The fear with leaving WordPress is “what happens to my Google rankings?” The honest answer is: in our migrations, organic traffic usually goes up, because the new site is faster and Google rewards that. The risk is in the handover, not the destination.
Here is the checklist we run on every WPGone migration. If you are doing it yourself, work top to bottom.
1. Crawl the old site first
Before you touch anything, run a full crawl of the live WordPress site. Screaming Frog (free for under 500 URLs) or Sitebulb. Export the URL list and the title-and-description list. Save it somewhere. This is your contract with Google.
For every URL, you have one of three jobs:
- Keep the path identical on the new site. Default. Do this whenever you can.
- 301-redirect it to a new path. Only if you are deliberately reorganising.
- Let it 410. Only if the page should genuinely not exist any more.
2. Match titles, descriptions, and H1s
Open Google Search Console, export the performance report for the last 90 days. Every URL that gets impressions should keep the same <title>, the same <meta name="description">, and the same <h1> on the new site. You can rewrite them later. Not in the same week as the migration.
3. Carry over the structured data
If your old site had Schema.org markup (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, Article) the new site needs it too. Run Google’s Rich Results Test on a sample of pages before and after. Numbers should match.
4. Rebuild the sitemap and robots.txt on day one
Generate a new sitemap.xml for the new site. Submit it to Search Console the moment the domain cuts over. Update robots.txt to point at the new sitemap. Boring. Important.
5. Run the redirects before flipping DNS
Set up the 301 map in the new hosting environment before the cutover. Then take your old URL list and hit every URL. Every single one should return either 200 with the right content or 301 to the right new URL. No 404s. No 500s. No redirect chains.
This is the step people skip and the step that costs them rankings.
6. Watch Search Console for the first month
You will see a small dip in week one as Google re-crawls. By week three you should be back. If you see a wave of 404s in Search Console, fix the missed redirect fast. Usually it is one mapping you missed.
What this looks like with WPGone
We do all of this for you. The plugin pulls the URL list out of WordPress before the rebuild. The redirect map gets built automatically and tested before the domain cuts over. Titles and descriptions get carried across by default. The Search Console submission happens on cutover day.
Read the full migration guide or request a free preview to see what your site looks like rebuilt.