Migrating to Shopify without losing your SEO: the honest guide
The number one fear before a Shopify migration is losing your Google traffic. Here is the protocol that prevents the drop, the real costs after migration, and the cases where you should not migrate at all.
The short answer
Yes, you can migrate to Shopify without losing your search rankings, provided you follow a strict protocol: exhaustive 301 redirects (pages, blog posts, images), title and meta tags carried over unchanged, internal linking rebuilt, and Search Console monitoring for three months. Without that protocol, market figures show a 10-30% traffic drop lasting 2 to 12 weeks. And in some cases (highly complex B2B, large editorial archives, URL structures that cannot be reproduced), the right answer is not to migrate at all.
Shopify or WooCommerce: what actually changes for a French brand?
Before answering, one observation: almost everything that ranks on this question has a horse in the race. Shopify promotes Shopify, WordPress blogs defend WooCommerce, and agencies that only build Shopify stores always conclude with "migrate". At Sonho, we build both Shopify stores and Next.js websites, so we have no stake in pushing you toward either one.
The fundamental difference is simple. WooCommerce is open-source software installed on your own hosting: you are responsible for updates, security, backups and compatibility between plugins. Shopify is a hosted platform: you pay a subscription, and the entire technical side (servers, security, traffic spikes) is handled for you.
For a French brand doing between €200,000 and €3 million in revenue, the real trade-off is not the sticker price but time. WooCommerce costs less on paper and more in hours spent maintaining, debugging and arbitrating between plugins. Shopify costs more in subscription and fees, and frees up time to sell.
| Criterion | Shopify | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting and security | Included, managed by Shopify | On you (hosting provider, updates, backups) |
| Entry cost | €27/month + theme | Low, but hosting + paid plugins add up |
| Maintenance | Almost none on the platform side | Regular and non-negotiable |
| URL freedom | Limited (/products/ and /collections/ are imposed) | Total |
| Blog and editorial content | Basic | Excellent (it is WordPress) |
Will I lose my Google traffic by migrating?
Honest answer: the risk is real, but it is quantifiable and manageable. Market figures are fairly consistent: a poorly prepared migration drops organic traffic by 10 to 30% for 2 to 12 weeks, the time it takes Google to recrawl and make sense of the new site. A migration that follows the full protocol keeps the variation close to zero, sometimes with a slight lift thanks to better loading performance.
Why does traffic drop when it is done badly? Because your URLs change. Shopify imposes its own structure: every product page moves under /products/ and every category under /collections/. If your old addresses are not redirected one by one, Google hits 404 errors, loses track of the pages that ranked, and the authority built up over years scatters.
Traffic loss is therefore not an inevitable cost of migrating: it is the symptom of an incomplete protocol. That is exactly what we lock down on the e-commerce migrations we deliver: your existing search rankings are treated as an asset to transport, not as collateral damage.
The anti-loss SEO protocol, step by step
Here is the full protocol, in order. No step is optional: forgetting a single one (usually the blog or the images) is what causes traffic drops.
- Exhaustive inventory of existing URLs: a full crawl of the current site, cross-checked with Search Console and your analytics. Including blog posts, indexed images, filter pages and the old forgotten pages that still receive traffic.
- Complete 301 redirect map: every old URL points to its exact equivalent on Shopify. A 301 redirect passes along almost all of the authority earned. No mass redirect to the homepage: Google treats that as a 404.
- Title tags and meta descriptions carried over: the tags of pages that rank are copied unchanged onto the new pages. You do not rewrite titles during a migration; you rewrite them after, once traffic has stabilized.
- Internal linking rebuilt: every internal link on the new site points directly to the new URLs, never through a redirect. Each redirect hop dilutes the signal.
- Sitemap submitted on launch day: the new sitemap goes into Search Console immediately, so Google discovers the new structure as fast as possible.
- Search Console monitoring for three months: 404 errors, index coverage, impressions tracked query by query. Anomalies get fixed within the week, not within the quarter.
The real costs of Shopify after migration
Shopify's advertised price is €27/month. The real cost of a running store is several times higher, and you might as well know it before migrating rather than after. Here are the line items, in market ranges.
