People usually stay with a web company too long because they are afraid of losing the site or their place in Google. Both are protected with a little planning.
1. Collect these first
- Domain login: who the domain is registered with, and the account it is in. It should be in your name.
- Hosting and email: where the site and your email live, so email keeps working during the move.
- Your content: page text, photos, documents and forms. Your new designer can usually pull this from the live site, but originals are better.
- Accounts: Google Business Profile, Google Search Console and analytics, in your name.
- A list of your page addresses, so none get lost.
2. Redesign, do not patch
I do not patch another company's build. Page builders, themes and CMS platforms carry their own code, scripts and accessibility problems, and fixing them piece by piece costs more than starting clean. Instead, I redesign your site to ADA and WCAG rules in hand-coded HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No CMS, no page builder, just a fast, accessible site that is easy to update.
3. Protect your Google ranking
Google ranks pages by their address. If an address changes and nothing points the old one to the new one, that page drops out of search. The fix is a 301 redirect for every page whose address changes, set up on launch day. Keep the same domain, and keep page titles and content that already rank well.
4. After the new site launches
- Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Check the old addresses to make sure each one lands on the right new page.
- Update the website link on your Google Business Profile and social accounts if it changed.
- Watch Search Console for a few weeks for any pages Google cannot find.
The short version
Collect your domain, hosting, content and account logins, redesign rather than patch, set 301 redirects for every changed address, and submit the new sitemap to Google. Planned that way, a switch keeps your site and your ranking.
