How do you move off WordPress and keep your Google rankings?
Give every old address a permanent redirect to its new page, keep what ranks, and tell Google the day you launch. Most WordPress sites answer far more addresses than they have pages, and the forgotten ones are where rankings go. Nine steps, the addresses people miss, and what it costs.
- Permanent redirect
- 301 or 308
- Credit lost to a 301
- none, says Google
- Keep redirects
- a year at least
- Settling time
- a few weeks
- Change of Address
- new domains only
- Most often missed
- unlisted addresses
- Price
- see our own price list
From Google's guides to site moves and redirects, read on 24 October 2026.
Australia · 2026Map every old address, and redirect each one permanently.
You keep your Google rankings by giving every old WordPress address a permanent (301) redirect to the page that replaces it, keeping the words that rank on the pages that rank, and sending Google the new sitemap on launch day. Google says permanent redirects lose no ranking credit, and asks for them to stay in place for at least a year.
What loses rankings is the address nobody listed. A WordPress site answers far more addresses than its sitemap shows: category, tag and author pages, page 2 of the blog, feeds, a page for every uploaded image on older sites, the PDFs in its uploads folder and ?p=123 shortlinks. WordPress even sends a mistyped link to the closest post. A static site does no guessing, so every address still in use needs its own redirect.
Expect a few weeks of movement. Google says most pages of a small or medium site move across in its results within a few weeks, and that rankings settle after that.
Keep the domain name the same. Google suggests changing one thing at a time, and leaving WordPress already changes the platform and usually the design. Domain changes are the slow kind of move: in a study of 1,052 of them by the SEO agency SALT, the median took 304 days to get its search traffic back.
How to move off WordPress without losing rankings, in nine steps.
- 01
Save what Google knows now.
Export Search Console's pages, queries and links, and your analytics landing pages, before anything changes. Search Console keeps 16 months of data, and it is both your before picture and your list of pages that matter.
- 02
List every address the site answers.
Combine the sitemap (WordPress's own at /wp-sitemap.xml, or the one an SEO plugin makes), a full crawl, the Search Console export and the server logs. The table below lists what the sitemap leaves out.
- 03
Keep addresses where you can.
A page that keeps its address needs no redirect at all, so the new site copies the old paths wherever they still make sense. Everything else points to the page that replaces it, or the closest match.
- 04
Never send everything to the home page.
Google may treat a pile of old addresses landing on one unrelated page as pages that no longer exist, called soft 404s. Merged pages are fine: several old posts can point to the one that replaced them.
- 05
Keep the words that rank.
The pages that bring visitors keep their titles, headings and main wording on launch day. Rewrite them once the move has settled, so any drop can be traced to one change.
- 06
Make every redirect permanent, in one hop.
Use 301 or 308, straight from the old address to the final page, never through a chain. Check your host's default: on Cloudflare, a redirect line without a status code is a temporary 302.
- 07
Test the whole list before launch.
Run every old address against the new site's preview. Each should answer 301 and land on a live page, and no page should still carry a noindex tag left over from testing.
- 08
Launch in one go, and tell Google that day.
Google suggests moving a small or medium site all at once, at a quiet time of the week. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and inspect the pages that matter most.
- 09
Watch for a month, then keep the redirects.
Check Search Console's page and not-found reports each week and fix what slips. Keep every redirect for at least a year, as Google asks, and for good if you can.
The Change of Address tool is only for a new domain. A WordPress exit on the same domain doesn't use it.
The WordPress addresses people forget.
