Most stores that lose traffic after a migration lose it for one reason: old URLs stop working and nobody tells Google where the pages went. The fix is planning, not luck.
List every URL that matters
Before anything moves, crawl the current site with a tool such as Screaming Frog and export every page. Then export the pages with impressions from Google Search Console for the last 12 months. Together they show which products, categories, blog posts and landing pages actually bring in visitors.
Accept that the URLs will change
Shopify uses fixed paths. Products live under /products/, categories become collections under /collections/, and pages and blog posts get their own prefixes. WooCommerce’s /product/ and /product-category/ addresses won’t survive the move, and that’s fine. What matters is that each old address points somewhere useful.
Map old to new, one row at a time
Build a spreadsheet with two columns: old URL and new URL. Match each product to its new product page and each category to the closest collection.
- Don’t send everything to the homepage. Search engines can treat that as a missing page, and shoppers leave.
- For discontinued products, redirect to the most relevant collection.
- Keep new handles close to the old slugs where you can. It makes the map easier to check.
Move the data carefully
Products, variants, images, alt text, SEO titles and meta descriptions should all come across. Customer records and order history can be migrated too. Passwords can’t, because they’re stored as one-way hashes, so plan an email that invites customers to activate their new account.
Import the redirects before launch
Shopify’s URL redirects tool accepts a CSV import, so the whole map can go in at once. Test a sample of old URLs on the new store before you switch the domain over.
Launch, then watch closely
- Point the domain at Shopify and check that old URLs redirect.
- Submit the new sitemap in Search Console. Shopify generates it at /sitemap.xml.
- Check analytics and ad tracking on the first real orders.
- Review Search Console for 404 errors every few days in the first month, and add any missing redirects.
Some movement in rankings for a few weeks is normal. With the redirects right, traffic usually settles back.