How to Migrate from WooCommerce to Shopify Without Losing SEO Rankings (2026 Guide)

Phase 1: The Pre-Migration Audit (The Baseline)

You cannot protect what you haven’t measured.

1.1 The Full Crawl

Use Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl your existing WooCommerce site.

• Goal: detailed inventory of every live asset.
• Export:
  • All HTML pages (200 status)
  • All Images
  • All PDFs
• Save: Keep this crawl file. It is your “Source of Truth.”

1.2 The “Money Strings” Identification

Not all pages are equal. You likely have 20 pages that drive 80% of your organic traffic.

• Tool: Google Search Console > Performance > Pages.
• Action: Export the top 100 pages by clicks over the last 12 months.
• Strategy: These 100 pages are “Mission Critical.” They require manual verification by a human. If “Leather Boots” is your money maker, you must ensure the new “Leather Boots” page on Shopify has the exact same H1, exact same Meta Title, and exact same content density.

1.3 The Backlink Audit

Use Ahrefs or Semrush to find your most linked-to pages.

• Why: If a blogger linked to your /summer-collection page, and you delete that page without a redirect, you lose that “link juice.”
• Action: Ensure every page with >5 backlinks has a 1:1 redirect, even if the product is discontinued (redirect to parent collection).

Phase 2: The Data Transformation (The Map)

This is the hardest part of the migration.

2.1 The URL Structure Reality

WooCommerce allows: `example.com/leather-boots` Shopify mandates: `example.com/products/leather-boots`

You cannot fight this. You must adapt to it.

2.2 The 301 Redirect Matrix

You need to create a master CSV file with two columns: `Redirect from` and `Redirect to`.

The Rules of Engagement:

1. Strict 1:1 Matching: The old styling product (/product/pink-shirt) must go to the new styling product (/products/pink-shirt).
2. No Chains: Do not redirect A -> B -> C. Redirect A -> C.
3. No Loops: Ensure A -> B doesn’t redirect back to A.

The “Wildcard” Myth: A common bad practice is to say “Redirect all `/blog/*` to `/blogs/news/*`.” Shopify redirects do not support Regex patterns natively in the CSV import. You must explicitly list *every single path*.

• /blog/post-1 -> /blogs/news/post-1
• /blog/post-2 -> /blogs/news/post-2

2.3 Migrating Metadata (Yoast to Shopify)

WooCommerce stores SEO titles in the `wppostmeta` table under keys like `yoastwpseotitle`. Shopify stores them in the `pagetitle` and `metadescription` fields.

The Failure Point: Most “One Click” migration tools ignore the Yoast data and just use the Product Name as the SEO Title.

• Old Title: “Best Waterproof Leather Boots for Men | Brand X”
• New Auto-Generated Title: “Leather Boots – Brand X”
• Result: CTR drops by 20% because the “Waterproof” hook is gone.

The Fix: You must use a migration tool (like Matrixify) that allows you to map Custom Fields.

• Map yoastwpseotitle -> SEO Title
• Map yoastwpseometadesc -> SEO Description

Phase 3: The Content Integrity Check

SEO is not just URLs; it’s content.

3.1 The H1 Tag consistency

Ensure the H1 tag on the new page matches the target keyword. Shopify themes sometimes wrap the H1 around the logo (bad practice) or use the H1 for the “Collection Title” while key text is H2.

• Audit: Check the theme code product.liquid. Ensure {{ product.title }} is wrapped in <h1>.

3.2 Internal Linking Structure

Your blog posts on WooCommerce heavily link to other products using relative paths like ``. On Shopify, that link will 404 because the URL is now `/products/shoe`.

• The Fix: You must run a “Search and Replace” on the HTML body of all Blog Posts and Pages after import to update these internal links.

3.3 Schema.org Data

WooCommerce plugins often inject rich Schema (Review stars, Price, Stock status) automatically. Shopify themes do this too, but differently.

• Validation: Use the Google Rich Results Test on your staging store. Do you see the “Product” snippet? Do you see the “Review” snippet? If not, you need to add a Schema app or edit the Liquid code.

Phase 4: Launch Day Protocols

4.1 The robots.txt Check

Ensure your Shopify store is NOT password protected and that `robots.txt` is not blocking crawlers. Shopify handles `robots.txt` automatically, but apps can sometimes inject “noindex” tags.

4.2 The Sitemap Submission

Shopify generates `sitemap.xml` automatically.

• Action: Immediately after DNS propagation, verify your domain in Google Search Console.
• Action: Submit https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
• Action: Submit the specific sitemapproducts1.xml and sitemappages1.xml as well to force a faster crawl.

4.3 The “Change of Address” Tool

If you are changing domains (e.g., `brand.com` to `brand-shop.com`), use the “Change of Address” tool in GSC. If you are keeping the same domain (most common), DO NOT use this tool.

Phase 5: The Post-Migration Watch (30 Days)

The “Ranking Flux”

It is normal to see rankings dance for 14-21 days. Google is digesting the redirects.

• Day 1-7: Traffic might dip 10-15%.
• Day 8-21: Traffic should stabilize.
• Day 30+: Traffic should exceed baseline due to Shopify’s faster server response times.

The 404 Monitor

Check the “Pages” report in GSC daily. Look for “Not Found (404)”.

• Action: If you see a spike, download the list, identify the missing redirect, and fix it immediately.

Protect Your Traffic

SEO migration is high-stakes 3D chess. One wrong move costs you revenue. Contact Presta to have our Technical SEO team manage your migration. We guarantee 100% URL mapping and zero ranking loss.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I change my filenames?

Ideally, no. Keep `/blue-shirt` as `/blue-shirt`. Changing the slug to `/blue-shirt-mens-v2` adds another variable. change platforms first, optimize URLs later.

What about image SEO?

Shopify renames image files upon upload to include the product title (e.g., `blue-shirt1024x1024.jpg`). This is actually good for SEO, but you must ensure the Alt Text is migrated.

Does Shopify load slower than WooCommerce?

No. Shopify’s server response time (TTFB) is consistently faster than 95% of self-hosted WooCommerce sites, which is a ranking factor.

Sources

• Ahrefs Migration Guide
• Google: Site Moves with URL Changes