The right way to transfer WordPress content to Wix

Copy and paste post to post, picture to picture is very time consuming. There must be a better way…

It is a pain when you want to switch from WordPress to another website builder. But you don’t have to endure such pain with Wix. To transfer WordPress content to Wix, you simply click the “Import WordPress Posts” button in Wix blog. Then wait for a few minutes until the auto importing process completes.

But your job doesn’t end there. You must ensure that you don’t lose your blog traffic caused by this content migration. 

1. Transfer WordPress post content to Wix blog

The instruction and the video below shows you how to auto transfer WordPress content to Wix blog

Steps to transfer WordPress posts to Wix blog

1. Click Menus & Pages icon
2. Select Blog Pages menu option
3. Click Blog page 
4. Click Manage Posts button
5. Click More Actions button
6. Select Import WordPress Posts option
7. Enter the WordPress blog link
8. Click Next button
9. Check the box to confirm you are the WP blog owner
10. Click Yes, Import Posts button to start 

In addition, there are a few things worth noting. First, what kinds of content get transferred?. They are blog post text, pictures, links, and videos. However, there is a limit on how much content you can transfer. 

If you have one GB of storage on Wix, you can only transfer one GB of WordPress content. One GB can hold a lot of text, but barely enough to hold a high quality video. Thus, you should think about uploading your videos to Youtube or Vimeo to save some space.

The time it takes to transfer content also varies. If you have very little content, the transfer process takes a few minutes. Otherwises, the process would take from 5 to 30 minutes in total. So don’t kick your computer if it doesn’t finish the job after 30 seconds.

Also, the authors are not automatically assigned to each post. You must do so manually. I have another instruction to create an author, assign an author, and add an author bio to your Wix blog. It will save you a lot of time. Check it out by clicking here.

2. Transfer traffic to the new Wix blog

Your next task is to redirect your existing traffic to the new Wix blog. This is the most important task of the content transfer process.

The most important elements are your website domain and the link to each blog post.

Your blog domain and the blog post links are shared all over the internet. People click those links to get to your website. The search engines use those links to read your blog content and show them to people. Thus, any broken link means hundreds of page views lost.

You must keep those links alive or auto redirect people coming from the old links to the new links. The instruction below teaches you how to do it.

2.1. Transfer to a brand new site with the same domain

I assume you keep your domain. You simply jump from WordPress to Wix. 

After you transfer your content, make sure the link of each blog post on Wix is the same as it was on WordPress. That means you go through each post and check the link. If the link is different, you correct the link by following the instruction below

Steps to change blog post link

1. Click Edit button on a blog post
2. Click SEO icon
3. Change Post URL

Plan A is to change the link back to what it was. In case the plan A doesn’t work, you try the plan B, which is to set up 301 redirect from the old link to the new link. 

What does “301” mean? I don’t know. But you simply redirect people coming to your old link to the new link. The setup instruction is below.

Steps to redirect traffic from old URL to new one 

1. Click Settings menu
2. Click My Dashboard menu option
3. Click Marketing & SEO meu option
4. Click SEO Tools menu option
5. Click URL Redirect Manager
6. Click + New Redirect button
7. Enter old URL
8. Enter new URL
9. Click Save & Close button  

Please note that redirect won’t work until you connect your Wix site with a custom domain.

2.2. Transfer from Wix free site to Wix premium site

You may have a free Wix website. Now you decide to get serious. You buy a premium domain. And all your blog posts have different links now.  

If those blog posts have been published for a while, their links are in the search engine database. Now those links no longer work.

To solve this problem, you can set up the link redirects like in the above section. The old link is the free blog post link. The new link is the blog post link with your own domain.  

2.3. Transfer to a brand new site with a different domain

Normally I advise my client against changing their site domains. But sometimes they cannot avoid it. For example, they sell their domains.

The process to redirect the traffic to the old domain is complicated. I will have another article to discuss it in detail. In this case the loss of traffic is inevitable. And you will have to wait for a few months to recover that traffic.

There are a few things you can do to minimize the damage. The first thing is to hold on to your old domain as long as you can. In this time period, you set up the link redirects and wait for the search engines to update the links. 

Conclusion

You only click a button in Wix to import all your content from WordPress. 

However, moving your content from WordPress to Wix doesn’t mean your traffic also moves along. If you are not careful, you may lose the traffic that took you years to build. Thus, try to use the suggestion above to avoid negative impact on your blog traffic..