Website redesign services that keep the rankings you earned

Not every tired-looking site needs a redesign. Some need a rebuild. Some should be left alone.

Leave it alone if it brings in calls, ranks for the searches that matter, and works on a phone. Dated looks cost less than people think. Fix the few pages that leak and keep going.

Redesign if the content and structure are mostly sound but the site looks old, is slow, is hard to use on a phone, or makes it hard to call. You keep the pages that rank, the addresses that have links pointing to them, and the platform if it’s working. The design, the layout and the weak pages change.

Rebuild if the problem is underneath: one page trying to rank for everything, a platform you can’t edit or move, a builder that locks you in, or a site so broken that patching costs more than starting over. A rebuild still keeps what ranks. It just doesn’t keep the frame.

I’ll tell you which one I think you need after looking at the site and its Search Console data, even if the answer is the cheap one.

The most common way a redesign hurts a business: pages get new addresses, nobody sets up redirects, and the old addresses Google ranked and other sites linked to now show an error. Traffic falls, and the new site gets blamed for something that happened at launch. The second most common: the content that ranked gets trimmed for a cleaner look, and the rankings go with it.

So every redesign starts with an audit. I pull every page the site has, with its traffic, rankings and links from Search Console and analytics. Each page gets a decision: keep, improve, merge or drop. Then a redirect map, a list matching every old address to its new home, so a link from 2015 still lands somewhere useful. At launch the redirects go live, I check them, and I watch Search Console for errors afterward.

That’s the part you can’t see on a new design, and it’s the part that decides whether the redesign brings in more calls or fewer. I’ve built and redesigned a lot of WordPress sites: 94 of my Upwork jobs have been WordPress and Divi work, new sites and redesigns among them. CPA on Fire’s redesign in 2022 turned into ongoing management. ATIP Law’s theme change and redesign ran across 2016 and 2017. And I’ve done Divi redesigns as small as a single blog, like one for Michel P. in 2021.

What drives the cost of a website redesign?

Page count first. A ten-page site and a sixty-page site with a blog are different projects, because every page has to be reviewed, redirected and rebuilt. Then copy: keeping your current text costs less than rewriting it, though most redesigns rewrite at least the homepage and the main service pages. Then the platform: staying on WordPress costs less than moving from a builder or an old custom system, where content has to be moved by hand. Then features: booking, payments, a store, member areas or integrations with other software. Finally, the state of what’s there. A site with hundreds of thin pages or a hacked install needs cleanup before the redesign starts. You get a fixed written quote that lists every one of these, so the price doesn’t move once I start.

What happens to my current site while you work?

It stays live and keeps doing its job. I build the redesign on a separate staging copy that only you and I can see, so you can review it on your own phone and laptop before anything changes for your customers. When it’s approved, I switch the live site over, turn on the redirects and check every page. If something unexpected shows up after launch, the old version is backed up and can be restored.

How much of my content do I need to rewrite?

Usually less than you’d expect. The audit shows which pages bring in traffic and calls, and those keep their substance, even if I tighten the wording and the headings. Pages nobody visits get merged or dropped. The pages that need new writing are typically the homepage, the main service pages, and any service or town you want to rank for and don’t have a page for yet. I can write all of it from a call with you, or edit what you write. Either way, nothing that ranks is cut without a reason you’ve agreed to.