Web & Development
The old site does not need throwing away. It needs recovering properly
We rebuild, migrate or take over existing websites, without losing the organic traffic, the rankings or the content that already works.
- The firm that built your site no longer exists, or the developer left and stopped replying
- You have already put serious money into the current site and do not want to throw it all away
- You want to change platform, but you are afraid of losing your Google rankings
01 · What it costs you today
You no longer have access to the domain, the hosting or the admin account
The domain sits on a former contractor's personal email, and the password went with his laptop. Recovering control becomes the first mandatory step, before any conversation about design.
You are afraid to touch anything in case it breaks
Every plugin update risks taking the whole site down, and the marketing team gave up proposing changes long ago.
A rushed migration can wipe out years of organic traffic
A study of 892 migrations shows an average recovery time of 523 days, and 17% of sites had not recovered their traffic even after 1,000 days.
The site has already been compromised
Injected phishing pages, suspicious redirects, the “this site may be dangerous” warning in Chrome. Doing nothing here means a Google blacklisting and a direct loss of trust.
02 · What you get
A technical audit against five decision criteria
Maintenance risk, Core Web Vitals, platform support, integration stability, isolation of new functionality. The report says “rebuild” or “full migration”, justified point by point, not decided in advance.
Recovering lost access
Domain ownership transfer, hosting migration to an account you control, administrative access reset, a complete backup before any change.
A URL by URL migration map
Every indexed old page mapped individually, never a blanket redirect to the homepage, which is exactly what produced losses of over 85% of visibility in the documented cases.
Work done in a staging environment
Separate from the live site, so visitors and Google indexing are unaffected until launch.
301 redirects kept for at least a year
In line with Google's recommendation, for the full transfer of the ranking signals accumulated on the old structure.
Post-migration monitoring, at least 30 days
Recrawl rate, 404 errors on unredirected URLs, weekly organic traffic compared with the period before.
03 · How we work
- 01
Technical and content audit
3 to 7 working days. We assess the platform against the five criteria, inventory every indexed URL and verify real access to the domain, the hosting and the accounts.
- 02
Recovering access, where needed
Ownership transfer, hosting migration, administrative access reset, a complete backup of the current state.
- 03
The SEO migration map
URL by URL mapping, a 301 redirect plan, and identification of the authority pages that need special attention.
- 04
Execution and controlled launch
4 to 16 weeks depending on scope, in staging separate from the live site, then at least 30 days of monitoring after launch.
04 · Results
- spitalultulkarem.roTulkarem Hospital
Taking over and rebuilding the hospital's web presence, keeping the existing content and addresses.
These are the figures reported by the clients themselves, for their own accounts, over the periods shown. We do not turn them into derived percentages and we do not present them as reproducible.
05 · What people usually ask us
- “It is more expensive than a new site from a freelancer.”
- It looks that way. A redesign on the existing structure costs 60% to 80% of the price of an equivalent new project, and if the current site has organic traffic, that traffic carries an acquisition value you have already paid for, which a complete rebuild without SEO migration throws away. We compare the “rebuild price” with the “new price plus the cost of winning back the lost traffic”, which can run past 500 days.
- “We tried with someone else and it was a disaster.”
- That is often why clients come to us. It is also why the audit phase is separate from the execution phase and delivered as a document: you see exactly what was found before you decide whether to go further.
- “It takes too long, we need a new site now.”
- A rushed migration, with no URL map and no proper redirects, is exactly the recipe for long-term traffic loss. We prefer a realistic 4 to 16 weeks to a fast launch followed by a recovery that runs over a year.
06 · Frequently asked questions
- How do I know whether I need a rebuild or a completely new site?
- It depends on the real technical state of the current site, not on its age. We use five audit criteria. If three or more point to serious problems, we recommend a full migration, otherwise a redesign on the current structure is enough and cheaper.
- Will I lose my Google rankings after migrating?
- That is the main risk, but it is manageable with the right process. We build a redirect map for every indexed URL and keep the redirects active for at least a year. A temporary fluctuation is normal, a permanent loss is usually the result of an incomplete map.
- I no longer have access to the old site's hosting account or domain. Can anything still be done?
- Yes, recovering access is frequently the first step of the project. We check the options for ownership transfer and hosting migration even without the former supplier's cooperation.
- How long does a rebuild or migration project take?
- A redesign on the existing structure usually takes 4 to 8 weeks, a complete platform migration 8 to 16 weeks. Emergency recovery of an actively compromised site is prioritised separately, immediately.
- Can you take over a project built by another agency, with no documentation?
- Yes, that is a common situation. The audit includes reconstructing the real technical state of the site, whether or not the previous supplier left any documentation.
Shall we talk about your project?
Tell us where you stand. If we are not the right answer for you, you will hear it in the first conversation.
Request a quote