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Moving a WordPress site to Next.js
Rebuilding an existing site in Next.js is one of the most common projects I take on, and also the easiest one to get badly wrong. Done properly you keep every ranking you have and the site gets dramatically faster. Done carelessly you lose traffic it took years to build.
Bilal Malass migrates WordPress websites to Next.js, rebuilding the site in Next.js and TypeScript while preserving search rankings through a complete URL-to-URL 301 redirect map, migrated content and metadata, and matching structured data. The rebuilt site keeps a custom admin panel for editing content, removes plugin and hosting subscriptions, and is owned outright by the client. Based in Minieh, North Lebanon, working in Arabic and English.
The reason migrations damage rankings is almost never the new framework. It is the URLs. WordPress produces addresses like /?p=42 or /2019/03/our-services/, and a rebuild naturally wants cleaner ones. Every address that changes without a 301 redirect is a page Google has to rediscover from scratch, and every link anyone ever made to it now goes nowhere.
So the first deliverable of a migration is not a design. It is a spreadsheet: every existing URL, its search traffic, and exactly which new URL it maps to. Nothing gets built until that document is agreed, and nothing goes live until every row in it is a working redirect.
What carries across is more than the text. Page titles and meta descriptions, image alt text, the internal links between posts, canonical tags, and any structured data the old site had — all of it is part of why the site ranks, and all of it is easy to quietly drop in a rebuild that only copies visible content.
What you gain is a site that is genuinely fast rather than fast after four caching plugins. Pages are rendered on the server and sent as finished HTML, so there is no theme framework to download and no plugin scripts fighting each other. On a phone over mobile data — which is most of your traffic — the difference is not subtle.
You also stop renting your own website. No monthly plugin subscriptions, no page-builder licence, nothing that breaks when it auto-updates on a Sunday. The code sits in a repository in your name, and the content lives in an admin panel built for the way you actually edit.
One honest caveat: not every WordPress site should move. If yours is a simple brochure that nobody edits and it loads acceptably, a migration is money spent on something your customers will not notice. The case is strong when the site is slow, when you are paying for plugins you did not choose, when editing it is painful, or when it needs to grow into something WordPress would fight you on.
What the migration includes
A full URL audit and redirect map
Every existing address, its traffic, and the new address it points to — agreed with you before the build and tested before launch. This is the single thing that decides whether rankings survive.
Content migration, not retyping
Posts, pages, images and media move across with their structure intact, including alt text and internal links.
Metadata and structured data
Titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, Open Graph images and schema markup are carried over and corrected where the old site had them wrong.
A rebuild in Next.js and TypeScript
Server-rendered pages, mobile-first, with images compressed and sized properly instead of served at full resolution.
A custom admin panel
Built around your content rather than around a generic post editor, in Arabic or English, so editing stops being a chore.
Search Console handover
New sitemap submitted, redirects verified, and coverage watched for the weeks after launch — which is when problems actually surface.
How the migration runs
Audit what you have
Every URL, which ones get traffic, which plugins are load-bearing, and what the site is actually ranking for today. You cannot preserve what nobody wrote down.
Agree the URL map
Old address to new address, row by row. Where a page should simply disappear, that is a decision made deliberately rather than by accident.
Rebuild and migrate content
The new site is built and populated on a staging address you can click through before anything public changes.
Redirects and pre-launch checks
Every redirect tested, metadata compared old against new, and the whole site crawled for anything that lost a title or a canonical.
Launch and watch
Go live, submit the new sitemap, and monitor Search Console. A small ranking wobble in the first weeks is normal; a drop that does not recover is a problem, and this is when you catch it.
What it costs
A migration is priced on how much there is to move and how tangled it is, not on page count alone. What matters:
- How many URLs exist, and how many actually receive traffic
- Whether the content is mostly pages, or hundreds of posts with categories and tags
- Whether it is one language or two, and whether the Arabic side was built properly
- Which plugins are doing real work — forms, bookings and shops have to be replaced, not just removed
- Whether the design is being kept, refreshed, or redone
- Whether anyone still has access to the hosting and domain, which is more often a problem than you would expect
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose my Google rankings if I move off WordPress?
Not if the URLs are handled properly. Rankings attach to addresses, so every old URL needs a 301 redirect to its new equivalent — and that map is agreed before the build starts and tested before launch. Sites lose rankings in migrations when nobody made that map, not because they moved to Next.js. Expect a small wobble for a week or two while Google re-crawls; expect it to recover.
What happens to my existing content and images?
It moves across with its structure: posts, pages, media, image alt text, internal links, titles and meta descriptions. Retyping content by hand is where details get quietly lost, so it is migrated rather than rewritten unless you specifically want it rewritten.
How long does a WordPress to Next.js migration take?
A small brochure site is usually a couple of weeks. A larger site with hundreds of posts, two languages, or a shop takes longer — most of the extra time goes into the URL map and the content move rather than the design. You get a timeline with the written estimate.
Do I still need to pay for plugins and hosting after moving?
No plugin subscriptions, because there are no plugins — the features are built into the site. Hosting a Next.js site is typically cheaper than the WordPress hosting that was fast enough to be usable, and for many small business sites it is free at the volumes involved.
Is Next.js actually better than WordPress?
For some things, and not for others — anyone who says otherwise is selling. WordPress is genuinely good if you want to install a theme today and never think about it again. Next.js is better when speed matters, when you want to own the code, when the content has real structure, or when the site has to grow into an application. If your site is a simple brochure that loads fine and nobody edits, you probably do not need this.
Can you keep the current design?
Yes. A migration can rebuild the existing design faithfully, refresh it, or replace it entirely — they are separate decisions from the move itself, and keeping the design is the cheaper path if you are happy with how it looks.
Let's talk about your project
Tell me what you need and you'll get a clear plan and a written estimate before any work starts.