aaron8.
  1. Home
  2. Website rebuilds

Rebuild the site. Keep the rankings.

The most expensive mistake in a website rebuild is invisible on launch day: the old pages that quietly earned your Google traffic get deleted or moved, and the phone stops ringing six weeks later. A rebuild done properly starts with what the old site earned, and carries it across on purpose.

Get a quote See the finished thing WordPress specifically?

Live proof

Drag the line. That is the difference.

The same business before and after a rebuild. Drag the divider across the two sites, then read what carried over untouched and what changed. The old rankings are on the carried-over list.

live demoBefore and after a rebuild

This working build runs in your browser and needs scripts enabled. Everything on the page describes what it does; turn them on to use it.

The finished thing is the point. The rebuild keeps every address Google already knows, moves the content across, and hands you a site that loads fast and reads well on a phone.

The method

Audit first. Then build.

  1. Find out what the old site is worth. Which pages actually get traffic, which searches bring it, what links point where. Eleven years as an analyst means the audit is not a formality; it decides what the new site must not break.
  2. Map every address that matters. Old page to new page, one by one, so a visitor or a search engine following a five-year-old link lands somewhere sensible instead of on an error page.
  3. Rebuild lean. New design, tidied content, and a site that is measurably faster than the one it replaces, checked with the same tools Google uses.
  4. Launch like it matters. Redirects live, measurement in place, and eyes on the search traffic afterwards so anything unexpected gets caught early, not at the quarterly review.

Signs it's time

You already know. But to confirm:

  • Editing one page means paying someone, waiting, then checking they got it right.
  • It looks fine on the office monitor and broken on every phone in the room.
  • The services you actually sell now are nowhere on it.
  • It takes longer to load than it does to say your business name.
  • The person who built it no longer answers, and nobody has the passwords. That is also a rescue, and I do those.
  • You are embarrassed to put the address on a business card.

Fair questions

Before you ask.

Will a redesign hurt my Google rankings?
It can, badly, if pages that rank get deleted or their addresses change without redirects. Done properly it should not: every old address that matters is mapped to its new home, the content that earns traffic is kept or improved rather than discarded, and the site gets faster, which helps rather than hurts.
Rebuild, or just refresh?
If the bones are sound and only the paint dates it, a refresh is cheaper and I will say so. A rebuild earns its cost when the platform fights every change, the site is slow at its core, or the business has outgrown what the site says about it.
How long does it take?
Small business sites typically run a few weeks from agreed scope to launch; bigger ones longer. The honest variable is content: design and build move quickly, and waiting on words and photos is what stretches timelines. You get a schedule with the quote.
What platform will the new site be on?
Whatever the job needs: WordPress where self-service editing matters, plain fast pages where it does not, something custom where the site is really an application wearing a website's clothes. The recommendation comes with reasons, not just a preference.