How to Transfer WordPress Site to Squarespace
Many small business owners are choosing Squarespace over WordPress for ease of use and slick designs. But changing the website platform can get messy. You may lose website traffic and search engine ranking in the process.
In this post, I will walk you through step by step how to graciously transfer your WordPress site to Squarespace without affecting user experience and SEO.
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Step 1: Identify pages to keep and remove
Transferring a website is a great opportunity for spring cleaning and removing any pages that don’t add value to your website.
You can use Google Analytics to identify the flops - i.e. zero-traffic pages.
Identify high and low-viewed pages in Google Analytics
Head to Behaviour and then Site Content to get a page view report.
If your business is seasonal, make sure you edit the time range to get fair results.
Step 2: Export content from WordPress
Import-export is a neat feature that saves you time copy-paste content from WordPress to Squarespace.
Squarespace can import from WordPress most of your core website content. That includes:
Pages
Blog page, blog posts, authors
Attachments
Comments
Categories, tags
However, Squarespace won’t import your styling, image captions, gallery images, and content from plugins.
To use the import feature, you first need to get your content from WordPress.
On WordPress, go to Tools, then Export.
You can choose to export all content or filter for a specific content type, category, or time range.
Export content from WordPress: Tools > Export
Step 3: Import content to Squarespace
In Squarespace, go to Settings > Advanced > Import/Export > Import.
Choose WordPress as the source platform, then toggle to the Advanced tab.
Drop the XML file you’ve gotten from WordPress there and click Begin Import.
After a few minutes, you’ll see a Success message.
Imported content will show up under the Not Linked section. If you don’t see them after the Success message, refresh the page.
Step 4: Transfer SEO settings manually
If you’ve been using Yoast or another SEO plugin on WordPress, this data will not be transferred to Squarespace automatically.
So here’s what you need to do.
Under settings of each page on Squarespace, you’ll find an SEO tab to enter page title and meta description.
Head to All Pages and/or All Posts on WordPress to see all your pages’ SEO titles and meta descriptions.
Then copy paste those meta descriptions over.
Edit Squarespace SEO settings
Related post: Heard the rumor that Squarespace SEO sucks? View my honest Squarespace SEO Review.
Customize Squarespace URL format match your WordPress site
Squarespace will generally try to preserve your old URL, but their default blog post URL format may cause your original link to change.
To customize Squarespace blog post URL format, go to Settings > Blogging, then edit the Post URL Format.
Generally speaking, you should have only the “%t” variable (the post title). Other variables are for the creation month, date, and year of the post.
Step 5: Move domain from Wordpress to Squarespace
Once your old content and SEO settings are in place, you can design and style the website to your liking.
When you’re ready to publish the new design, there’re two options to move your domain from WordPress to Squarespace.
Option 1: Connect Squarespace site with a third-party domain provider. In this case, you’ll still pay and manage your domain with that third-party domain provider.
Option 2: If you prefer to manage everything in one place, you can transfer the domain to be managed within Squarespace.
I usually choose the first option because it only take 24 hours to connect a domain. Transferring a domain can take up to 15 days, depending on your domain provider.
Squarespace has specific instructions to connect your domain. Two popular options for WordPress are Bluehost and HostGator, but you can view all other guides in this post.
Pro-Tip: When connecting a domain, make sure you check or uncheck the www prefix option to match your current WordPress site. Your site with and without www are not the same.
If you prefer to transfer the domain to Squarespace, view this guide for step-by-step instructions.
Step 6: Redirect pages with URL changes
Sometimes your URL might change as you move from WordPress to Squarespace.
For example, your WordPress blog posts’ format is mywebsite.com/interesting-situation, but on Squarespace you need to add a collection name to it, like mywebsite.com/blog/interesting-situation.
Changing URLs can lead to users getting 404 errors when clicking on the old links.
To fix this, you need to create 301 Redirect (permanent redirect) to point any links with the old URL to the new page.
Be sure to redirect old URL to new URL
In Squarespace, head to Settings > Advanced > URL Mappings.
Use the following format: /old-url -> /new-url 301
For example, your previous blog post link is mysite.come/rainbow and now it’s mywebsite.come/blog/rainbow, your mapping will be: /rainbow -> /blog/rainbow.
Step 7: Test for broken links
To ensure you don’t forget about any redirects, do a test for broken links.
After launching your site, go to Dead Link Checker and enter your website domain.
The results will show any links you have that point to a 404 Error (page doesn’t exist).
Wrap Up
Those are the steps you need to transfer your WordPress site or blog to Squarespace.
I’m curious to know how you feel. Is the process of moving from WordPress to Squarespace easier or harder than you thought?
Let me know in the comment below!
