Do you actually lose rankings when you leave Wix?
No, not by default. This is the fear that keeps contractors stuck on a slow template site for years, and it is mostly a misunderstanding of where rankings live. Google does not rank Wix. Google ranks your domain, your specific page URLs, and the content and links pointing at them. Wix is just the machine that was serving those pages. Swap the machine, keep the addresses, and Google barely notices.
Where contractors genuinely get hurt is in the how, not the whether. A migration goes wrong when the new site uses different URLs and nobody sets up redirects, so every page Google had indexed suddenly returns a 404. It goes wrong when the domain changes at the same time. It goes wrong when the owner treats the move as a chance to rewrite all the copy, drop half the service pages, and change the business name in the header, so Google cannot tell it is the same business anymore.
None of those are caused by leaving Wix. They are caused by changing too many things at once. A clean migration changes exactly one thing: the code underneath the site. Same domain, same URLs, same content, same phone number, same service list. The homeowner sees a faster page. Google sees the same site, just quicker to load and easier to read.
There is usually a short, small wobble in the first week or two while Google recrawls and confirms the redirects. That is normal and it settles. A well-run migration might dip a position or two for a few days and come back. It should never be a cliff. If you hear stories of contractors who tanked after a rebuild, dig in and you will almost always find changed URLs with no redirects, or a designer who took the site down for a week. Those are avoidable mistakes, not the price of leaving a template.
It helps to separate two ideas that get tangled together. Moving the site is a plumbing job: same water, new pipes. Redesigning the site is a different job entirely, one where the copy, the layout, and sometimes the page structure all change. Both can be worth doing, but doing them in the same weekend is how contractors scare themselves. Migrate first, keep everything identical, confirm the rankings held, and then improve pages one at a time on the new build. When you change things gradually on a site Google already trusts, you can see what each change did. When you change everything at once, a dip could be any of a dozen causes and you will never know which.
The one thing that decides it: your redirect map
If you take one thing from this guide, take this. The redirect map is the single document that determines whether your rankings survive. It is a simple list: every URL on your current Wix or Squarespace site in one column, and where each of those should point on the new site in the other column. Get this right and the rest is cleanup. Get it wrong and you lose the pages that were feeding you leads.
Start by pulling a full list of your live URLs. Google Search Console under the Pages report shows you every URL Google has indexed, which is exactly the set that matters. Export it. That is your left column, and it is the list a homeowner or a search result can actually land on.
Now match each old URL to its new home. Most of the time the answer is the same address on the new site, and no redirect is needed at all because the URL did not change. That is the goal: keep the URLs identical wherever you can, and you skip most of the work. You only need a 301 redirect when an address is changing.
| Old Wix URL | New URL | Action |
|---|---|---|
| /roof-replacement | /roof-replacement | Keep identical, no redirect |
| /services/roofing.html | /roofing | 301 redirect |
| /blog/post-name?123 | /blog/post-name | 301 redirect, drop the parameter |
| /old-service-we-dropped | /services | 301 to the closest live page |
Two rules keep you out of trouble. First, redirect to the closest matching page, never dump everything onto the homepage. A homeowner who searched for your gutter page should land on your gutter page, not your front door. Second, every redirect must be a 301 (permanent), not a 302 (temporary), because only a 301 tells Google to pass the ranking value to the new address. Wix and Squarespace both bury URLs in odd formats, so expect the map to have more moving parts than you would guess. That map is the deliverable that protects the leads, and it is the first thing we build.
The pre-launch checklist that protects your leads
A safe migration is a checklist, not a leap of faith. The new site gets built and fully checked on a staging address while your live Wix site keeps running and keeps taking calls. Nothing goes dark. Only when every box below is ticked does the domain get pointed at the new site, usually late at night when your traffic is lowest.
- Redirect map finished and tested. Every changed URL has a 301 to the right page, and each one has been clicked to confirm it lands correctly.
- Every service and service-area page rebuilt. Not just the homepage. If Wix had thirty pages indexed, the new site has thirty pages (or clean redirects for any you are retiring).
- Title tags and meta descriptions carried over or improved. These are ranking and click signals. You do not want them silently blanked out in the rebuild.
- Content preserved. The words on your money pages come across intact. A migration is not a rewrite. Change the code, keep the copy.
- Business name, phone, and address identical everywhere. Same NAP in the header, footer, and schema. Google uses this to confirm it is still you.
- Working quote form and click-to-call tested on a real phone. The whole point is leads. Submit a test lead and confirm it hits your inbox before launch, not after.
- Schema and sitemap.xml rebuilt. A fresh sitemap listing the new URLs, ready to submit the moment the site goes live.