| Compared on | What it looks like | Where it should go |
|---|---|---|
| Shortlinks | What it looks like /?p=123, the link WordPress hands out for sharing. WordPress forwards it to the post | Where it should go The post's new page. On a static site it just opens the home page, and Cloudflare's redirects file can't read the ?p= part, so it takes a rule in front of the site |
| Categories and tags | What it looks like /category/news/ and /tag/events/, a page for every topic | Where it should go The matching topic page if the new site has one, otherwise the blog |
| Author pages | What it looks like /author/jane/, listed in the WordPress sitemap | Where it should go The person's profile, or the team page |
| Blog page 2 onwards | What it looks like /page/2/ or /blog/page/2/ | Where it should go The blog's first page |
| Date archives | What it looks like /2021/05/, and posts at /2021/05/14/post-name/ if the permalinks used dates | Where it should go Each post to its new address, and each month to the blog |
| Image pages | What it looks like A page for every uploaded image on sites set up before WordPress 6.4, left out of the sitemap | Where it should go The page the image appears on |
| Uploaded files | What it looks like /wp-content/uploads/2021/05/menu.pdf | Where it should go The same file at its new address. PDFs rank in Google and get linked from other sites |
| Feeds | What it looks like /feed/, /comments/feed/ and a feed under every post | Where it should go The new site's feed if it keeps one, otherwise the blog |
| Guessed links | What it looks like Mistyped or cut-short links that WordPress quietly sent to the closest post | Where it should go Found in the server logs, and in Search Console's not-found list after launch, then redirected one by one |
| Login and admin | What it looks like /wp-admin/, /wp-login.php and /xmlrpc.php | Where it should go Nowhere. They should answer not found, because only bots still ask for them |
If a person, a link or Google ever used an address, it gets a destination. If only bots ask for it, it gets a not-found page.
Old addresses we've kept working.
130+
old addresses redirected
NIODA · every old WordPress address still leads to a page
400+
redirects from three old sites
Precise Group · three WordPress sites into one
700+
PDFs moved by script
Fiducian · links to its WordPress-era documents still land
Counts from each build, rounded down. Each case study has the rest of the story.
Doing it yourself, or paying for it.
From free tools to a rebuild that includes the move. Read on 24 October 2026; Screaming Frog is priced in pounds, everything else in Australian dollars.
| Cost | Option | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Cost $0 Google's free tools | Option Search Console for the before picture, the new sitemap and the checks afterwards. Screaming Frog's free version crawls up to 500 addresses. | Good for A small site, if someone has the time to build the list by hand. |
| Cost £199 a year A crawler licence | Option Screaming Frog's paid version crawls without the 500-address limit, and saves each crawl so the old and new sites can be compared. | Good for A site with hundreds of pages, or someone who does this more than once. |
| Cost $0–550 A host's WordPress migration | Option Copies the same WordPress site to a new server. Some hosts include it, and published Australian prices run from $79 to $550. | Good for Staying on WordPress. Nothing about the site changes, plugins and PHP included. |
| Cost $1,500–10,000 An SEO agency's migration project | Option An audit, the redirect map and the monitoring, as Australian SEO agencies price it, on top of what the new site costs. | Good for A large site, moving to a builder who doesn't do the SEO side. |
| Cost from $9,000 A rebuild that includes the move Ours | Option Our static rebuild, typically $9,000 to $18,000, plus $1,000 to $4,000 to move the content. The redirect map, the tests and a month of Search Console checks are part of it. | Good for One team for the design, the build and the rankings. Agencies publish $5,000 to $50,000 and up for a platform switch. |
Who moves websites off WordPress in Australia, and what to ask them.
- 01
Can I see the redirect map before launch?
A spreadsheet of every old address and where it goes. If it doesn't exist before launch, nobody will check it after.
- 02
How will you find the addresses that aren't in the sitemap?
A good answer names a crawl, Search Console and the server logs.
- 03
Which pages keep their wording on launch day?
The ones that bring visitors should change least, and the builder should know which they are.
- 04
What happens to our PDFs and images?
Files other sites link to need redirects as much as pages do.
- 05
Who checks Search Console after launch, and for how long?
A named person, for a month at least, and what they do when a page drops.
- 06
We do.
Croissant & Baguette is a small studio with a network of Australian specialists. Built in Australia, never offshored. We move businesses off WordPress to static sites, with the redirect map in the quote, every address on it tested before the switch, and Search Console checked weekly for the first month.
A 20-minute look at your site tells us how many addresses it answers and what the move involves.
What we charge.
