WordPress Development

A WordPress build is a design job and a technical job at once. Get the migration wrong and you can lose the rankings, the backlinks and the page speed the old site had, and spend the next six months earning them back. We build new WordPress sites, rebuild ones that have outgrown their theme, and move sites from other platforms onto WordPress, with the redirect map and technical checks that keep what already works intact.

This is the build service, and it sits under Web Design & Development. For ongoing plugin, schema and content work on a site that already exists, see WordPress SEO instead.

What we build

We work in your existing WordPress account or set up a new one, on your own hosting or a provider we recommend. Either way the site, the domain and every credential belong to you from the start, not to us.

New WordPress sites. Brochure sites, service sites and content-led sites, built on a theme and block structure your team can actually edit afterwards, not one that only makes sense to the developer who built it.

Rebuilds. A site running on a page builder that has become slow and hard to maintain, replaced with a cleaner build on the same domain, without a ranking reset.

Migrations onto WordPress. Moving a site from Wix, Squarespace, a custom stack or another CMS onto WordPress, with a full URL map so every old page redirects to its equivalent.

WooCommerce builds. Ecommerce on WordPress, product catalogue, checkout and the plugin stack that supports it, where WooCommerce fits the client better than Shopify.

Care and change requests after launch. A retainer that covers updates, backups, security monitoring and a set amount of change work each month, so the site does not go stale six months after we hand it over.

How we protect what you already rank for

Before we touch anything we crawl the existing site and record every indexed URL, its title, its internal links and its backlink profile. That crawl becomes the redirect map for the new build. Nothing goes live until every old URL has a mapped destination and every redirect has been tested.

We stage the new build on a separate URL and run it through the same technical checks we use on an SEO audit: crawlability, indexation settings, structured data, Core Web Vitals and internal linking. Content and metadata are carried over deliberately, not regenerated, so a page that ranked for a specific term keeps the wording that got it there.

Launch happens in a single cutover with the redirect map live from minute one, and we watch crawl stats and rankings for the following weeks to catch anything the redirect map missed.

What is included

• Site architecture and page plan, agreed before any design work starts.
• Theme and block build on WordPress, using the block editor or a page builder depending on what your team needs to edit day to day.
• Full URL and redirect map for any rebuild or migration, tested before launch.
• Technical SEO baseline built into the templates: titles, headings, schema and internal linking structure.
• Speed and Core Web Vitals work as part of the build, not an afterthought.
• Staging environment and a rollback plan before anything touches the live domain.
• Handover documentation so your team, or ours on a care plan, can maintain the site afterwards.

Rebuilds and migrations without losing rankings

The most common way a WordPress rebuild costs a business money is a missing redirect map. A site relaunches, the old URLs return a 404, and Google drops pages it can no longer find. We treat the redirect map as a deliverable in its own right, checked line by line against the pre-launch crawl, not a task squeezed in at the end.

The second most common cause is content that gets rewritten during the rebuild because it looks dated in the new design. If a page ranks for a specific phrase, we keep that phrase in the new template even where the surrounding design changes completely.

The third is speed regressions from a new theme or page builder that looks better but loads slower. We test Core Web Vitals on staging before launch, not after a client reports the site feels slower.

What we need from you

Access to the current site and hosting where one exists, a list of who needs to log in and edit content once it is live, and a decision on hosting if you do not already have a preference. For a migration we also need to know which platform the current site sits on, since the export and crawl process differs between Wix, Squarespace and a custom build.

You do not need existing brand guidelines or a finished page plan before the first call. Page structure and content requirements are usually worked out together in the first two weeks, based on what the site needs to do and what is already ranking.

Proof

William Sugg & Co: a WordPress rebuild paired with ongoing SEO work delivered a 79% visibility lift. See the William Sugg case study.

Our own site, terrieragency.com, runs on WordPress. The rebuild took its mobile speed score from 78 to 100. That figure is Terrier’s own site, and it is the standard we aim at on a client build.

How long a build takes

The timeline is fixed at the prototype stage, once page count and how much content still needs writing are known. A migration or rebuild takes longer at the start, because the pre-launch crawl and redirect map have to be complete before any design work begins, but the design and build phase itself is similar in length to a new site. An e-commerce build on WooCommerce adds time for product data, payment setup and checkout testing. You get a specific timeline once we have seen the current site or the page plan, not a generic estimate.

What it costs

A WordPress brochure site starts from £6,500 excluding VAT, and a WordPress build with e-commerce from £8,500. Care plans and development retainers are priced separately once the site is live. Every band, and what moves a build within it, is on the web development pricing page. There is no minimum term, 60 days’ notice, at any point.

What moves the price on a WordPress project specifically is page count, how much content has to be migrated, and whether the build includes e-commerce. We price against your site and the rankings it already holds rather than a generic package, so tell us what you are building and we will scope it.

Who this is for

Businesses whose current site is on a page builder that has become slow to edit and slower to load, and who want a cleaner build without a ranking reset. Businesses on Wix, Squarespace or a custom stack who have outgrown it and want to move onto WordPress properly, with a plan for every existing URL. Businesses starting from nothing who want a WordPress site built to a technical standard from day one, rather than fixed up two years later once problems have accumulated.

This is not the right fit for a business that wants a general web development retainer covering features and integrations unrelated to the site itself. That work sits with a development retainer once the site is live, priced separately from the build.

Related services

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