Case study · Directory and review website · 18 days
Twenty years of content. A new site in 18 days, nothing lost.
A directory and review website had been online for more than twenty years, on an old WordPress install that search engines had stopped trusting. Its owner wrote a plan for the new site. We audited the old one from its own data, built the new one to his plan section by section, and launched it on its own domain 18 days after kickoff. Every old address still answers, and an AI agent now keeps it current.
From kickoff to the new site live on its own domain.
Audited from its own data first, before any rebuild was decided.
The owner’s plan
20 of 20
Sections of the owner’s plan built, each one shown on a demo page.
Work beyond the agreement marked “Extra”, so scope never blurred.
Nothing lost
Every
Old address answers as mapped: kept, forwarded to its new page, or removed on purpose.
Checked by a script on every build, and in a rehearsal of the switch.
Sized from demand
13,252
Searches mapped to the pages the plan names.
Then 1,005 more sorted one by one, each with an action and a reason.
Quality at launch
100
Lighthouse score for accessibility, best practices and SEO, on the homepage and a review page.
Every page checked at phone and desktop width.
After launch
Daily
An AI agent on duty, with an engineer setting the rules and checking.
Every page has its next review date.
Client, sector, people and the companies listed are withheld. The figures describe our own work and were re-checked against the project’s records. Nothing here describes the client’s business or audience.
How we got there
Five results, each with its cause.
18 days
A plan to build to, not to argue with
What held it back
The owner had a detailed plan for the new site and a launch date
Our own audit and the search data sometimes pointed elsewhere
What we did
Followed his plan section by section; where the data disagreed, we wrote the difference down as an open question and left the plan standing
Agreed each step before building it
A written report every week, and a checklist with every section and its state: done, held waiting on his answer, or ongoing after launch
A demo page that walks the owner through every item, with a screenshot
How we report: anything waiting on the client says so, with “ready on our side”, so nobody wonders who holds it.
Every
Old addresses kept working
What held it back
Twenty years of pages, linked from other sites and known to search engines
Most of the pages that earned clicks were missing from the list the old site gave Google
What we did
Every old address classified: keep, forward to the page that now serves it, or remove on purpose; never dumped on the homepage
A script checks a running copy of the site against that map on every build
Old sitemaps and feeds lead to the new ones; images keep their old addresses
The go-live rehearsed with the live switch on, with a written rollback
1,005
A structure sized from demand
What held it back
The old site’s traffic measured how it had been run, not what was possible
Many pages answered the same need under different wordings
What we did
The new structure built from what people search for, mapped to the pages the owner’s plan names
1,005 further searches sorted one by one: merge, hold, drop or new page, each with a reason; 61 new pages came out of it
60 near-duplicate addresses merged before launch, so each need has one page
Hubs, filters and list pages that fill themselves from each company’s fields
0
Facts invented
What held it back
Hundreds of pages to write in days, in the owner’s own voice
Facts about the companies listed change, and some sites refuse automated reading
What we did
Written with AI from the owner’s own writing samples, and every page run through a voice check
Every fact about a company taken from its own pages, with the source and the date it was checked
Pages that need facts we couldn’t source held back, not guessed; lines that read as memories nobody had, cut
Comparisons of any two companies side by side, every line with its source
How we write: AI drafts at speed; nothing goes out that can’t be traced to a source.
Daily
Launch is when the work starts
What held it back
A directory goes stale the day its companies change their terms
The owner’s plan asks for news every week and reviews kept current
What we did
An AI agent on duty, with an engineer who sets the rules and checks the work
A written routine: daily changes that touch a reader’s money go in that day; weekly news, a refreshed guide and a link check; monthly reviews re-read at the source
A content inventory gives every page its next review date and status
Companies can ask to be listed: their site is checked against the listing rules, with quoted evidence, and the owner decides in his own admin
Before and during
Audit first. Then build to the plan.
Before · The audit
Find out where it stands, from its own data.
Area
What we did
The number
Data
Search Console export, a full crawl and Google’s own inspection of a sample of pages
Its own data
Findings
What Google stopped showing and when, what it never saw, and links worth disavowing
Verified vs hypothesis
Measurement
Nothing tied traffic to what the site earns: flagged as the first gap
1 tracking plan
Proposal
Fix discovery, measurement and links first, then build comparison hubs on strong reviews
8 actions
The owner then wrote his plan for the new site; every one of the audit’s eight actions is done or waiting on his answer.
18 days · The build
One plan, built section by section.
Area
What we did
The number
Structure
The plan’s structure, sized from search demand
13,252 searches
Migration
Every old address mapped and checked on every build
Every address
Content
Written from sources, in the owner’s voice, voice-checked
0 invented facts
Directory
Hubs, filters, comparisons and list pages from each company’s fields
Filled from fields
Quality
Every page at two widths; three code reviews
Every page
Launch
Rehearsed, then switched on its own domain
Day 18
Live on its own domain, built in the client’s own repository and hosting account, with page sources the owner’s team can edit.
Fast, because it is careful
Checked before it went live, not after.
Reviews of the code
3
Before launch: cleanup (4 reviewers), correctness and security.
10 bugs found and fixed; nothing exploitable.
Listing requests
63 of 63
End-to-end checks passed on the form companies use to ask to be listed.
Every type of question, mistakes and retries, every admin action.
One page per purpose
60
Near-duplicate addresses merged into the page that serves the same need.
Their searches moved with them.
Security
Same day
A critical framework advisory came out mid-build: the site was moved off the affected version and live that day.
Full security check clean afterwards.
How we worked here
1
Audit before you build
We looked at the old site’s own data before anyone decided to rebuild it, and separated what was proven from what was a guess.
2
The client’s plan is the spec
Built section by section. Where data disagreed, the difference was written down as a question, and the plan stood.
3
Never invent
Every fact from a source, with its date. What couldn’t be sourced was held, not guessed.
4
Keep it running
An AI agent on a written routine, an engineer setting the rules and checking, and every page with its next review date.
Old software the business depends on? We map what it really does, pin it with tests and replace it piece by piece, with AI speeding up the work and no big-bang rewrite.