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§ 2.11.1 ARTICLE
Published VerifiedEvery 6 weeks Sources5 named Authored bySquareRank Team

Migrations · § 2.11.1 · How-to

Wix to Squarespace SEO migration — the redirect map that protects rankings

Squarespace's official Wix importer1 ports text content and images. It does not port layout, animations, Wix Apps, structured data, custom fonts, or any non-content features. A typical Wix-to-Squarespace migration loses 30 to 50 percent of organic traffic in the first 60 to 90 days and recovers to baseline within 90 to 180 days when the URL Mappings list is complete4. The redirect map is the lever that decides whether the drop is recoverable or permanent. Wix's URL pattern uses path segments (e.g. /post/slug, /shop/product) that Squarespace replaces with cleaner paths (/blog/slug/, /shop/product/) — the mapping is mechanical, but it has to be complete.

This leaf is the per-platform Wix migration playbook. It documents what the importer does, what it does not do, the per-URL-pattern redirect map, the Wix App equivalents on Squarespace, the SEO re-author pass, and the post-cutover monitoring. The migrations hub covers the cross-platform context.

What Squarespace's Wix importer ports and what it doesn't

Squarespace's Wix importer accepts the Wix site URL and pulls text content, images, blog posts, and basic page structure. It does not port: Wix Apps (forms, bookings, members, structured-data apps), Wix Velo custom code, page animations, transition effects, custom fonts (the font NAME is read but Squarespace's own font catalog is what renders), CSS customisations, embedded video players (links are preserved, but the player itself is replaced with Squarespace's), or any structured data app's output. The importer is best understood as a starting point: it saves the manual content-paste step on every page, but it does not eliminate the rebuild.

Squarespace's Wix import documentation1 is direct about the scope: "Imported content may not exactly match your Wix site's design. You may need to manually rebuild certain elements." The importer succeeds at content transfer; the design and feature rebuild is the operator's job. Plan for 8 to 30 hours of rebuild work on top of the import depending on Wix App count.

The realistic Wix migration cost

8-30hrs

rebuild work after the Wix importer runs — design, animations, Apps, and SEO re-author.

Squarespace Help · 2026
30-50%

typical organic traffic drop in the first 60-90 days when redirect mapping is complete.

Moz migration guide · 2025
0

Wix Apps that survive the migration. Replace with Squarespace native equivalents.

Squarespace Help · 2026

Wix URL patterns vs Squarespace URL patterns

Wix uses a small set of distinctive URL prefixes: /post/slug for blog posts, /shop/product-slug for products, /service-page/service-slug for service items, and /event/event-slug for events. Squarespace's equivalent patterns are /blog/slug/, /shop/product-slug/, /services/slug/ (or whatever the operator names the service collection), and /events/slug/. Every blog post, product, service, and event on the Wix site needs an explicit redirect from its /post/-pattern URL to its /blog/-pattern Squarespace equivalent. Page URLs (/about-us, /contact) are usually identical or near-identical and require only minor cleanup.

The asymmetry that catches first-time Wix migrators: Wix slugs are often title-cased ("/post/Why-Squarespace-Is-Faster") while Squarespace lowercases everything ("/blog/why-squarespace-is-faster/"). The redirect map must account for the case change, and the URL Mappings panel5 is case-sensitive on the source URL. Audit the Wix export for capitalised slugs before authoring the map.

The Wix-to-Squarespace 301 redirect map (sample)

The redirect map is one row per source URL, one destination URL per row, status 301. The sample below covers the four URL patterns Wix sites typically expose. Authoring is mechanical; CSV import via the URL Mappings panel handles the bulk submission. Validate every redirect by appending the source URL to the new Squarespace domain in a private browser window before cutover.

