How do you move from WooCommerce to Shopify without losing your Google rankings?

You keep your Google rankings through a WooCommerce to Shopify move by planning the SEO side before you build anything. That means mapping every old URL to its new Shopify address with a 301 redirect, carrying across your titles, descriptions and content, and watching Search Console closely after launch. Do that properly and you give your rankings the best chance of carrying across, though some short-term movement is normal while Google catches up.

Why do so many WooCommerce stores end up looking at Shopify?

It rarely starts with a big decision. It starts with a morning where a plugin update breaks the checkout, or your host emails about PHP versions, or the payment and shipping plugins stop talking to each other. WooCommerce is flexible, and plenty of stores run well on it for years. But that flexibility comes with a job: you, or someone you pay, keeping WordPress, the theme, the hosting and a stack of plugins all working together.

Shopify takes most of that off your plate. Hosting, security and checkout are handled for you. The trade-off is that you work within Shopify's structure, and the first place you feel that is in your URLs. That's the bit that worries most store owners, and rightly so.

Will my URLs change when I move to Shopify?

Yes, almost certainly. Shopify uses fixed paths for each type of page. Products live under /products/, categories become collections under /collections/, information pages sit under /pages/ and blog posts under /blogs/. You can't change those prefixes.

WooCommerce, by contrast, lets you set your own structure. A typical store might have products at /product/silver-hoop-earrings/ and categories at /product-category/earrings/. On Shopify those become /products/silver-hoop-earrings and /collections/earrings. Same product, different address. If Google and your customers hit the old address and find nothing, that page's rankings start to slip.

How do 301 redirects protect your rankings?

A 301 redirect tells browsers and Google that a page has moved for good. Google's own guidance on redirects (updated 2026) describes permanent server-side redirects as "the best way to ensure that Google Search and people are directed to the correct page." In practice, that means every old product, category, page and blog URL needs a matching new one.

Shopify has a built-in redirect tool, and you can import redirects in bulk from a spreadsheet. According to Shopify's Help Center guide to URL redirects (checked October 2026), you can create a maximum of 100,000 URL redirects, or up to 20,000,000 on the Plus plan, which covers most catalogues comfortably. There are two quirks to know. Shopify says "You can redirect only from broken URLs", so a redirect won't fire if a live page still sits at the old address. And you can't redirect Shopify's fixed paths themselves, such as /products, /collections or /collections/all.

The mapping is where the care goes. Sending everything to the home page is quick, and it's the approach that loses rankings. Each old URL should go to its closest new equivalent: a product to the same product, a category to the matching collection, a discontinued item to its nearest category. On a store with thousands of products and old blog posts, that's a proper spreadsheet job, best done before the new site is built.

What else needs to come across for SEO?

Redirects get the address right, but content earns the ranking, so it needs to arrive intact. Before you switch over, check these come across for every product, collection and page:

• Page titles and meta descriptions, which WooCommerce stores often hold in an SEO plugin rather than in WooCommerce itself, so they're easy to leave behind.
• Product descriptions, headings and any category copy you've written.
• Images, with sensible file names and alt text.
• Internal links in your blog posts and pages, updated to point at the new URLs rather than relying on redirects.

Then check structured data, the behind-the-scenes code that tells Google a page is a product with a price, stock level and reviews. On WooCommerce it often comes from a plugin. On Shopify it usually comes from the theme and your reviews app, so test it before launch rather than assuming.

Shopify generates an XML sitemap for your store as standard, so there's nothing to build. Once you're live, submit it in Google Search Console, which Google says can help it discover the new URLs more quickly.

What happens to products, customers, orders and reviews?

Products move across with their variants, prices, stock and images, then need checking, because variations and custom fields are where imports go wrong. Customers come across with their details and order history, so repeat buyers still look like repeat buyers. As with most platform moves, though, passwords don't transfer, so customers set a new one the first time they log in. A friendly email around launch saves a lot of confused messages.

Past orders matter for reporting and customer service, so they're worth migrating rather than leaving in an old WordPress database. Reviews matter for trust and search, and most WooCommerce review data can be exported into a Shopify reviews app, with each review kept on the right product.

How much will my rankings move after launch?

Some, probably, and that's expected. Google's guide to site moves with URL changes (updated 2026) puts it plainly: "Expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during the move." It adds that a small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most of its pages to move, with larger sites taking longer, and advises keeping your redirects in place for as long as possible, generally at least a year.

So the aim isn't zero movement in week one. It's a clean move Google can follow, so rankings settle rather than drift. In our experience, stores that lose traffic for months usually have missing redirects or lost page titles.

What should you watch once the new store is live?

The first few weeks are about catching problems early. In Search Console, watch for pages reported as not found, check your sitemap has been read and see which URLs Google is indexing. Compare organic traffic and sales for your key products with the weeks before the move, and crawl your old URL list to confirm each one lands on a live page. If a product that sold steadily goes quiet, check that page first.

Where does DLR fit in?

We move stores from WooCommerce to Shopify, and we plan the SEO before the build: every old URL mapped to its new page, titles and content carried across, and your Google and Meta product feeds moved, then rankings, traffic and orders monitored after launch. Scope and price are fixed once we've audited your store.

You'll have a named project lead and the same designers and developers from audit to launch, in a private Slack channel. Your plugins are reviewed and replaced with Shopify apps where they exist, and connections to your ERP, CRM or warehouse are rebuilt where they don't. A Shopify Growth build, which includes platform migration, SEO migration planning, product feeds and post-launch optimisation, costs £25,000 + VAT. Timelines depend on your catalogue, data and integrations, and we agree a fixed timeline after discovery.

For a sense of what a well-run replatform can do, a luxury jewellery retailer that replatformed to Shopify with us saw online revenue rise 187%. If you'd like a clear view of your own risks before committing, our migration and replatforming audit looks at your URLs, content and data first. Moving from Magento instead? We've covered that in our Magento to Shopify guide.

Frequently asked questions

Will I lose my Google rankings if I move from WooCommerce to Shopify?

Not for good, if the move is planned properly. Google warns that rankings can move about for a while during a site move, and with redirects, content and structured data carried across, they usually settle as Google recrawls your new URLs.

Can I keep my WooCommerce URLs on Shopify?

No, not exactly. Shopify uses fixed paths such as /products/ and /collections/, so product and category URLs will change, which is why every old URL needs a 301 redirect to its new page.

How long should I keep my redirects?

Keep them permanently if you can. Google recommends keeping them for as long as possible, generally at least a year, and there's little reason to remove them from Shopify after that.

Will my customers need to create new accounts?

No, their accounts and order history can come across. They'll need to set a new password the first time they log in, so it's worth telling them before launch.

If you're weighing up the move and want to know what it would involve for your store, book a free call or ring us on +44 1382 699595.