- Website build static, pre-rendered, designed from scratch
- from $9,000 typically $9–18k
- Content migration your pages, posts, files and old addresses, off WordPress
- quoted typically $1–4k
- Care plan monitoring, updates, small changes and a monthly speed report
- from $250/month
What moves the price within those ranges:
- how many pages, posts and files move across
- how many old addresses need a redirect of their own
- which plugins become services or built features
- how many different page layouts the design calls for
Why the redirects are in the quote
Because a rebuild that loses its rankings costs more than it saves. The map, the tests and the month of checks are listed in the fixed quote, so they can't be dropped to hit a price.
Fixed quote after a 20-minute call. Bug fixes and critical updates are included for the first 12 months.
Ask away.
Seven things people ask before they move. What the move itself involves is on our Leaving WordPress page. Still one missing? Ask us.
Will I lose my Google rankings if I leave WordPress?
Not if the redirects are right, though positions can wobble for a few weeks. Google says a permanent redirect passes on what a page has earned, and that most pages of a small or medium site move across in its results within a few weeks. Rankings are lost for good when an old address has nowhere to go, which is why the full list of addresses comes before the design.
What is a website migration?
In SEO, any change to where pages live or what runs them: a new domain, a new platform, new addresses or a redesign. Leaving WordPress is a platform migration, usually with a redesign. What hosts sell as a WordPress migration is something else: the same WordPress site copied to a new server, often for $79 or free, with every plugin and PHP update still to come.
Should I use 301 or 302 redirects?
301, or 308, for anything that has moved for good. Google reads a permanent redirect as a sign to show the new page in its results, and a temporary one, a 302 or 307, as a sign to keep showing the old address. Check your host's default before launch: Cloudflare's redirects file treats any line without a status code as a 302.
How long should I keep the redirects?
At least a year, Google says, so it can recrawl the old addresses and pass the links pointing at them to the new pages, and for visitors it suggests keeping them for good. On a static site a redirect is one line in a file, so there's no reason to remove it. Update your own links, your Google Business Profile and your social profiles so people skip the hop.
How long does it take Google to pick up the new site?
A few weeks for most pages of a small or medium site, by Google's own estimate, and longer for big ones. Google has to visit every old and new address at least once, so a fast site and a fresh sitemap help. Expect positions to move up and down in that time; a page still missing after a month needs a look.
Can I change my domain name at the same time?
You can, but we'd keep them apart. Google suggests changing one thing at a time, and a new domain is the slowest part of any move: across more than a thousand domain changes, the typical one took about ten months to get its search traffic back. If the domain must change, do it as its own step, with Search Console's Change of Address tool.
Do I need an SEO agency to move off WordPress?
Not if whoever builds the new site draws the redirect map, keeps the content that ranks and checks Search Console afterwards. Ask to see the map before launch: it shows whether the work is being done. Australian SEO agencies price a migration project at $1,500 to $10,000, which earns its keep on a large site moving to a builder who doesn't do this part.
Sources
Read on 24 October 2026; Google's two guides are the ones to follow.
- 01 Site moves with URL changes Google Search Central · updated 20 August 2026
- 02 Redirects and Google Search Google Search Central · updated 14 April 2026
- 03 Change of Address tool Search Console Help · for domain changes only
- 04 Connect Search Console to Google Analytics Analytics Help · Search Console keeps 16 months
- 05 New XML sitemaps functionality in WordPress 5.5 Make WordPress Core · what the sitemap lists
- 06 Changes to attachment pages Make WordPress Core · WordPress 6.4
- 07 Customize permalinks WordPress.org · address formats and bases
- 08 redirect_canonical() WordPress developer reference · how ?p= links are forwarded
- 09 redirect_guess_404_permalink() WordPress developer reference · how mistyped links are guessed
- 10 Redirects Cloudflare Docs · 302 by default, no query strings
- 11 SEO Spider pricing Screaming Frog · 500 addresses free, £199 a year
- 12 Only 27% of domain migrations recover in 90 days SALT.agency · 26 June 2026, 1,052 domain changes
- Leaving WordPress. Every page moved across, every old address redirected, and nothing left to patch.
- WordPress or pre-rendered? Speed, running cost and security side by side, and why we left WordPress.
- WooCommerce or Shopify? Fee by fee in Australian dollars, and what moving a store across involves.
- SEO & AI Visibility. Get mentioned when customers ask ChatGPT, Claude or Google's AI.