URL Mappings Sample Wix-to-Squarespace redirect map — the four most common patterns 
 # Top-level pages — usually identical or near-identical /about-us -> /about/ 301 /contact-us -> /contact/ 301 /services -> /services/ 301 # Blog posts — /post/ to /blog/ pattern shift /post/why-squarespace-is-faster -> /blog/why-squarespace-is-faster/ 301 /post/the-2026-design-trends -> /blog/the-2026-design-trends/ 301 # Products — /shop/ pattern preserved /shop/red-blanket -> /shop/red-blanket/ 301 /shop/blue-pillow -> /shop/blue-pillow/ 301 # Service pages — /service-page/ to /services/ /service-page/website-audit -> /services/website-audit/ 301 # Catch-all for legacy /pages-old/ pattern (rare but worth checking) /pages-old/legacy-promo -> / 301

Squarespace's URL Mappings documentation5 supports a wildcard pattern that compresses repetitive mappings: /post/[name] -> /blog/[name]/. The wildcard works when the slug portion is identical between Wix and Squarespace, which is the case after the Wix importer runs because the importer preserves slugs. Use the wildcard for blog posts to reduce a 200-row CSV to a single line.

Wix Apps that do not survive — the replacement map

Wix's app marketplace adds functionality that lives inside the Wix ecosystem and does not export. Common apps that operators have to replace on Squarespace: Wix Forms (replace with Squarespace Form Block), Wix Bookings (Squarespace Scheduling, included on Business+), Wix Members (Squarespace Member Areas, Plus+), Wix Stores beyond basic products (Squarespace Commerce, included on Commerce Basic+), Wix Chat (replace with a third-party chat embed via Code Injection), and Wix Blog Manager comment system (Squarespace's native commenting on Commerce plans, or a Disqus embed for other plans).

The structured-data Wix Apps are the SEO-relevant loss. Wix's SEO-Wiz app, schema.org structured data apps, and any third-party schema generators that ran inside Wix do not export. The schema must be rebuilt on Squarespace via Code Injection. The JSON-LD leaf in the Code Injection cluster covers the rebuild pattern; ship Article schema on every blog post, Organization schema sitewide, and LocalBusiness or Service schema as appropriate.

Schema and SEO settings re-author after the import

The Wix importer ports the visible content of meta titles and descriptions where they are stored as page-level text, but it does not port them as Squarespace SEO panel content. The operator has to re-author every meta title, meta description, Open Graph image, and image alt text in the Squarespace panel on every page. The work is per-page and tedious; budget 15 to 30 minutes per page including the Article schema install on blog posts.

The order of operations: SEO panel content first (because it ports cleanly during the rebuild), then alt text on every image, then JSON-LD via Code Injection on each blog post and on the homepage for Organization. Validate each Article block in Google's Rich Results Test before walking away from the post. The SEO Panel cluster covers the per-field discipline; the JSON-LD leaf covers the Article block.

The cutover sequence — what fires when

Cutover day is the moment DNS points at Squarespace. Before that moment, the staging Squarespace site exists at staging.yoursite.com or at a built-in trial URL, the Wix site is live at the production domain, and the URL Mappings list is built but not yet exposed to the world. Cutover is: update DNS, wait for propagation (4 to 24 hours), submit the new sitemap to Google Search Console, file the change-of-address request if the domain itself changed, monitor for the first 48 hours intensively.

Google's site-move guidance3 is explicit: file the change-of-address request only after every URL on the new site is responding correctly. Filing the request before the URL Mappings have caught is the most common cause of migration-related ranking damage because Google starts re-evaluating the new site before the redirect signals are complete.

The 14-day post-cutover monitoring

The first 14 days after cutover reveal every gap in the URL Mappings list. Watch Search Console's Coverage report daily for 404 spikes. Watch the Performance report for impression and click drops on specific high-traffic URLs. Watch the Index Coverage detail view for 'Page with redirect' counts that are climbing as expected and 'Not found' counts that should be near zero. The 14-day window is the recovery window; gaps caught within it are fixable, gaps caught later are sticky.

Add any missed redirects to URL Mappings as you discover them. The platform accepts the additions live without re-cutover. After 14 days, the major URLs have been recrawled and the dust has settled enough to read the migration's actual outcome. If the drop is in the 30 to 50 percent range, the migration is on a normal trajectory. If the drop is higher, the traffic-drop diagnostic leaf covers the four checks that distinguish a normal drop from a broken migration.

Keep reading · § 2.11.1