Leave WordPress. Keep your SEO. Ship in 3–5 weeks.
Full migration to Next.js 16 with preserved URLs, 301 mapping, structured data, and sub-1-second LCP. Bring your WP login — I'll screen-share a live plan.
Who this is for
CMO or CTO running a slow WordPress site that is losing Core Web Vitals, paying a plugin tax, and watching AdWords quality score drop — but cannot afford a botched replatform.
The pain today
- TTFB over 1 second even with caching, dragging down ranking
- Plugin conflicts every update cycle
- Agency quotes of $50k+ and 6 months for a rebuild
- Fear of losing hard-won SEO in the switch
- Editors who need a CMS but don't want to learn a new tool
The outcome you get
- Next.js 16 site on Vercel with sub-1-second LCP on key pages
- URL-for-URL preservation or 301 mapping — zero organic traffic loss
- Structured data, sitemap, canonical tags verified in Search Console
- Editor UX via a headless CMS (Sanity, Contentful, or Notion) — simpler than WP
- 3–5 week delivery with a staging preview gate before DNS flip
Why teams migrate away from WordPress in 2026
WordPress isn't the problem on a brochure site. It becomes the problem when the site has to load fast, rank on Core Web Vitals, handle custom interactions, or survive a plugin conflict. Ten plugins on a production site means ten attack surfaces and ten update cycles to fight every month. Next.js 16 on Vercel gives you static pages for speed, server components for dynamic data, incremental static regeneration for editor previews, and zero plugin tax. You pay for what you ship, not for a plugin ecosystem. For most marketing sites, the math is obvious once you add up hosting, plugins, developer hours, and the SEO penalty of a slow page.
Preserving SEO during a replatform
The number one failure mode of a WP replatform is losing ranked pages. I prevent that with a four-step protocol. One: crawl the current site and export every indexed URL. Two: build a URL map — preserved where possible, 301 where not. Three: verify structured data, canonical tags, sitemap, and hreflang match the old site or improve on it. Four: stage the new site on a preview domain, crawl it, diff against the map, fix deltas. On launch day I ship the redirects, submit the new sitemap, and monitor Search Console for the next four weeks. The goal is zero organic traffic loss.
Headless WordPress vs full Next.js rebuild
Two paths. Headless: keep WordPress as the content database, pull data through its REST or GraphQL API into a Next.js frontend. Good when editors are married to WP and the content model is complex. Full rebuild: migrate content to a modern headless CMS (Sanity, Contentful, Notion-as-CMS) and retire WP entirely. Simpler long-term, one less thing to maintain. I recommend based on editor count, content model complexity, and your tolerance for ongoing WP maintenance. Most sub-100-page marketing sites should go full rebuild. Enterprise sites with deep editorial workflows sometimes keep headless WP for one more cycle.
My migration checklist
Export content → map URLs → design audit → rebuild in Next.js 16 with ISR for editor previews → re-wire forms (Resend, HubSpot, Salesforce) → set up analytics (GA4, Plausible, optional Clarity) → structured data pass → CWV pass (LCP < 2s, CLS < 0.1, INP < 200ms) → staging crawl + diff → redirect map → DNS flip with monitoring. Each step is a deliverable with a reviewable output. Editors get a short training session on the new CMS before launch. I stay on the project through the first month of Search Console monitoring so any ranking wobble is fixed before it becomes a problem.
Case study: Imohub rebuild
Imóveis SC was a legacy real estate portal under a typical PHP/WordPress-adjacent stack, struggling with 120k+ property records and slow search. I rebuilt it as Imohub — Next.js frontend, Laravel backend, Meilisearch for search, MongoDB for property data, AWS for infrastructure. Query response dropped to under 0.5 seconds. Infrastructure cost dropped 70%. The site started ranking Top 3 on Google for its target categories. Same buyers, same listings, very different economics. The same migration pattern applies to marketing WordPress sites — preserve the SEO, upgrade the stack, drop the operational tax.
Pricing and timeline
WordPress to Next.js migration falls under the Websites Redesign tier, starting at $5,000 fixed-price for typical marketing sites (up to ~30 pages, standard blog and forms). Larger sites (custom post types, WooCommerce, membership, multisite) price up from there. Timeline is 3–5 weeks for most projects, with the DNS flip scheduled on a Tuesday morning so I can monitor all day. 14-day money-back guarantee, 1-year bug warranty, and Work Made for Hire — the code, CMS setup, and migration docs are 100% yours on final invoice clearance.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Rebuilt a real estate portal at a fraction of the cost
Rebuilt Imóveis SC's real estate portal as ImoHub — a faster, more scalable successor — handling 120k+ properties with sub-second search and drastically reduced AWS costs.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Will my site lose SEO traffic during the migration?
- Not if the migration is executed correctly. I preserve URLs where possible, map every changed URL to a 301 redirect, verify structured data in staging, and monitor Search Console for 4 weeks post-launch. Short-term (1–2 weeks) ranking fluctuation can happen on large sites, but permanent traffic loss shouldn't.
- How do editors manage content after migration?
- I set up a headless CMS — Sanity, Contentful, or Notion depending on your team — with a clean editor UX. Most teams find it simpler than WordPress because the fields are shaped to your actual content model, not WP's generic post/page/ACF stack. A short training session is included.
- Can I keep WordPress as the backend (headless)?
- Yes, if your editors are married to WP or the content model is deeply custom. I use the WP REST API or WPGraphQL and pull into a Next.js frontend. Fair warning: you still pay WP hosting and plugin updates; most clients eventually migrate content out within a year.
- What about WooCommerce or membership plugins?
- WooCommerce migrations go case-by-case — for smaller catalogs I move to Stripe Checkout or Shopify, for larger ones we keep WooCommerce headless. Membership/LMS plugins usually get replaced with a purpose-built custom app; that's a separate engagement scoped against the Applications service.
- What's the rollback plan on launch day?
- The old WordPress site stays running until the DNS flip and for 72 hours after. If anything goes wrong I can revert DNS in minutes. I monitor analytics, Search Console, and error logs live on launch day, and I don't walk away until the new site has passed the first 24 hours clean.
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