Fix or Rebuild Your Website: How to Decide

Fix your website if the problems are on the surface: a wrong phone number, slow images, a missing form, old photos. Rebuild it if the problems are in the structure: it doesn't work on a phone, nobody can edit it, it runs on software that no longer gets updates, or every fix breaks something else.

If you do rebuild, you can keep the Google rankings you have by keeping the addresses of the pages that matter and permanently redirecting the ones that change. The second half of this article walks through how.

Start with a list, not a feeling

"The site looks old" is a feeling. Before you decide anything, open your site on your phone and write down what's actually wrong. Be specific: "phone number isn't tappable", "the services page lists two things we stopped doing", "the contact form sends to an email nobody checks". Then sort each item into one of two piles.

When a fix is enough

These are content and settings problems. Someone who can log in can usually fix them in an afternoon:

Wrong or outdated information: phone, hours, services, service area, prices.
Slow pages caused by huge photos. Resizing and compressing the images often helps a lot.
No working contact form, or a form that sends to the wrong inbox.
Missing basics like tap-to-call, a list of the towns you serve, or reviews.
Small errors: broken links, an expired SSL certificate, a typo in the business name.
An older design that still works well on a phone and that you can edit yourself.

If your list is short and every item is in this pile, fix it. A rebuild would cost more and change less.

When it's time to rebuild

These are structure problems. Fixing them means touching most pages, which is a rebuild in all but name:

It wasn't built for phones. The desktop layout shrinks down, text is tiny, buttons are too close together.
Nobody can edit it. The person who built it is gone, the logins are lost, or only one person knows how it works.
The software is abandoned. The theme, plugins or page builder stopped getting updates, updates break the layout, or your host keeps sending security warnings.
It stays slow after the images are fixed, because the theme or page builder itself is heavy.
The structure doesn't match the business anymore. You've added services, dropped others, or moved into new towns, and the menu can't show it.
You keep paying for small fixes month after month on a site that still doesn't bring calls.

If two or more of these are true, a rebuild is usually a better use of your money than another round of patches. For what a site needs to bring in calls in the first place, see why your website doesn't get calls.

Check these before you decide either way

Who owns the domain. Log in to the registrar and make sure the domain is in your name or your company's name, not your old web designer's. This matters more than anything else on this list.
Who has the logins for hosting, the domain, your Google Business Profile and Google Search Console.
Which pages actually get visits. Search Console shows which pages people find you through. Those are the ones to protect in a rebuild.
What content to keep: real job photos, reviews, service descriptions that already work, and the phone number people already have saved.

How to rebuild without losing your Google rankings

Google has a guide for exactly this situation: site moves with URL changes. For a small business site, it comes down to these steps.

1. List every page on the old site

Pull the list from your sitemap, from Search Console and from your analytics. Google's guide says to start with the most important URLs: the ones with the most traffic and the ones other sites link to. Include images and downloads like PDFs if people link to them.

2. Keep the same URLs where you can

If your furnace repair page lives at /furnace-repair today, keep it at /furnace-repair on the new site. Same domain and same addresses means far fewer redirects to set up, and less that can go wrong.

3. Map every URL that changes

For each old address that won't exist anymore, pick the closest page on the new site. Google's guide warns against irrelevant redirects, like sending many old pages to the new home page. Send the old deck page to the new deck page. If a page has no equivalent at all, let it return a 404.

4. Use permanent, server-side redirects

Set up 301 (or 308) redirects on the server from each old URL to its new one. Google's page on redirects and Google Search explains that Google treats a permanent redirect as a signal that the new page should be the one it indexes, and does not treat a temporary redirect that way. Redirect straight to the final page, without chains of one redirect leading to another.

5. Check the launch settings

New sites are often built with a setting that hides them from search engines while they're in progress. Make sure it's switched off on the live site, and that robots.txt doesn't block pages you want found. Then submit the new sitemap in Search Console. If you're also changing the domain name, use Search Console's Change of Address tool for the old domain.

6. Keep the redirects for at least a year

Google's guide says to keep redirects "for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year." In practice, leave them in place for good. Old links in directories, emails and printed material keep working that way.

7. Update your links elsewhere

Change the website link on your Google Business Profile, your social media profiles, directory listings and any ads to the new addresses, so they don't depend on the redirects.

What to expect after launch

Google says to expect temporary fluctuation in rankings while it crawls and indexes the new site, and that rankings settle down over time. Watch Search Console for errors and for pages that drop out, and fix any redirect that points to the wrong place.

Change the domain only if you need to

A new design doesn't require a new domain. Keeping the domain you have removes a whole layer of the move: no Change of Address, no domain-wide redirects, nothing for customers to relearn. Change it only for a real reason, like a business name change.

If you want someone to handle the move, our website redesign page explains how we rebuild sites and carry the old pages over.

Find out which pile you're in

Run your current site through our free website checker. It uses Google's own mobile speed test plus checks for getting calls, phone fit, Google search, trust and security, so you can sort your list into "fix" and "rebuild" with real results in front of you.