All in, an active Shopify store costs more like €150-400/month to run, excluding sales fees. That is not a trap, it is the price of a platform that handles hosting, security and traffic spikes for you. But comparing it to the advertised €27 would be dishonest.
To place these amounts within a full build or redesign budget, we broke down the complete ranges in our guide how much a website costs, and the recurring costs in how much website maintenance costs.
| Line item | Range | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify subscription | €27-79/month | The Basic plan is enough for most brands at first |
| Apps | €100-300/month | Reviews, email, search, subscriptions: it adds up fast |
| Fees outside Shopify Payments | ~1.5% + €0.25 per transaction | On top of your payment provider's fees |
| Theme | €0-350 (one-off) or custom | See the next section |
When you should NOT migrate to Shopify
Because we also build Next.js websites, we can afford to say it: there are cases where Shopify is the wrong answer, and where a Shopify-only agency will still tell you to migrate.
First case: highly complex B2B. Multi-tier price lists, order approval flows, quotes, hierarchical accounts: Shopify is making progress on B2B, but some setups require so many apps and workarounds that the platform loses its main advantage, simplicity.
Second case: large editorial archives. If your traffic comes first and foremost from hundreds of blog posts, Shopify's blog module will be a clear step down from WordPress. Third case: structural URLs that cannot be reproduced. Shopify imposes /products/ and /collections/ with no exceptions. If your search rankings rest on a URL tree that this structure cannot reproduce, even perfect redirects will not make up for the lost semantic logic. In these three cases, we recommend staying put, or looking at another solution.
The first three months after migration: what to watch in Search Console
The migration does not end on launch day. The first three months determine whether traffic stabilizes or erodes, and it all shows up in Search Console.
Week after week: the Coverage report to spot 404s (each error is a forgotten redirect, to be fixed within days) and the Performance report, comparing query by query against the equivalent period before migration. A page losing positions without any technical error usually signals a modified title or weakened internal linking. Also check that the number of indexed pages converges toward the number of pages on the new site, neither far more (duplicates) nor far fewer (forgotten pages).
If the migration followed the protocol, those three months are quiet: a few redirects to adjust, and curves that return to their previous level. If you are preparing a migration and want an opinion before committing, write to us: we will also tell you, if that is the case, when migrating is not the right idea.
Frequently asked questions
- Will my old URLs still work after the migration?
- Not as they are: Shopify imposes its own structure (/products/ for product pages, /collections/ for categories), so your old addresses will inevitably change. That is what 301 redirects are for: each old URL automatically sends the visitor, and Google, to the new equivalent page. Done properly, these redirects pass along almost all of the search authority you earned. Links placed elsewhere (press, directories, social) therefore keep working.
- How long does a migration to Shopify take?
- At Sonho, the average is six weeks from project kickoff to going live, and up to ten weeks for a multilingual store with a B2B portal. That window covers theme design, content import, the redirect map and testing. Automatic import tools advertise a few days, but they cover neither the design nor the SEO protocol: that is where the difference is made.
- Are my customers and their accounts transferred?
- Customer records, order history and the product catalog transfer through Shopify's import tools. Passwords, however, are never transferable: they are encrypted on the old platform and unreadable by the new one. Your customers therefore receive an invitation to reactivate their account on first login. It is a step to plan for in your launch communication, not a bug.
- How much does a Shopify migration by an agency cost?
- Market ranges go from €3,000 to €15,000 and beyond depending on catalog size, design and features. At Sonho, every project starts at €2,000 excl. VAT, with a fixed-price quote set after a discovery call: the amount does not move afterwards. We also take over existing Shopify stores without starting from scratch, and we migrate from Wix, WordPress, Squarespace or Webflow while preserving content and search rankings.
- Is Shopify good for SEO?
- Overall yes: pages load fast, the generated code is clean, basic structured data is in place and the HTTPS certificate is included. The limits are real: an imposed URL structure, a basic blog module, and some fine-grained settings out of reach. For the vast majority of brands, these limits weigh nothing against content and link quality, which remain the real ranking factors.
