Yes, you can move from Squarespace to WordPress without losing SEO, but the export button won't do it for you. Rankings hold when every old Squarespace URL 301 redirects to its closest new WordPress page, the content and metadata come across unchanged, images are re-hosted on WordPress, and someone watches Google Search Console for the weeks after launch. Squarespace's WordPress export only brings over basic pages and one blog. Your URL structure, images, store and redirects are on you.
Most guides stop at export and import. That's the easy bit. What protects your traffic is everything around it: crawling the old site, mapping Squarespace's URL patterns, building the redirect list, rebuilding the design and watching recovery. It's the same method I describe in my Wix to WordPress migration guide and my Webflow to WordPress migration guide, and the approach I took when I moved an agency site from Framer to WordPress.
What does Squarespace's WordPress export actually include?
Standard pages, blog posts from one blog, comments, and basic text and image blocks. Products, events, forms, custom CSS and media hosted on Squarespace stay behind.
Squarespace lets you export site content as an .xml file that the WordPress importer can read. Its own help article says a lot of its features rely on Squarespace's own JavaScript and CSS, so some content simply doesn't export. BigScoots' walkthrough lists what does come across: layout pages, blog posts, up to 1,000 comments per post, and basic text and image blocks. Got more than one blog? Only one gets exported.
| Content type | Exports to WordPress? | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Standard pages | Text and basic blocks only | Rebuild the layout and move the copy across |
| Blog posts, categories, tags, authors | Yes, for one blog | Import, then fix formatting and internal links |
| Images | As links to Squarespace's servers | Download and host them on WordPress |
| Products and store data | Not in the XML export. Products can be exported separately as a CSV | Import the CSV into WooCommerce and rebuild the shop pages |
| Events, portfolio and cover pages | No | Rebuild as custom post types or templates |
| Forms | No | Rebuild and connect to your email or CRM |
| Custom CSS and style settings | No | Rebuild the design |
| Audio and video hosted on Squarespace | No | Move to YouTube or Vimeo, or upload |
| Password-protected and member content | No | Rebuild with a membership plugin |
Don't cancel Squarespace yet
Posts imported into WordPress usually still point to images on Squarespace's servers. Download every image, upload it to WordPress and update the links before you cancel the Squarespace plan, or those images can break.
Why do Squarespace to WordPress migrations lose rankings?
WordPress isn't the problem. Rankings drop because of missing redirects, broken images and lost metadata, and usually because nobody checked for them before launch. These are the usual culprits:
- URLs change with no redirect. Squarespace and WordPress structure URLs differently, so any path that changes returns a 404 unless you redirect it.
- Files under /s/ disappear. PDFs, price lists and menus uploaded to Squarespace live on paths like
/s/menu.pdf. They often have backlinks and some rank on their own. - Category and tag pages use query strings. Squarespace filters a blog with URLs like
/blog?category=News. WordPress archives use clean paths, so these need redirects that match on the query string. - SEO titles and meta descriptions go missing. The custom search titles and descriptions you set in Squarespace may not come through cleanly, so check every important page by hand.
- Store, event and portfolio URLs vanish. None of them export, so each one has to be rebuilt and redirected.
- Internal links still point at the old site. Imported posts keep their old Squarespace links and image paths.
How do you crawl and map Squarespace URLs?
Put the Squarespace sitemap, a full crawl and your Search Console data into one spreadsheet, then match each old URL to a new WordPress URL. You want every URL that has value, not only the pages in your navigation. Pull from four sources:
- The Squarespace sitemap at
yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. - A full crawl with a tool like Screaming Frog. It also finds
/s/files, images and orphan pages the sitemap misses. - The Search Console Pages and Performance reports, which show what Google has indexed and which URLs actually get clicks.
- Your backlink targets from Search Console's Links report. A linked URL needs a redirect even if it gets no traffic.
Then each old URL gets a new home. These are the Squarespace URL patterns to look for:
| Squarespace pattern | Example old URL | WordPress target | How to handle it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page | /about | /about/ | Keep the slug. WordPress adds the trailing slash with a single 301 |
| Blog post | /blog/my-post | /blog/my-post/ | Set permalinks to /blog/%postname%/ |
| Dated post (some older sites) | /blog/2019/5/14/my-post | /blog/my-post/ | Use one regex redirect for the whole pattern |
| Category or tag filter | /blog?category=News | /blog/category/news/ | Use a redirect that matches the query string |
| Uploaded file | /s/price-list.pdf | /wp-content/uploads/price-list.pdf | Upload each file, then redirect each one |
| Product | /shop/p/blue-mug | /product/blue-mug/ | Map one to one after rebuilding in WooCommerce |
| Event | /events/summer-party | /events/summer-party/ | Use a custom post type with the same base |
If your Squarespace blog sits at a different path, like /journal or /news, use that in the WordPress permalink instead. Get this right and most blog URLs stay almost identical, which means most of them need no custom redirect at all.
How do you build the redirect list?
Every Squarespace URL with traffic, backlinks or an index entry gets a permanent 301 to the WordPress page that matches it best. The rules I stick to:
- One to one, closest match. A deleted service page goes to the nearest live service page, not the homepage. Dumping everything on the homepage throws away whatever value those URLs had.
