Step-by-Step Guide: Migrating Your WordPress Site to Webflow

Migrating a WordPress website to Webflow can seem daunting, but with the right guidance, the process can be smooth and efficient. In this step-by-step guide, we'll walk you through the essential tasks needed to ensure a seamless migration from WordPress to Webflow, minimizing any potential disruptions to your SEO performance.

But first, a couple of disclaimers. This post is meant to be a high-level overview of how to migrate your website from WordPress to Webflow. There are a lot of other small steps involved here that won’t be covered. This is meant to be simple.

Second, migrating your website almost always has a short term negative impact on SEO in the short term. Even if you do everything correctly. The good news is if you follow best practices for migration your website will be in a better position to grow.

Alright, here are the basic steps to migrate your WordPress website to Webflow:

1. Establish a list of all URLs and Meta Data

Start by auditing your WordPress site. Create a list of all your URLs and the titles and meta tags for each of them. Put these in an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet so you can export them. For larger websites, you can use a tool like Screaming Frog to make this task easier. There is a free version of Screaming Frog but if you have a bigger website with established authority you may want to consider paying for a license to make sure you can configure the crawl with Google Analytics. The paid version will also allow you to configure Screaming Frog to crawl for orphaned pages (pages that don’t have any other internal pages linking to them). If any orphaned pages are ranking you’ll want to make sure these are migrated to the new website.

If you’re going to be switching out a lot of keywords or redesigning your website during the migration, you’ll also want a list of what keywords each of your URLs are ranking for. SEMRush us a great platforml for this and has a number of tools for pulling this. Again if you have a larger website you’ll want to have a paid plan to benefit from some of the tools like the Organic Traffic Insights tool that will make this easier.
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2. Export Data from Wordpress

Next you will want to export all your content and data from your current WordPress website via CSV. This includes blog posts and images. In your WordPress dashboard, you can navigate to Tools > Export in the menu to export all your content.
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3. Import Data into Webflow

Import all your data into your new Webflow staging website. You can check out Webflow’s guide on importing content via CSV here. This step assumes that you’ve set up your new Webflow website though you don’t need to have any pages or CMS items built to begin importing your data.
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4. Build Your New Webflow Website

Build your new website in Webflow. If you've already built your site great! This is a big step in itself and will depend on how much of your website you’re planning on redesigning. If you’re just starting out working in Webflow and don’t want to invest a ton into the design you can always find a template on Webflow’s marketplace that works for your purposes and swap out the content for your own.
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5. Optimize SEO

Once the website is built and all the content has been transferred over it’s time to make sure all your SEO items have been transferred and implemented. Unfortunately WordPress doesn’t export title tags and meta descriptions so you will need to add this in yourself. With a little magic in Excel or Google Sheets you can also add these to your CSV import file and save yourself some time.

Again, depending on your SEO plan for your website you may want to make some adjustments here to update keywords or your title and meta descriptions.
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6. Set Up 301 Redirects for URL Changes

If any of your URLs have changed, you will need to set up 301 redirects to help maintain SEO after migration. You can document any URL changes on your same Excel or Google Sheet file. To make this easy, you can put the old URL in a column with the corresponding new one in the column next to it and export this as a CSV. From there Webflow has an easy option for importing all your redirects all at once. You can find Webflow’s full guide on importing and exporting URLs here. If you want to get a little more advanced you can check out Webflow’s full guide for 301 redirects here as well.
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7. Final Quality Checks

Before making your domain switch and taking your website live you’ll want to make your final quality checks to ensure nothing has been missed. If you’re not sure what to check you can download my free quality control checklist here.
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8. Launch Your Site in Webflow

Once you’ve done your final quality control checks, it’s time to change your domain and launch your new website. If you haven’t already you’ll need to log in to Webflow and choose a site plan from the website dashboard. After choosing a plan you can follow Webflow’s instructions here to update your DNS settings.

Depending on your domain registrar your website may take up to 48 hours to fully propagate. Once the site has finished propagating you’ll see your new Webflow website live on your domain.

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Wrapping Up

There you have it, a high-level overview of how to migrate your WordPress website to Webflow. These steps will help you successfully make the switch and start taking advantage of all the benefits Webflow offers. 

If need additional guidance or you’re looking to have someone help you transfer your WordPress website to Webflow, feel free to drop me a line at sam@samcom.design and I’d be happy to help.