Because a hand-coded static site has no CMS to migrate, no database to export, and no plugins to reinstall, this list is shorter and cleaner than a WordPress migration. There is no fragile import step where a plugin mangles half your pages. The pages get built as finished files, checked, and served. When you flip the domain, the homeowner gets a site that loads in under 2 seconds instead of the four or five a Wix template usually takes, and Google gets a site it can read faster.
Launch day and the first two weeks after
Launch is quiet by design. The domain gets repointed at the new site, the redirects go live at the same instant, and the old Wix site is left in place but no longer serving your domain for a while as a safety net. There is no window where visitors hit a dead site, because the cutover is a single switch, not a slow migration.
The moment it is live, a handful of steps tell Google what happened and keep the transition fast:
- Submit the new sitemap.xml in Google Search Console. This hands Google the full list of live URLs and speeds up the recrawl. Do it the same hour you launch.
- Spot-check the top pages. Open your five or six best-performing pages (the ones that bring the most calls) and confirm each loads and each old address redirects to it.
- Test a lead end to end. Fill out the quote form and tap the Call button from a phone, off wifi, like a real homeowner. Confirm the lead lands and the number dials.
- Watch the Coverage and Pages reports. Over the first two weeks, Google recrawls and swaps the old URLs for the new ones. Some short-lived 404s or redirect notices are normal while it catches up.
Expect a small, brief wobble. In the first week or two, Google is confirming the redirects and reindexing, so you may see a page dip a position or two, or traffic look slightly jumpy in Search Console. This is the system working, not breaking. It settles as the recrawl completes, and a clean migration typically returns to its prior positions inside a few weeks, often faster because the new site is quicker and easier for Google to crawl.
One honest caveat: this guide covers keeping the rankings you already have through the move. Actively climbing higher afterward, chasing new keywords, building links, and growing organic traffic is ongoing search work, and that is a separate job from the migration itself. The migration protects what you have earned. Growing it from there is the next conversation.
What about your Google Business Profile and reviews?
Good news: your Google Business Profile, your map pack position, and your reviews are not touched by a website migration. They live on Google, tied to your business, not to your Wix account. Moving your website does not move or reset any of it. Your stars stay, your review count stays, and your pin on the map stays exactly where it was.
There is one small housekeeping step. Your Business Profile links to your website, and after the migration that link still works because you kept the same domain. But it is worth opening your profile and confirming the website URL still points to a live page, especially if you retired the specific page it linked to. If your profile pointed at an old service URL that you redirected, the redirect will carry it, but pointing it directly at the live page is cleaner.
Any place your website address is published off your own site is worth a quick pass too: your Facebook page, your directory listings, the truck wraps you are not going to reprint. As long as the domain did not change, every one of those still lands correctly, which is a big reason we push hard to keep the same domain through a migration. Change the domain and you inherit a much larger cleanup job across every listing you have ever created.
One thing a migration does help your local presence with, indirectly, is speed and structure. Google reads your website when it decides how much to trust your Business Profile, and a faster, cleaner site that clearly names your trades and service areas gives it better signals to work with. You are not doing local SEO by migrating, but you are handing the map pack a stronger website to point at, which never hurts.
The map pack, citations, and reviews are their own discipline, and keeping them healthy is ongoing local work rather than part of building the site. This guide stays in its lane: getting your website off the template cleanly. If your rankings, map presence, or review flow need attention as their own project, that is a separate conversation from the migration, and we will point you to the right one.
Why leave Wix or Squarespace in the first place?
If the migration is this careful, it is fair to ask whether it is worth doing at all. For a contractor who is winning jobs off a template site today, the answer comes down to what the platform costs you in leads you never see. Template builders are fine for a business card. They start to hold you back once the site is your main way of booking work.
The recurring problems we see on contractor Wix and Squarespace sites are consistent. They load slowly, usually four to five seconds on a phone, because the platform ships a heavy pile of code to render even a simple page. They are hard to structure the way search engines and AI answer engines want, so you rank below cleaner competitors even when your work is better. The URLs are awkward and hard to control. And you are renting: the monthly fee never stops, and you never own the thing your leads depend on.
A hand-coded static site fixes the machinery underneath without changing what works about your business. It loads in under 2 seconds because the page is already built and served as finished files, with no CMS assembling it on every visit. It is structured with real trade nouns, real service pages, and clean schema, so it is readable to Google and quotable by AI search. And it is yours: built, handed over, and hosted cheaply, not rented by the month.
The point of doing the migration carefully is precisely so you keep the rankings you spent years building while you upgrade everything underneath them. You are not starting over. You are moving the same address into a faster, better-built house. If you want the numbers on what that build runs, our contractor website cost guide breaks down real ranges, and our DIY-versus-hiring guide walks through who should build it. Both are honest about the tradeoffs.