Leaving Wix or Squarespace without losing your Google rankings

Short answer: you can't take your Wix or Squarespace site with you, but you can take everything Google cares about. That's your domain name, your words and images, your page addresses (by redirecting each old one to its new home), and your reviews, which never lived on the site in the first place. When rankings drop after a move, it's nearly always for one reason: pages changed address and nobody told Google. Get the redirects right and most sites come through with little more than a few weeks of wobble.

Website builders are a perfectly good place to start. Lots of businesses outgrow them, though. The monthly fee creeps up, the site's slow on mobile, you can't make it do the thing you need, or you've realised you're renting something you thought you owned. Then the worry kicks in: "If I move, will I disappear from Google?"

You don't have to. This guide covers what you can and can't take with you, the prep to do before you cancel anything, how redirects work in plain English, how to move your domain without breaking your email, and the mistakes that actually cost people their rankings.

Google doesn't rank your website builder. It ranks your pages, at their addresses. Keep the addresses working and the rankings follow.

What you can and can't take with you

Neither platform lets you download your site and host it somewhere else. Wix says so plainly in its help centre: sites have to run on Wix's servers. Squarespace offers an export, but it's a WordPress import file that covers only some of your content. The design never comes with you on either. What that means in practice:

The takeaway: the stuff that ranks (your words, your addresses, your domain) can all be moved or preserved. The stuff that can't be moved (the design) isn't what Google ranks you on.

Before you cancel anything

Do all of this while your old site is still live. Once the plan lapses, some of it becomes impossible.

1. List every page address. Both Wix and Squarespace publish a sitemap at yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xml. Open it and copy every URL into a spreadsheet. That's your master list.
2. Find out which pages earn their keep. If you have Google Search Console, export the Pages report for the last 12 months. Sort by clicks. The pages at the top are the ones you can't afford to lose.
3. Save the content. Copy the text of every page, download every image you'll want, and screenshot each page so you have a record of how it looked.
4. Note the titles and descriptions. The page titles and meta descriptions you see in Google are part of why a page ranks. Write them down for your best pages so the new versions can keep or improve on them.
5. Export anything else you rely on, like form submissions or a mailing list, from your dashboard.
6. Leave the subscription running. Don't cancel until the new site is live, the domain has moved, and you've checked everything works.

Redirects, in plain English

Every page on your old site has an address. Wix blog posts usually sit at /post/your-post-name. Squarespace pages and posts have their own patterns too. Your new site will probably use different addresses, and that's fine, as long as each old address points to its new one.

That pointer is a 301 redirect. It tells browsers and Google "this page has moved permanently, it's over here now". Google treats it as a signal to pass the old page's standing on to the new one. Without it, anyone clicking your old Google result, or an old link on another site, hits a "page not found", and Google eventually drops the page.

Add a column to your spreadsheet with the new address for every old one:

A few rules for the mapping:

• Redirect each page to its closest match, not everything to the homepage. Sending every old page to the homepage is treated a lot like a "page not found", and you lose the ranking you were trying to keep.
• If a page is genuinely gone and there's no sensible match, it's fine to let it go. Just make sure it isn't one of the pages from your Search Console list.
• Keep the redirects in place for at least a year. That's Google's own guidance: "for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year". In practice, leave them forever. They cost nothing.

Where the redirects actually go depends on your new platform. On WordPress, a redirect plugin handles it. On a static site like ours, it's a simple redirects file. Whoever builds your new site should do this as standard, and if they don't mention it, ask.

Moving your domain without breaking your email

If you bought your domain through Wix or Squarespace, you'll want to move it somewhere independent so you control it directly. If it's already registered elsewhere, you only need to change where it points, which is simpler.

Transferring away is routine, with a few catches:

• .co.uk domains move by changing the "IPS tag". You get the tag from your new registrar and enter it in your old provider's dashboard. Wix's .co.uk transfer steps walk through it, and the new registrar may need to accept the transfer within five days.
• .com and most others move with an authorisation (EPP) code. They can't be transferred within 60 days of being registered or previously transferred.
• Email is the bit that breaks. If your business email runs on your domain, its settings (the MX records) have to come with it. Wix's own guidance says you need to add them again after the transfer. Write down every DNS record before you start, and check email is still arriving the moment the move completes.
• Can't get into the account? If the domain was registered by a designer who's gone quiet, or in an account you can't access, start with our guide to getting your website back. It covers recovery, including the Nominet route for .uk addresses.

Our advice: move the domain first, before the new site launches, and keep it pointing at the old site until you're ready. That splits one risky day into two calm ones.

Keeping the same domain is the single best thing you can do for your rankings. If you're changing domain too, it's still doable, with redirects from old domain to new and Search Console's Change of Address tool, but expect a longer settling-in period.

Launch day checklist

• Domain points at the new site, with the padlock showing, on both the www and non-www versions.
• Test ten redirects from your spreadsheet, including your top pages. Each old address should land on the right new page.
• Check nothing's hidden from Google. New sites are often built with a "don't index" setting switched on. Make sure it's off.
• Submit your new sitemap in Google Search Console.
• Fill in every form and check the enquiries arrive.
• Send yourself an email at your business address, and reply from it.
• Update your Google Business Profile website link if any address changed, and anywhere else your site is listed.

Only once all of that is ticked off should you cancel the old plan.

What to expect afterwards

Some movement is normal. Google says it can take "a few weeks or more" to swap old addresses for new ones in its results, and rankings can wobble while it does. A small dip that recovers within a month or two is a move going to plan.

For the first couple of months, check Search Console every week or two. Look at the Pages report for addresses Google can't find, and fix any with a redirect. Watch clicks for the pages on your original list. If one of them drops and stays down, compare the new page against your saved copy. Usually something got lost along the way: a section of text, a heading, a title.

Done well, a move is often the moment rankings start to climb. A faster, better-built site with clearer pages gives Google more to work with than a builder template ever did.

The mistakes that cost rankings

1. No redirects at all. By far the most common. Old results break, links from other sites break, and Google starts again from scratch.
2. Everything redirected to the homepage. Quicker to set up, nearly as bad as none.
3. Cutting the pages that ranked. A rebuild is a tempting time to tidy up. Check your Search Console list before deleting anything.
4. Thinner pages. A slick new design with half the words. If a page ranked because it answered a question properly, the new version needs to answer it at least as well.
5. "Don't index" left switched on. It happens more than anyone admits.
6. Email forgotten. Doesn't hurt rankings, but a week of lost enquiries hurts more.
7. Changing everything at once. New domain, new addresses, new content and new design on the same day makes it hard to tell what caused any drop. If you can, keep the domain and change the rest.

When you shouldn't move at all

If your Wix or Squarespace site loads quickly, brings in enquiries, and you're happy updating it yourself, there's no prize for leaving. Builders suit a lot of businesses. Moving makes sense when the site is holding you back (if you're not sure it is, check whether you need a new site or just a fix): slow on mobile, can't do what you need, costs more each year than it's worth, or you want to own it outright. We've laid out the trade-offs in Zenlio vs DIY website builders, including where the builder genuinely wins.

If you do decide to move, we handle all of the above as standard when we build a new Zenlio Local site: the URL list, the redirect map, the domain and email move, and the checks afterwards. Your Google reviews stay exactly where they are. Book a free 15-minute call and we'll look at what your current site is ranking for before we touch anything, so you know what's at stake before you decide.

Keep reading: Domain, hosting and email, explained in plain English · Website launch checklist: what to check before you go live · How a website redesign works · Website and CMS migration · Your website might have a twin