How to migrate from WordPress to Cloudflare Pages without losing rankings

We lived this story firsthand. The previous tumarcaviral.com site ran on WordPress. One day, Google started showing thousands of pages we never created: junk URLs injected by a hack. The site was slow, loaded plugins nobody used and asked for a new update every week.

We decided to migrate to a static site on Cloudflare Pages. What we learned in the process is exactly what we share here, so your migration gains speed and security without losing the rankings that took so much to earn.

Why migrate from WordPress to Cloudflare Pages?

For speed, security and less maintenance.

• Speed: static pages are served from Cloudflare's global network.
• Security: with no exposed database or admin panel, much of the attack surface disappears.
• Less maintenance: there are no plugins to update every week.

Speed has a direct impact on sales; we explain it in why a slow website costs you customers.

How do I build the URL inventory?

By listing, before moving anything, every URL that has traffic or links: pages, blog posts, categories. Search Console (the pages and performance reports) and your current sitemap are the starting point. This inventory is your moving map: every old address needs a new one.

How do I set up 301 redirects?

One for every URL that changes, pointing to its new equivalent address. That is Google's recommendation in its guide to moving a site with URL changes. In Cloudflare Pages they are configured with a _redirects file at the root of the site, according to Cloudflare's redirects documentation.

Situation	What to do
The page exists on the new site with another URL	301 redirect to the new URL
The page exists with the same URL	Nothing, it stays
The page no longer exists and has no equivalent	Let it respond 404 or 410
Junk URL from a hack	Respond with an error, never redirect to the home page

Common mistake: blocking a hack's junk URLs in robots.txt. It seems logical, but it backfires: if Google cannot visit them, it cannot see they no longer exist, and they stay in its records. Make them respond with an error (404, 410 or 403) so Google drops them from the index. That is how we learned it.

What should I check on the new site?

1. A canonical on every page pointing to its own URL.
2. A single version of the domain: with or without www, and the other redirecting with a 301.
3. Titles and descriptions as good as or better than the previous ones.
4. Structured data for the organization and the services.
5. Access for AI crawlers: make sure your firewall does not block them, as we explain in what GEO is.

Watch out: migrating the website does not require touching your domain's email records. If someone suggests changing them “while they are at it”, stop: a mistake there leaves your company without email.

How do I let Google know about the migration?

1. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console.
2. Use URL inspection to request indexing of the key pages.
3. Over the following weeks, check the page indexing report.

How long does Google take to reflect the migration?

Several weeks, and it is normal to see movement in the meantime. Google has to recrawl the old URLs, follow the redirects and replace the addresses in its index. The key is to check Search Console regularly and fix any important URL that shows an error.

In short

Migrating from WordPress to Cloudflare Pages gains speed, security and peace of mind, as long as it is done with a URL inventory, 301 redirects and follow-up in Search Console. We did it with our own site and today it is faster and more secure. We do it for you in our hosting and domains service.