The Wholesalers Site Migration Checklist for Moving to Shopify Without Losing Rankings

Migrating your wholesale business to Shopify makes sense for scalability and ease of use. But without proper planning, you could lose months of SEO progress overnight.

Here is everything you need to protect your rankings during migration.

Phase 1: Pre-Migration Documentation

Export Your Current Performance Data

Before touching anything, capture your baseline metrics.

From Google Analytics, export:

• Top 50 landing pages by organic traffic

• Conversion rates for those pages

• Revenue attributed to organic channels

From Google Search Console, download:

• All pages with clicks and impressions

• Current keyword rankings

• Any existing issues

Store these exports safely. You will reference them for months after migration.

Complete a Full Site Crawl

Use Screaming Frog or a similar tool to crawl your entire current site. Export every URL, title tag, meta description, and H1 tag.

For wholesale sites, pay special attention to product pages, category pages, and any content that drives traffic.

A comprehensive SEO audit before migration identifies issues worth fixing during the move.

Create Your URL Mapping Document

Shopify has specific URL structures different from your current setup:

• Products at /products/handle

• Collections at /collections/handle

• Blog posts at /blogs/blog-name/post

• Pages at /pages/handle

Create a spreadsheet with columns for current URL, new Shopify URL, page title, and monthly organic traffic. Every page with traffic needs a planned destination.

Phase 2: Shopify Setup Before Launch

Configure SEO Settings

Before adding content, set up Shopify's SEO fundamentals:

Set your preferred domain format. In Settings, choose whether to use www or non-www. Shopify handles HTTPS automatically.

Edit your robots.txt. Shopify generates this automatically, but you may need customizations using the robots.txt.liquid template.

Verify your sitemap structure. Shopify generates sitemaps at /sitemap.xml automatically.

Migrate Content with SEO Intact

When recreating pages in Shopify:

Preserve title tags exactly. Do not let Shopify auto-generate titles. Copy your optimized titles from the migration document.

Keep meta descriptions. Transfer these manually for every page.

Maintain header structure. Your H1, H2, and H3 hierarchy should match the original pages.

Set Up 301 Redirects

In Shopify Admin, go to Online Store, Navigation, URL Redirects.

For bulk imports, prepare a CSV with two columns: redirect from (old URL path) and redirect to (new Shopify URL path).

Upload the CSV to create all redirects at once. Test redirects before launch by accessing your Shopify store through a test domain.

An SEO migration specialist catches redirect gaps that often get missed in DIY migrations.

Phase 3: Launch Day Checklist

Final Pre-Launch Verification

The morning of launch, verify:

• All redirects are in place and active

• Robots.txt allows crawling

• Sitemap generates correctly

• Analytics tracking is installed

• Search Console is verified

Execute the Domain Switch

Point your domain to Shopify following their DNS instructions. DNS propagation takes 24 to 48 hours. Monitor for SSL certificate provisioning.

Submit Your New Sitemap

As soon as DNS propagates, submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console. Remove any old sitemaps referencing your previous URL structure.

Phase 4: Post-Migration Monitoring

Week 1: Daily Search Console Checks

Monitor Search Console daily for the first week. Look for crawl errors, 404 errors from missed redirects, and indexing issues.

Fix any issues immediately. The faster you respond, the less impact on rankings.

Week 2-4: Track Ranking Changes

Monitor your target keywords daily. Some fluctuation is normal, but watch for rankings dropping more than 10 positions or important pages disappearing entirely.

Use your pre-migration baseline to compare traffic levels. A continuous SEO monitoring service catches problems before they compound.

Month 2-3: Full Recovery Assessment

Most pages should recover fully by month two. Pages still underperforming need investigation: verify redirects work, check that content transferred completely, and confirm canonical tags point to correct URLs.

Common Migration Mistakes

Changing content during migration. Migration is not the time for a content refresh. Change only what is necessary for the platform move.

Forgetting about images. If images were hosted on different URLs, those URLs need redirects too.

Rushing the timeline. Migrations done in a week fail more often than migrations planned over a month.

Expected Recovery Timeline

Days 1-7: Increased crawl activity. Rankings may fluctuate significantly.

Weeks 2-4: Rankings begin stabilizing. Traffic should approach 70 to 80 percent of pre-migration levels.

Months 2-3: Full recovery for most pages.

If you have not recovered after 90 days, something fundamental went wrong. A site architecture review can identify the issue.

Your Checklist Summary

Pre-migration: Export data, crawl site, create URL mapping, plan redirects.

Setup: Configure SEO settings, migrate content with metadata, implement redirects.

Launch: Verify systems, switch DNS, submit sitemap.

Post-launch: Monitor daily, track rankings, assess recovery at 90 days.

Your wholesale business depends on organic traffic. Proper migration protects that traffic and sets you up for continued growth on Shopify.