Full migration to Next.js with URL preservation, 301 mapping, structured data, and sub-1-second LCP. Bring your WP login and I'll walk you through a live plan on the first call.
- Design
- Build
- Launch
fixed-price project
Who this is for
This page is for CMOs and CTOs running a WordPress site that is losing Core Web Vitals, paying a growing plugin tax, and watching paid search quality scores slip — but who cannot afford a botched replatform that drops six months of organic rankings. If the agency quotes started at $50k and you want to understand what a senior engineer with a fixed price and a proven checklist can do differently, this is that page.
The pain today
- TTFB over 1 second even with caching, dragging down Google rankings
- Plugin conflicts eating developer hours every update cycle
- Agency quotes of $50k+ and 6-month timelines for a rebuild
- Fear of losing hard-won organic traffic during the platform switch
- Editors who need a CMS but don't want to learn another unfamiliar tool
The outcome you get
- Next.js site on Vercel with sub-1-second LCP on key landing pages
- URL-for-URL preservation or 301 redirect mapping — zero organic traffic loss
- Structured data, sitemap, and canonical tags verified in Search Console before DNS flip
- Editor-friendly headless CMS (Sanity, Contentful, or Notion) — cleaner than WP's ACF stack
- 3–5 week delivery with a staging preview you approve before any DNS changes go live
Why teams leave WordPress in 2026
WordPress to Next.js migration searches have more than doubled since 2024, and the reason isn't fashion. WordPress works fine on a brochure site with five pages and one editor. It starts working against you when the site has to load fast for paid traffic, pass Core Web Vitals, handle custom interactions, or survive a plugin conflict at 2am. Ten plugins on a production site means ten attack surfaces, ten update cycles, and ten things that can break when a host pushes a PHP version bump.
Next.js on Vercel changes the equation: static pages for speed, server components for dynamic data, incremental static regeneration for editor-triggered previews, and a deployment model where a bad push never takes down the live site. You pay for what you ship. There is no plugin ecosystem tax. For most marketing sites, the math becomes obvious once you add up hosting fees, plugin licenses, developer hours spent on maintenance, and the Google penalty that comes from a slow page.
Next.js site on Vercel with sub-1-second LCP on key landing pages
What a zero-loss SEO migration actually looks like
The most common failure in a WordPress replatform is losing ranked pages. I have seen teams drop 40% of organic traffic in a week because someone forgot to redirect a slug that had three years of backlinks pointing at it. My migration follows a four-step SEO protocol to prevent that.
First, I crawl the current site and export every indexed URL, including paginated archives, tag pages, and image attachment URLs if they rank. Second, I build a URL map — preserved where structure allows, 301 where not — and flag any URL carrying backlink equity for manual review. Third, I build the new site on a staging domain and run a diff crawl: every URL from the export must be resolvable or have a redirect, every page must have a correct canonical, and every piece of structured data must match or improve on the original. Fourth, I ship the redirects on launch day, submit the updated sitemap to Search Console, and monitor crawl coverage, click data, and ranking positions for the next four weeks. Short-term fluctuations of a few days are normal on any replatform. Permanent traffic loss is not.
120k+: Properties indexed and searchable.
Headless WordPress versus a full rebuild
There are two structural paths when migrating from WordPress. The headless path keeps WordPress as the content database and pulls data through its REST or GraphQL API into a Next.js frontend. It makes sense when editors are committed to the WP interface, the content model is deeply custom with complex ACF fields, and there is no appetite to retrain a large editorial team. The trade-off: you still pay for WP hosting, plugin updates, and security patches indefinitely.
The full rebuild path migrates content to a modern headless CMS — Sanity, Contentful, or in simple cases Notion — and retires WordPress entirely. Simpler to operate long-term, one less system to maintain, and typically cheaper to host. I recommend based on editorial team size, content model complexity, and the customer's honest tolerance for ongoing WP maintenance. Most sub-100-page marketing sites should do the full rebuild. Enterprise sites with deep editorial workflows or custom post type hierarchies sometimes keep headless WP for one additional cycle before finishing the migration.
Core Web Vitals: what the thresholds mean for your business
Google's Core Web Vitals are not an abstract developer concern. LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) over 2.5 seconds correlates directly with bounce rate increases and lower Ad Quality Score on paid search. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) above 0.1 makes pages feel broken to users and signals poor engineering to Google. INP (Interaction to Next Paint) above 200ms makes the site feel sluggish on mobile, where most organic traffic now arrives.
A fresh Next.js build on Vercel's global CDN typically scores LCP under 1 second on well-optimized pages, CLS at zero or near-zero when image dimensions are declared correctly, and INP well under 200ms because there is no jQuery, no WooCommerce frontend, and no theme framework adding 200kb of parse time. I run a CWV audit pass during the build phase and a second pass on staging before the DNS flip. If any metric misses the green threshold, the launch waits until it passes. The Imohub rebuild I did reduced query response to under 0.5 seconds and reached Top 3 Google rankings for its target categories — the same technical discipline applies to marketing WordPress sites.