- No chains. Squarespace has its own URL Mappings setting. Copy any old mappings before you leave and collapse them, so A goes straight to C instead of A to B to C.
- 301, not 302. A temporary redirect tells Google the old URL is coming back.
- Test every old URL after launch. Not a sample. All of them.
On WordPress, the Redirection plugin does the job and supports regex and query-string matching. On bigger sites I put the rules at server or Cloudflare level so PHP isn't processing them on every request. Google's site move guidance says to keep redirects for at least a year, so it has time to pass all signals to the new URLs.
Why rebuild the design on Bricks instead of using a theme?
Squarespace's export brings over none of your styling, so you're rebuilding the design whatever you do. I usually pick Bricks Builder. Its output is light and pages load quickly. Templates for blog posts, services and case studies keep every page consistent, and once it's live your team can edit pages without calling a developer.
I've done this kind of rebuild before. For the Aura Clips agency website, I moved auraclips.com from Framer to WordPress on Bricks, with service page templates, a blog, GA4 and Google Tag Manager. Framer has the same problem as Squarespace: the content can move, but the design and URL structure have to be rebuilt by hand, carefully.
During the rebuild I copy across:
- The title tag and meta description for each page. Where the old ones were weak, my free Meta Tag Generator helps.
- Headings and body copy. No rewriting until rankings settle.
- Image alt text, and image file names where they matter.
- Structured data. My Schema Markup Generator writes JSON-LD for your business, articles and FAQs.
- robots.txt and the XML sitemap. Run the live site through my AI Crawler Checker to make sure you're not blocking crawlers by accident.
What should you check on launch day?
Test every old Squarespace URL on staging, protect your email DNS records, switch DNS, recrawl the live site and submit the new WordPress sitemap in Search Console. In that order.
- 1
Test on staging first
Run your full old-URL list against the staging site and confirm every URL returns a 301 to the right page.
- 2
Protect email before touching DNS
Copy your MX, SPF and DKIM records to the new DNS so email keeps working after the switch.
- 3
Switch DNS
Point the domain to the new host. DNS changes can take a day or two to reach everyone, so keep Squarespace live during that window.
- 4
Recrawl the live site
Crawl the old URL list again on the live domain and fix any 404s, chains or loops the same day.
- 5
Submit the new sitemap
Add the WordPress sitemap in Search Console and use URL Inspection on your top pages.
If the domain itself changes, Google also wants a Change of Address submitted for the old property. Same domain? You can skip it. My hosting migrations and DNS service covers the whole switch, email included.
How long does it take rankings to recover after a Squarespace migration?
Google says medium-sized sites can take a few weeks or more before the new URLs show in search, and large sites take longer. Google also says to expect some temporary ranking movement after any significant site change, so don't panic at the first wobble.
For the first couple of months I check three things in Search Console every week:
- Pages report. New "Not found (404)" entries mean a redirect is missing. "Page with redirect" climbing for old URLs is normal.
- Performance report. Compare clicks and impressions for your top pages against the same period before launch.
- Core Web Vitals. A slower site can undo a good migration. Paste a PageSpeed report into my free Page Speed Fix Planner and you'll get a ranked list of fixes.
Still falling after a month? Work through my traffic drop recovery guide. The usual causes are missing redirects or pages that have stopped being indexable.
How much does a Squarespace to WordPress migration cost?
I couldn't find a reliable published price range for Squarespace to WordPress migrations specifically, so I won't make one up. The cost mostly comes down to how many URLs you have, how much design needs rebuilding and whether there's a store. In more detail:
- Number of URLs, and how messy they are. A 15-page brochure site is a very different job from 400 posts with dated URLs and dozens of
/s/files. - Design rebuild. Moving content is the small part. Rebuilding the design in Bricks or Elementor is most of the work.
- Store, events and members. None of these export from Squarespace, so each one is a rebuild.
- Integrations. Forms, CRM, booking and analytics all need reconnecting.
Some managed hosts include basic migrations. BigScoots, for example, includes unlimited free migrations on its managed WordPress plans, but says design and custom product data are left to you. That's the part where a developer earns their fee. For the build side, my UK WordPress website cost guide and what a website redesign costs in the UK give sourced ranges.
What should you ask a developer before hiring for a Squarespace migration?
Ask how they'll map URLs, handle redirects, move images and monitor Search Console, and get the answers before any build starts. The questions I'd want answered in their shoes:
- Will you crawl the full site and give me the URL map before building anything?
- How will you handle
/s/files, category filters and product URLs? - Where will the redirects live, and how will you test them?
- Who moves my images off Squarespace's servers, and when?
- What will you watch in Search Console after launch, and for how long?
- Can my team edit pages without you once it's live?
Vague answers here usually mean a vague migration.
Planning a move off Squarespace?
Send me your domain and a line on what the site does: pages, blog, store or bookings. I'll look at how your Squarespace URLs are structured and what Search Console shows, then tell you what the move to WordPress involves before any build work starts. You can see how I handle redirects and rankings on my technical SEO and Core Web Vitals service page, or book a call on the contact page.
