google Analytics for analysis. Consider website redesign best practices and user experience as you structure the site. Proper site architecture is an important part of SEO.
Design. Use your template’s style settings to design the site to match your brand.
Optimize. Ensure that you fully optimize the new site for search engines. Read up on the latest Squarespace SEO best practices. Maintain (or improve) important SEO elements for each page: title tags, meta descriptions, keywords, image alt tags, etc.
Step 6: Create 301 redirects
Now you can create 301 redirects, these will take effect when you connect the domain. 301 redirects tell search engines that content has permanently moved to a new URL. This step is important for all migrations, but especially for legacy website migrations.
Open the spreadsheet you created in Step 1, next to your old URLs list the corresponding new URLs. If the URLs differ, then you need to write a 301 redirect. In Squarespace, visit Settings > Developers Tools > URL Mappings to create redirects. Refer to our in-depth Squarespace redirect guide for more information. In general, they will look like this:
/old-url -> /new-url 301Note, if you have a large number of blog posts, products, or events, you can save time by doing a bulk redirect of all similar items using the [name] variable. This technique works if the imported WordPress blog used a folder structure:
www.yoursite.com/folder/blog-name For example, if the blog URL is changing from /news to /blog, the catch-all redirect to move all posts would look like this:
/news/[name] -> /blog/[name] 301 Keep in mind, if you are cleaning up content, it might be appropriate for some URLs to lead to your 404 page versus being redirected.
Step 7: Connect your domain
Once your content is ready to go, there are just a few more tasks to finalize the switch to Squarespace:
Connect your domain. Your domain can remain registered with your current registrar (e.g. Godaddy, Namecheap, etc.) and you’ll simply point DNS records to Squarespace. Or if your current registrar is WP, you might consider transferring the domain from WordPress to Squarespace, just to keep everything housed together.
Pay the Squarespace hosting fee.
Remove the site-wide password to make your Squarespace site public.
When you see that everything is working as expected, close the old WP site.
Step 8: Request indexing
Use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to submit the new XML sitemap and request indexing of your new Squarespace site. Delete any old sitemaps. You’ve now completed the switch from WordPress to Squarespace.
Over the next few weeks, keep a close eye on your Google Search Console reports and watch for any outstanding issues, such as unexpected broken links causing 404 page not found errors.
Remember to Update RSS
Finally, if you have RSS email marketing campaigns on a platform such as Mailchimp, make sure to update your RSS feed URL if needed.
Conclusion
When you migrate WordPress to Squarespace, follow a detailed plan and you stand to not only maintain your current rankings and traffic, but also to improve the site overall.
Remember, if your site is already well-established, maintaining its functionality, user experience, and SEO rankings should be a top priority. Hiring a professional can be a prudent investment to safeguard the value and performance of your website during the migration process. We help businesses with expert technical website migration services. You can hire us for complete builds, redesigns, or as an SEO consultant for any project.