What the migration covers, step by step
Content export from WordPress → URL map and redirect plan → design audit and component inventory → rebuild in Next.js with ISR for editor previews → form rewiring (Resend, HubSpot, or Salesforce depending on your stack) → analytics setup (GA4 and Plausible, optional Microsoft Clarity) → structured data pass (WebPage, Article, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage where applicable) → CWV pass with real-device testing → staging crawl and diff against the URL map → redirect configuration → DNS flip on a Tuesday morning with full-day monitoring.
Each step produces a reviewable output — URL map as a shareable spreadsheet, CWV report as a Lighthouse JSON, staging diff as a crawl export. Editors receive a short training session on the new CMS before the DNS flip so they are not flying blind on day one. I stay on the project through the first month of Search Console data so any ranking fluctuation is diagnosed and addressed before it compounds into a real problem.
WooCommerce and membership sites
WooCommerce migrations are handled case by case. For smaller catalogs (under 500 SKUs, simple variable products, no complex tax rules), I move to Stripe Checkout or a lightweight Shopify channel, which eliminates the WP overhead entirely. For larger or more complex stores, a headless WooCommerce approach — keeping WC as the commerce engine, building the storefront in Next.js — is a viable intermediate step. For membership plugins and LMS tools (MemberPress, LearnDash), I typically replace them with purpose-built custom logic or a dedicated platform; that work is scoped as an Applications engagement rather than a website migration.
The key thing I tell every WooCommerce customer: do not attempt a commerce migration and a design migration simultaneously unless the timeline is flexible. They have different risk profiles and different rollback strategies. Separating them by even two weeks makes both safer.
Pricing, timeline, and what you get
WordPress to Next.js migration falls under the Websites Business tier, starting at $7,999 fixed price for typical marketing sites — up to approximately 30 pages, standard blog, contact and lead-gen forms. Larger sites with custom post types, multisite setups, or WooCommerce price up from there after a scoping call.
Timeline is 3–5 weeks for most projects. Every engagement includes a 14-day money-back guarantee, a 1-year bug warranty, and Work Made for Hire terms — the code, CMS setup, redirect map, and migration documentation are 100% yours on final invoice clearance. The price is fixed: no hourly overruns, no scope creep surprises. I take on 1–2 migration projects per quarter by design, so each one gets my full attention rather than being handed to a junior team after the kickoff call.
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.
Read the case studyKeep reading
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
Not if it is executed correctly. I preserve URLs where possible, map every changed URL to a 301 redirect, verify structured data on staging, and monitor Search Console for four weeks post-launch. A few days of minor ranking fluctuation can happen on any replatform. Permanent traffic loss is a sign of a botched migration — one that skipped the URL map or launched without redirect verification. That is the specific thing my four-step protocol prevents.
Fixed price from $7,999 for a typical marketing site up to around 30 pages. That covers the rebuild, SEO parity work, redirect map, headless CMS setup, and four weeks of post-launch Search Console monitoring. Larger sites with WooCommerce, custom post types, or multisite scope up after a written assessment. There are no hourly overruns — the price is fixed at the start.
Three to five weeks for most marketing sites. Week one is the crawl, URL map, and design audit. Weeks two and three are the build. Week four is the CWV and SEO pass on staging. Week five, if needed, is buffer for revisions and the DNS flip. I schedule the launch on a Tuesday morning so I have a full business day to monitor analytics, Search Console, and error logs before closing out.
Yes, that is the headless approach. I keep WordPress as the content database and pull through the WP REST API or WPGraphQL into a Next.js frontend. It works well when editors are committed to the WP interface or the content model is too complex to migrate quickly. The honest trade-off: you still carry WP hosting and plugin update costs indefinitely. Most customers on this path migrate the content out within 12–18 months anyway.
For technical SEO, yes — in almost every dimension. Next.js renders complete HTML pages that Googlebot can index without executing JavaScript, unlike some SPA setups. You get fine-grained control over canonical tags, meta tags, structured data, and sitemap generation without plugins that conflict with each other. The performance gains (sub-1s LCP on a well-built Next.js site vs. 3–5s on a typical WordPress page) also matter directly: Core Web Vitals are a Google ranking signal.
I set up a headless CMS matched to your team's needs — Sanity for teams that want a structured content model with real-time preview, Contentful for teams that need enterprise permissions and localization, or Notion for very simple sites where a non-technical editor just needs to update text. Most teams find the new CMS faster than WordPress because the fields are shaped to their actual content, not WP's generic post/page/ACF stack. A training session is included.
The old WordPress site stays running right through the DNS flip and for 72 hours after. If anything goes wrong — a missing redirect, a broken form, an unexpected ranking drop — I can revert DNS in under ten minutes. I monitor analytics, Search Console, and error logs in real time on launch day. The new site does not get a clean handoff until it has passed 24 hours without any critical issues.