Recently, I was talking with the owners of a wedding venue about their website and digital marketing.
They had already spoken with several SEO companies and marketing agencies. They had heard different recommendations about their website, advertising, SEO and what they should do next.
Then the owner’s son said something that stuck with me:
“I’ve talked to so many SEO agencies that I’m completely confused right now, and I don’t know what to do.”
His problem wasn’t a lack of information.
He had too much of it.
Worse, some of the advice contradicted other advice they had received.
One company told them SEO was dead. Others recommended SEO. Several told them they needed to rebuild their website.
And I thought about another conversation I’d recently had with a dental practice in Michigan.
They had gone through three different marketing agencies.
Each one told them essentially the same thing:
You need a new website.
Maybe they did.
But before a business spends $25,000, $50,000 or more rebuilding a website, I think there is a question worth asking:
Why?
Does Your Website Need to Be Rebuilt—or Does It Just Need a New Shirt?
A website built on WordPress has an interesting advantage.
Its appearance can be changed without necessarily replacing everything underneath it.
Think about getting dressed.
When you change your shirt, you don’t need a new set of arms.
When you change your pants, you don’t need a new set of legs.
Yet businesses are frequently told that because their website looks dated, doesn’t convert well or needs a better user experience, the entire website should be rebuilt.
Sometimes that’s true.
Sometimes it isn’t.
A better analogy might be your house.
If your kitchen was built 20 years ago and looks dated, you might decide to renovate it.
You wouldn’t automatically tear down the entire house.
Before making that decision, you’d probably want someone to look at the foundation, framing, electrical system, plumbing and roof.
If all of those things are sound, demolishing the house because you don’t like the kitchen would be an awfully expensive solution.
Websites deserve the same kind of diagnosis.
Sometimes Rebuilding Really Is the Right Answer
I don’t want to suggest that a WordPress website should never be rebuilt.
I’ve seen websites burdened by years of abandoned plugins, outdated themes, poorly written code, security problems, obsolete page builders and technical decisions layered on top of technical decisions.
Sometimes starting over is the most economical and responsible choice.
A business may also have completely different needs today than it did when its website was originally built.
But there is a significant difference between saying:
“Your website needs to be rebuilt.”
and saying:
“Here are the specific problems with your existing website. Here are the things worth preserving. Here are the things we can repair. And here’s why rebuilding it makes more sense than renovating it.”
One is a prescription.
The other is a diagnosis followed by a prescription.
I’d rather have the diagnosis first.
Your Existing Website May Contain Assets You Don’t Realize You Own
An established website isn’t simply a collection of pages and pictures.
Over time, it may have accumulated things that have real value:
- URLs that have been indexed for years
- Links from other websites
- Pages that already appear in search results
- Citations and mentions
- Content that customers regularly find
- Analytics and conversion history
- Internal linking relationships
- Bookmarks and referral traffic
- Forms and business processes
- Brand recognition
A well-planned website migration can preserve many of these things.
But migration introduces risk.
URLs can change. Redirects can be missed. Metadata can disappear. Content can be altered. Forms can stop working. Tracking can break. Information can fail to transfer correctly.
I’ve experienced this firsthand.
While moving a business from Shopify to WordPress, we used a conversion service specifically designed to help with the migration. It worked—but not perfectly. Information still needed to be checked, corrected and reconstructed.
Migration tools can be incredibly useful.
But moving a website isn’t always the digital equivalent of copying a folder from one computer to another.
That’s why I believe businesses should understand what they’re replacing before they replace it.
There’s Another Question: What Are You Building That You Get to Keep?
The wedding venue raised another interesting issue.
Their advertising agency had created separate assets on a subdomain for running paid advertising.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that approach.
In fact, I’ve recommended similar strategies.
If an advertising agency needs the freedom to create landing pages, run experiments and conduct A/B testing without interfering with an existing website—or dealing with another agency that doesn’t want anyone touching its work—a separate environment can make a lot of sense.
But there’s a tradeoff.
And business owners should understand it.
Suppose you spend months testing landing pages.
You discover which headlines work.
You discover which photographs generate more inquiries.
You discover which calls to action people respond to.
You learn which questions potential customers need answered before they’ll contact you.
That’s valuable information.
But what happens when the advertising relationship ends?
If those pages exist entirely within an agency-controlled campaign environment, they may disappear when the campaign ends.
So I think businesses should ask another question:
What will my marketing leave behind?
Renting Marketing Assets Versus Building Assets You Own
Imagine spending $25,000 improving a piece of property.
There may be perfectly good reasons to improve property you’re renting.
But before spending the money, you’d probably want to know whether those improvements remain yours when the lease ends.
Digital marketing isn’t exactly the same, but the principle is worth considering.
Instead of creating every advertising landing page as a temporary campaign asset, there may be opportunities to create useful permanent pages on the company’s primary website.
