URL Redirects allow you to maintain your previous site's Google search ranking data when moving your site to Wix. URL Redirects also send people to your new Wix site when they click on old links in search results.
Even if Google hasn't checked in on your site in months, result links will bring visitors to your new site rather than showing them a 404 broken page error.
URL Redirects for Moving to Wix with the Same Domain:
When building your new site with Wix, create new pages with URLs that match the ones from your old site. To learn how click
here.
If you have new pages, and cannot match the new URLs to the old ones, you can retain your SEO rankings by creating a URL redirect. To learn how click
here.
URL Redirects for Moving to Wix with a New Domain:
Add your old domain to your Wix account and connect it as a secondary domain to your new domain. This will set up a URL redirect from the old domain to the new domain. For instructions click
here.
To get the most out of your URL redirects:
Analyze your previous site's SEO
- It's important to review your previous site, in terms of SEO, so similar content can be used when creating your new site. This includes reviewing your previous site's text, images, meta tags, and header tags, and menu structure.
- Take note of the search phrases that are being used to target each of your pages. Map out what content is located on each page. If you have a site with many pages, decide which pages you will be redirecting and which are not necessary.
Build your new site with Wix
- Using the information that you gathered in the previous step, start to build your site. Make sure that your new site has a corresponding page for each of the important pages of your previous site.
- Your new site does not need to be a duplicate of your previous site, but it is important for the content, on each corresponding page, to be similar. For example, if your previous site's 'About' page contained information on what your business does, your new site's 'About' page should contain the same information.
- At the end of this step, you should have a draft version of your new site prepared. In order to avoid exposing your site to search engines before setting up your redirects, we recommend disabling Let search engines index your site from your site's SEO settings. Learn How
Set up your URL redirects
- In order to set up your URL redirects correctly, it's helpful to determine which of your previous site pages have already been indexed by Google. To do so, perform the following search in Google - site:yourdomain.com.
- From the search results, note down the URL of each page that appears. You can also access all of your previous site's URLs by looking at the site map. Consult your previous site builder on how to access your sitemap.
- Set up your URL redirects so that each relevant URL corresponds to a page on your new site.
You are now ready to publish your site! Go ahead and click
Publish from inside the Editor for the URL redirects to be activated. Make sure that you have selected
Let search engines index your site from your site's SEO settings.
Learn How
Review the redirects that you've set up and make changes if necessary.
Submit your sitemap to Google
