Some business owners have built one website using the Wix platform and then, for numerous reasons, might need to move to a new Wix website. There are lots of reasons for this. It could be that you have had a change in your brand name, or that you have changed your brand direction and would like to change the domain for the new brand.
The problem is that the old SEO-friendly Wix pages will have considerably more domain authority than a new website. You do not want to be losing that potential traffic because it will cost you revenue, so you will need to learn how to move old SEO-friendly Wix pages to a new website with ease.
Option 1: Copying and pasting an old SEO-friendly Wix page to another site
The first option is to create a duplicate of your old page onto the new website. This strategy is easy to do, but you need to watch out for duplicate content problems, which can harm your SEO. To complete this task, follow these steps:
Step 1 – Menus & Pages
Click on the Menus & Pages option on the left-hand side of the editor screen, then click on the menu option that reads ‘Site Menu’.
Step 2 – Copy
Find the page that you would like to copy and then right-click on it and select ‘Copy’ from the menu that appears on the screen.
Step 3 – Target editor
Now, go to the editor for the new website and paste the page you wanted to copy into the editor. To paste easily, right-click and select ‘Paste’. If a page you are copying contains media files, you can choose to either ‘Upload’ or ‘Don’t Upload’ for the media. Any saved media is uploaded and added to the media file of the target site.
Step 4 – Rename
Now, you can rename the page.
There are some limitations to this first method. For one, it only allows you to copy and paste regular Wix pages. You can not copy links, folders, anchors or router pages, nor are you able to copy pages from third-party or Wix business solution apps. In addition, you are not able to copy some elements, such as datasets, collections, headers, footers, code in Velo by Wix and more.
You can use the copy and paste option for Wix sites that are on different accounts, but the accounts must be open within the same browser. If you copy any password-protected website page or member-only website pages, they are made available for everyone.
Option 2: 301 redirects
Another option is to complete a 301 redirect. The 301 redirect is a simple tool within the Wix SEO Tools suite. When a user clicks on an old link (e.g. oldsite.com/first-page) they are directed to a new page (like newsite.com/first-page).
There are a few advantages to this option. The first is that by keeping the old website, you can continue to receive the benefits of the SEO value. You can then take your time to improve the new site’s SEO, so you do not lose out on potential traffic to your website while your new site’s SEO improves.
In addition, when there are links on the internet on other sites, not setting up a 301 redirect means that they are going to the old site. There is no way to ensure other site owners are going to redirect links to your new page, so setting up the redirect ensures that you keep the traffic from other sites too.
This method also allows you to maintain a more professional look. If customers continue to click on the old link, they will see a 404 error page. This scenario can also harm your SEO in the short term and reduce traffic.
Setting up a redirect is easy.
Step 1 – SEO Tools
Access your website in Wix and then go to the SEO Tools area of your website.
Step 2 – URL Redirect Manager
Now you can click on the URL Redirect Manager option.
Step 3 – Enter redirect options
Now, you need to enter the redirect criteria. Start with the old URL and then enter the new URL. It might be best to keep the new URL as close as possible to the old URL.
Moving to Wix from another platform
If you are moving your website from another platform such as WordPress to Wix and keep the old SEO for that page, this is a simple process.
Create your new website but do not make it live. Then, enter the URLs exactly as they are on the old website. When you deactivate the old website and reactivate the new website, the SEO will carry forward onto the new domain.
There might be changes as Google starts to crawl your new website, as the search engine will recognise changes, but you should have implemented better SEO on the new website. Therefore, hopefully, you should have better performance and higher rankings. If not, then you might need to speak to an SEO consultant.
Moving between domains
If you have got an existing Wix website and would like to move to a new domain, you can build your new website using similar URLs. Then, you need to connect your old domain to your Wix account hosting the new domain. Use the old domain as a secondary domain, attached to the new domain. This strategy will automatically set up a URL redirect from the old domain to the new one.
Conclusion: How to move old SEO-friendly Wix pages to your new website
When you have an old website and would like to learn how to move old SEO-friendly Wix pages to a new website, there are several options above for different scenarios. Keeping the old SEO exposure should help you maintain some traffic from Google and other search engines while moving your website on.
If you need help with keeping your old SEO exposure and building better SEO for your Wix website, then speak to the Wix SEO Guy today and I can help you with your ranking and traffic.