For a wedding venue, those might include pages addressing different types of weddings, accommodations, ceremonies, receptions, private events or other things prospective customers are actively researching.
Those pages can still be used for advertising.
They can still be tested.
They can still be improved based upon what visitors do.
But when appropriate, they can also become part of the permanent website.
They may be internally linked.
They may be discovered through search.
Other websites can link to them.
They can be improved over time.
And the business retains them when an advertising campaign ends.
That doesn’t mean every PPC landing page should be indexed by Google or become part of the permanent website. Some campaign pages are intentionally temporary, and some experiments should remain isolated.
The point isn’t that one method is always right.
The point is that the business owner should understand the difference.
Your Advertising Can Teach You How to Build a Better Website
There’s another reason I like connecting advertising and permanent website development.
Advertising produces information.
Suppose an A/B test reveals that one version of a wedding venue page generates significantly more inquiries than another.
Maybe visitors respond to photographs of the outdoor ceremony space.
Maybe pricing transparency matters.
Maybe accommodations are important.
Maybe couples want to understand what happens if it rains.
Maybe they respond more strongly to seeing real weddings than perfectly staged photography.
You’ve learned something valuable about your customer.
Why should that knowledge remain trapped inside an advertising campaign?
Use it to improve the permanent website.
Advertising doesn’t only have to produce leads.
It can produce intelligence.
And that intelligence can help build a better business asset.
What Happens If You Want to Leave?
There is another question I think every business should ask before choosing a website platform, developer or marketing company:
If I decide to leave tomorrow, what exactly can I take with me?
Can you move your website to another host?
Can another developer work on it?
Can you export your content?
Do you control your domain?
Do you have access to your analytics?
Can you export your leads and form submissions?
Who owns the photographs and creative assets?
What happens to your landing pages?
What happens to your tracking data?
What happens to the functionality you’ve paid to develop?
This is one reason I’ve continued to appreciate WordPress.
It isn’t perfect. No platform is.
But WordPress remains one of the more portable mainstream website platforms because businesses can control their hosting, files, database, content and code.
Compare that with moving away from certain proprietary website builders or hosted development platforms.
Exporting your information may be possible.
Recreating the actual website somewhere else may be considerably more difficult.
Portability isn’t something most businesses think about when they’re starting a relationship.
It becomes very important when they’re trying to end one.
“SEO Is Dead”
One of the companies the wedding venue spoke with told them SEO was dead.
I’m not interested in turning this article into an argument about whether SEO is dead, alive or evolving.
I’m more interested in what happens to the business owner hearing the statement.
One expert says SEO is dead.
Another recommends investing heavily in SEO.
Another says rebuild the website.
Another says leave the website alone and build separate landing pages.
Another says the future is AI search.
Another says you need to increase your advertising budget.
Put yourself in the owner’s position.
Who do you believe?
Perhaps that’s the wrong question.
Instead of immediately deciding who to believe, start asking each expert to explain why.
Questions Worth Asking Before Spending the Money
You don’t need to become an SEO expert, web developer or digital advertising specialist to make a better decision.
You can ask simple questions:
What specifically is wrong with my existing website?
How do you know?
Which parts of my existing website are worth preserving?
Can the problems be repaired without rebuilding everything?
What is the least invasive solution?
What happens if I do nothing?
What do I risk losing if we rebuild or migrate?
How will we measure whether the changes worked?
What will I own when we’re finished?
If I stop working with you, what happens to the things you’ve built?
A good professional should be able to explain those answers without requiring you to understand the technical vocabulary.
Expertise shouldn’t make you more confused.
It should make a complicated decision easier to understand.
Sometimes You Need a Second Opinion
If a doctor recommended a major operation, many of us would seek a second opinion.
That doesn’t mean we think the first doctor is dishonest.
The second doctor might examine us and say:
“The first doctor is absolutely right.”
That information still has value.
A second opinion isn’t valuable because someone tells you what you want to hear.
It’s valuable because it gives you greater confidence that you understand your options before making an important decision.
I think businesses should approach major website and digital marketing decisions the same way.
Before spending $25,000 or $50,000 rebuilding a website, get another perspective.
Before abandoning a platform you’ve invested in for years, understand what you’re leaving behind.
Before moving everything to a new platform, understand how portable it will be if you someday want to leave.
Before replacing URLs, pages and content that have existed for years, understand whether they have value.
And before accepting anyone’s recommendation—including mine—ask them to explain why.
Sometimes the answer will be:
Rebuild it.
Sometimes it will be:
Renovate it.
Sometimes:
Leave the website alone and fix the marketing.
And sometimes:
You don’t have the problem you’ve been told you have.
The objective shouldn’t be to find someone who agrees with you.
It should be to understand your choices well enough to make a decision you’re comfortable owning.
Because before you spend tens of thousands of dollars changing your website or marketing strategy, you don’t necessarily need another sales pitch.
Sometimes you just need someone willing to help you understand your options.