Shopify Migration Checklist: Moving from WooCommerce, Magento or Lightspeed Without Losing SEO

Moving your webshop to Shopify? A Shopify migration checklist for WooCommerce, Magento and Lightspeed: data, 301 redirects, SEO and launch day.

TL;DR: A Shopify migration (Shopify migratie) keeps its Google rankings if you treat it as an SEO job first and a data import second. List every old URL and decide where it goes on Shopify. Load the 301 redirects before you switch the domain, and keep them for at least a year. Bring over your page titles, meta descriptions and structured data. Then check Search Console every day for the first few weeks. Moving products, customers and orders is rarely the problem. Most lost traffic comes from missed redirects and forgotten URLs.

We build Shopify stores and move webshops to Shopify for brands in the Netherlands. In this article you get the checklist we work from, including the Shopify details that often get skipped.

When is moving to Shopify worth it?

Moving to Shopify (overstappen naar Shopify) usually pays off when your current platform costs you more time than it saves. Common signs:

• Too many plugins. WooCommerce and Magento 2 stores often run dozens of extensions. Every update can break something.
• You handle hosting and security yourself. On Shopify, hosting, a PCI-compliant checkout and platform updates are included.
• Your marketing team needs a developer for every change. On a well-built Shopify store, the team edits sections and content themselves.
• You want to sell in more EU countries. Shopify Markets handles currencies, languages and domains out of the box.

It's less obvious if you depend on complex B2B pricing or a very custom checkout. Shopify Plus, custom apps or a headless setup can often cover that. Check it before you commit.

Step 1: List everything you have now

Make a full list before anyone touches Shopify:

1. Crawl the whole site with Screaming Frog, Sitebulb or a similar tool. Export every URL that Google can index: products, categories, CMS pages, blog posts, images and PDFs.
2. Find the URLs that bring in traffic. Export the last 12 to 16 months of page data from Google Search Console and GA4. Add the pages other sites link to, from Ahrefs or a similar tool. These are your priority URLs.
3. Write down where you stand today: clicks, impressions and average position per page, plus Core Web Vitals. After launch you compare against these numbers.
4. List every connection to other systems: ERP, POS, warehouse software, payment providers, reviews, email and product feeds. Each one needs a Shopify app or a custom connection.
5. Agree on a content freeze. Products and pages added during the migration are the ones that get forgotten.

Step 2: Match every old URL to a Shopify URL

This is where most traffic gets lost. Shopify uses fixed URL paths that you can't fully change. Products sit under /products/, collections under /collections/, pages under /pages/ and blog posts under /blogs/<blog-name>/. Your old platform almost certainly used different paths, so nearly every URL changes.

Build the list in a spreadsheet, one row per old URL. Follow these rules:

• Match one to one where you can. A product goes to the same product, a category to the matching collection. Use the homepage only as a last resort. Google says that sending many old URLs to the homepage can be treated as a soft 404, which is basically an error.
• Keep the same handles (the last part of the URL) where possible, so blue-hoodie stays blue-hoodie.
• Send products you no longer sell to the closest collection, not to a 404 page.
• Map each language separately. If you sell in NL, BE and DE, each language version needs its own row, pointing to the matching Shopify Markets folder or domain.

Step 3: Learn Shopify's redirect rules before you import

Shopify's redirects are simple, but they have limits that trip up many migrations:

• A redirect only works if the old URL is broken. Shopify says you "can redirect only from broken URLs", so URLs that would otherwise show a 404. If a live product, collection or page exists at the old path, Shopify ignores the redirect without warning (Shopify Help Center).
• There is a maximum. Standard plans allow up to 100,000 redirects. Shopify Plus allows up to 20,000,000. A large Magento catalogue with filter URLs can get close to the standard limit.
• Wildcards don't work. If you enter /old-blog/*, Shopify saves the asterisk as a normal character, so it matches nothing (Wislr test). Every URL needs its own row.
• Some paths can't be redirected. Shopify blocks redirects from URLs that start with /apps, /cart, /orders, /services or /shop, among others. URLs with query strings (the part after ?) might not work as expected.
• Import them as a CSV in the admin under Content → Menus → URL redirects → Import. For very large sets, use a bulk tool such as Matrixify.

Google advises to keep redirects "for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year", and to point each old URL straight at its final address instead of through a chain of redirects (Google Search Central). On Shopify we simply leave them in place.

Step 4: Move the data, and know what doesn't come along

Shopify lists products, customers, past orders, gift cards and store credit, blog posts and pages as data you can move. You can do it by copying by hand, with CSV files, with a migration app, through the API, or by hiring a Shopify Partner (Shopify: Migrating to Shopify).

Watch out for these:

• Product setup. Shopify limits the number of options and variants per product. Complex Magento products sometimes need to be split up or use metafields (extra custom fields on a product).
• SEO fields. Bring over SEO titles, meta descriptions, image alt text and product specs, not just names and prices.
• Order history. Your customer service and your Klaviyo segments need it, so import it instead of starting from zero.
• Customer passwords don't come along. Your old platform stores them encrypted, and standard imports can't move them. With Shopify's current customer accounts this matters less: customers enter their email and "receive a one-time 6-digit verification code. A password isn't required to sign in" (Shopify Help Center). Still send returning customers an email about it at launch.
• Reviews, loyalty points and subscriptions each have their own export and import route, for example through Yotpo or a subscription app. Plan them as separate tasks.

