WOOCOMMERCE TO SHOPIFY MIGRATION WITHOUT LOSING YOUR SEO

AB Media Co, and here is why.

What we offer is more than ten years under Akshit Bhasin, 100+ brands, ₹3,300 Cr+ in revenue generated for clients, ₹100 Cr+ in ad spend managed, and a team whose whole approach treats a URL as revenue.

It is tempting to treat a migration as a data job with some SEO checks at the end. We run it the other way round. The URL map comes first, before a single product moves, and rankings and AI impressions are what we report against. Every row on that map is checked by a person before launch, and nothing goes live until the counts match on both sides.

A senior person owns your project and reads your Search Console personally. We also run ads and stores, so we see a dip in orders the week it happens and can tell whether search, the funnel or a broken pixel caused it.

The free mini audit starts with one question: should you move at all?

By mapping every URL that earns clicks or links to its exact new home, carrying your content and data across unchanged, and checking the same reports before and after.

Our order is fixed. We record a baseline in Search Console and GA4. We export each URL with clicks, links or AI impressions. We map each one to the closest Shopify page, product to product, category to collection, post to post. We carry across titles, descriptions, copy, alt text and schema, and we bring the feed up to parity. We rehearse on a preview store. Then we cut over and import the redirects in a set sequence.

A short dip is normal. A long drop usually points to a broken redirect or content that did not make the trip, and both can be found by comparing with the baseline.

The map has to be finished before the move starts, and that is the one rule we never bend, however tight your launch date is.

From real data, one row per URL, in a sheet you can read and check.

We combine three sources: a crawl of your WooCommerce store, Search Console pages with clicks or impressions, and the URLs other websites link to. Together they show what has value. Each row then gets one destination: the same product, the matching collection, the same post.

We never send an old URL to your home page. The ranking belonged to a page about that product, and a visitor looking for it has no use for your home page. A product that no longer exists goes to its closest real alternative.

Three Shopify rules shape the map. A redirect only works when the old URL stops loading a page. URLs under /shop and a few other prefixes cannot be redirected. And the limit is 100,000 below Plus.

We also remove chains. If an old WooCommerce redirect already points somewhere, the new one goes straight to the final page, as Google advises.

They do not move on their own, so we rebuild both on Shopify and check them against what you had. We call that parity.

Before cutover, we record what your store prints. A plugin wrote most of that, and the plugin is not coming with you. On Shopify the theme or an app takes over, so we check that every field survives, in one source, matched to the visible page.

The feed needs the same care. Your WooCommerce sync stops being the source when the store moves, so we set up the new feed, keep product IDs stable where we can, and compare titles, GTIN, brand, price and stock with the new pages.

Google asks for exactly this in its AI features guidance: markup that agrees with the visible page and a Merchant Center account kept current. Losing it at launch makes your store harder to trust at the worst moment.

In a fixed sequence, with the riskiest step last and a rehearsal before it.

First the preview store, with theme, products, content, schema, feed and tracking in place. We crawl it, test checkout and payment gateways, and compare counts against WooCommerce.

Then the freeze. We agree a date well away from your biggest sale, and we stop content and product changes on the old store for the final stretch, so nothing goes missing.

Then launch. The domain moves to Shopify and the old pages stop loading, which is what lets Shopify’s redirects fire. We import the full map, confirm the robots.txt reflects what you want crawled, test a sample from the map by hand, submit the new sitemap in Search Console and replace internal links with their new addresses.

The old store stays backed up until the redirects are proven. We watch Search Console closely for those first days, because that is when a missed rule shows up.

The same reports both times, so we compare like with like.

Before, we export the Performance report by page and query, the Page indexing report, the sitemap status and the Generative AI performance report. That baseline shows exactly which pages hold the clicks and which hold the AI impressions.

After, we watch for what Google describes. Indexed counts should fall on old URLs and rise on new ones, and the sitemap of new URLs should fill up. Search queries should begin to show the new URLs earning impressions and clicks.

Each week for the first months we also pull 404s, check any page that lost clicks against its row on the map, and confirm that AI impressions have moved to the matching Shopify URL.

When a page falls, we do not guess. We look at the redirect, then the content, then the schema, and the fix goes in that same week.

They can, if what they read about you stays true, complete and easy to find. AI answers lean on your pages, your product data and what other websites say, and a move only has to disturb the first two.

Here is what can go wrong. A supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode has to be indexed and snippet-eligible, by Google’s own rule, so a page caught mid-recrawl can drop out for a while. A guide that loses its copy, or a product that loses its schema, gives AI answers less to use.

What stays the same is your reputation. Reviews, comparison pages and press do not move, and we ask the most valuable of them to update their link.

We run your customers’ buying questions across four AI tools before cutover and again afterward, the same run that feeds your Share of Decision. If a product falls out of the answers, we trace it to the page and fix it.

Only if upkeep costs you more than the control is worth, because neither platform ranks you on its own. Shopify is easier to keep healthy, and WooCommerce gives you more control.

On WooCommerce you can change almost anything, including URL structure and templates. The price is upkeep: plugins, hosting and updates are your job, and they can hurt rankings when no one is watching. Shopify handles hosting and updates for you, but its paths are fixed and you have less server-level control.

What decides rankings and AI answers on both is the same: product data, pages that help someone choose, schema, speed and what others say about you. A migration will not fix thin categories.

Move when your team wants to sell rather than maintain a server. Stay when you depend on heavy custom features or a large content operation, or when speed is your only complaint, since a better host may fix that for far less. We would rather talk you out of a move you do not need.

The mini audit is free, and it will tell you whether the move is worth making. The complete audit, ₹30,000 to ₹80,000 by catalog and website size and adjusted against your first month, gives us the data the URL map is built from.

The migration itself is scoped after that, since no two stores carry the same load. Catalog size and variations decide the data work. Custom features such as subscriptions or special pricing rules each need their own Shopify answer. A ready theme set up well costs less than a custom build. And the number of URLs with real clicks and links sets the size of the map.

Your running costs change as well. Shopify charges a plan fee and apps add their own, while your WooCommerce costs sit in hosting, plugins and developer time. We lay that out for you before you decide, because a move should pay for itself.

Preparation takes weeks, and rankings can take a few weeks or more to settle after launch, longer on a large store.

Google’s guidance says a small to medium-sized website can take a few weeks for most pages to move, and larger sites take longer. That is the book number, and Akshit Bhasin reminds the team that “book numbers and experiential numbers can be different, both should be plausible.” So we plan for Google’s figure and also watch what your store actually does, category by category, against your own baseline.

Preparation depends on your catalog and custom features, and we give you dates once the size of the map is known. After launch, our weekly checks run for the first months.

A drop that keeps going is not normal. It usually means a missing redirect, a thin collection or copy that did not make the move, and we go and find it.