Step 5: Set up SEO on the new store

With the redirects ready, make sure the new store is at least as strong as the old one:

• Give every page a canonical tag that points to itself, and update internal links to the new URLs instead of leaning on redirects.
• Check the structured data on product pages (Product, Offer, Review, Breadcrumb). Many themes include it, but test it with Google's Rich Results Test.
• If you sell in several countries or languages, check that hreflang (the tag that tells Google which language version to show) is set up per market.
• Get Core Web Vitals in order before launch. A migration is a good moment to drop years of plugin weight. Our Orangefit build, a headless Shopify store, passes all Core Web Vitals (1s LCP, 143ms INP, 0.02 CLS).
• Make sure no noindex tag or robots.txt block from the test store is still there at launch. Google warns about this in its site-move checklist.

Planning a move to Shopify? We scope every project at a fixed price, including the URL list and redirects. Tell us about your current store →

Native Shopify or headless?

You rebuild the website your customers see anyway, so the migration is the cheapest moment to make this choice.

• Native Shopify (Plus) theme: the quickest way to launch. You get the full app store and one system for your team. This is the right choice for most brands.
• Headless Shopify: the website is a separate Next.js app with its own CMS, and Shopify runs products, cart and checkout in the background. You get full design freedom, very fast pages and more room for content. It suits brands with a lot of content or several markets. It costs more to build, and your URLs are no longer tied to Shopify's fixed paths.

We build both. Our e-commerce page explains when each one fits.

Step 6: Test, then launch in the right order

Go through this list on the test store, and again on launch day:

Before the domain switch

• All priority URLs from Step 1 are in the redirect list
• Redirect CSV imported, and at least 50 old URLs tested (one 301 step, right destination)
• Test orders placed with every payment method (iDEAL, cards, Klarna and anything else you offer)
• Shipping rates, VAT/OSS settings and invoices checked for every country you sell to
• Connected systems (ERP, warehouse, POS, Klaviyo) send and receive the right data
• Tracking (GA4, Meta, cookie banner) works and meets GDPR rules
• Test store password and noindex removed

Launch day

• Point the domain to Shopify (DNS) at a quiet moment, never right before a campaign
• Submit the new XML sitemap in Search Console
• Crawl the old URL list again and confirm every URL returns a 301 to the right page
• Send customers a "we've moved" email (how to sign in, loyalty points, what's new)

Step 7: Keep watching for 90 days

Google says to "expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during the move". For medium-sized sites it can take a few weeks or more before Google shows the new URLs instead of the old ones (Google Search Central). A short dip is normal. A drop that lasts usually has a cause you can fix.

• In week one, check the Pages report in Search Console every day for new 404s and "Page with redirect" spikes. Add missing redirects right away.
• Compare clicks per page with your Step 1 numbers after 2, 4 and 12 weeks.
• Watch Core Web Vitals data from real visitors as traffic comes in.
• Keep a read-only copy of the old platform's database for at least a few months, in case you need to trace a missed URL or order.

Choosing who runs your Shopify migration

In the Netherlands you can hire anything from a data-only migration service to a full agency. Ask every candidate:

1. Who builds and checks the URL list, and can I see it before launch?
2. What do you do with products or options that don't fit Shopify?
3. Which connections do you rebuild, and which do you replace with apps?
4. What do you check after launch, and for how long?
5. Is the price fixed, and what exactly is included?

Our process goes from intake to a fixed-price proposal, build, feedback rounds, handover and support. No retainer for services you don't need.

FAQ

How do I migrate my webshop to Shopify? (Hoe migreer ik mijn webshop naar Shopify?) Crawl your current store and list every URL. Match each old URL to its new Shopify URL. Import products, customers and orders with CSV files, a migration app or the API. Rebuild the design and connections, test with real orders and import the 301 redirects. Then switch the domain and watch Search Console.

Will I lose my Google rankings when I move to Shopify? Not if every indexed URL gets its own 301 redirect and your titles, content and structured data come along. Expect some movement for a few weeks while Google crawls the new store. Lasting losses almost always come from missing redirects or a forgotten noindex.

How long does a Shopify migration take? It depends on the size of your catalogue, the systems you connect and the design. A native theme with a standard catalogue is much faster than a headless store for several markets with an ERP connection. A fixed-scope proposal should give you a timeline before work starts.

Can I migrate from WooCommerce, Magento or Lightspeed to Shopify? Yes. Shopify has its own migration instructions for WooCommerce and Lightspeed, among others. Magento stores move with CSV exports, migration apps or the API. Each platform uses different URLs, so the redirect list is always custom work.

Do customer passwords transfer to Shopify? No. Passwords are stored encrypted, and standard imports can't move them. With Shopify's customer accounts, customers sign in with a one-time code sent by email, so they only need the email address they already used.

Should I switch to headless Shopify during the migration? Only if you need more design freedom, more content options or more speed than a theme gives you. The migration is the cheapest moment to decide, because the website gets rebuilt either way.

Ready to move to Shopify without losing your rankings?

We move WooCommerce, Magento and Lightspeed stores to native or headless Shopify. That includes the URL list, redirects, connected systems and a handover with training, so your team can run the store from day one. Book an intake call, email info@petercoolen.com or call +31 6 57 54 60 27.

Sources

• Shopify Help Center: Migrating to Shopify
• Shopify Help Center: Creating and managing URL redirects
• Shopify Help Center: Customer accounts
• Google Search Central: Site moves with URL changes
• Google Rich Results Test
• Wislr: Shopify URL redirects (tested limitations and wildcards)