The Things You Probably Want to Know

We work best with established service businesses that want one team to take responsibility for their website, ongoing care, and the systems around it. Tell us what you are trying to improve, and we will be honest about whether we are the right fit.

We are based on Long Island and work with businesses across the United States. Your location matters less than whether we can communicate well, understand the work, and support it responsibly.

Send us a few details about your business and what you need. Mike will review your request and arrange a time to talk. There is no pressure or obligation to move forward.

For website projects, the first conversation and discovery are currently free and included. We use discovery to understand your business, audience, goals, content, existing website, and technical needs before recommending a scope. The first conversation establishes fit and does not include a free strategy or technical audit.

The cost depends on what your business needs, what already exists, and what the website must do. Our Pricing page shows useful starting points, and discovery gives us the information needed to prepare a clear proposal. You will know the agreed scope and cost before implementation begins.

The timeline depends on the size of the website, the content, the functionality, and how quickly decisions and materials are provided. After discovery, we will set a realistic schedule with clear review points and responsibilities.

Yes. We build professional websites for businesses starting fresh, and we rebuild websites that have become outdated, difficult to manage, or disconnected from the business they represent today.

Yes. WordPress is our usual starting point for website projects. We choose the specific setup around your content, editing, integration, performance, and support needs.

We can help plan, structure, write, edit, and prepare content within the agreed website scope. You provide accurate business information, existing materials, and approval of what goes public. If you need a logo, photography, or other visual material, we will define the right approach during discovery.

You will help us understand your business, provide the information and access we need, and review the work at agreed points. We guide the process, explain our recommendations, and make each decision clear.

You will review the work at agreed milestones and provide consolidated feedback. The proposal will define the included review rounds. New requirements or changes outside the approved direction may need a separate quote and schedule adjustment.

We review existing pages, URLs, content, search evidence, and important website functions before planning the migration. We preserve useful paths where practical and plan appropriate redirects when URLs change. Search performance can move during a rebuild, so we manage the risk without promising unchanged rankings.

Yes. We provide editing access suited to the approved content model and show you how to manage the content you are responsible for. We continue to manage high-risk technical settings for as long as we remain responsible for the website.

After payment, you own the custom deliverables created specifically for your business and your business data, subject to the project agreement. All Phase Media retains its reusable systems, methods, components, and processes. Third-party tools and licensed assets remain subject to their own license terms.

Your website moves into ongoing care so updates, backups, monitoring, and support already have an owner. We keep the foundation healthy and can plan additional improvements as your business changes.

Yes. Every website we launch moves into an ongoing care plan while we remain responsible for it. If you later decide to leave, we complete a documented handoff and clarify where each technical responsibility moves.

The care foundation includes managed hosting, required updates, backups, security and uptime monitoring, maintenance reporting, support, and fair-use minor content edits. Your agreement will define the exact inclusions, limits, and response expectations.

Possibly. We first review the website, hosting, software, access, licenses, security, and maintenance history. If the foundation is suitable, we can propose a care arrangement. If it needs remediation first, we will explain what must change and why.

Yes. We provide SEO and paid advertising when the website, landing experience, tracking, and offer are strong enough to support them. We will recommend the channels that fit your goals rather than selling marketing activity for its own sake.

There is no universal timeline. Your market, competition, starting position, website, content, and authority all affect how quickly progress appears. We set realistic priorities, measure what is happening, and avoid promises about rankings or dates.

It depends on what you need. SEO can build useful visibility over time, while Google Ads can place an offer in front of relevant people sooner. Some businesses benefit from one; others benefit from using both as part of the same plan.

We agree on what matters before deciding what to track. Depending on the engagement, that may include relevant visits, calls, forms, qualified opportunities, sales activity, or time saved. More traffic or more leads only matter when they support the business you actually want.

Yes. We can connect suitable forms, CRMs, email platforms, payment tools, and other business systems when the requirements, access, ownership, and support path are clear. Discovery identifies what should connect and the most reliable way to do it.

We can automate repetitive work such as routing inquiries, sending notifications, moving information between tools, and supporting customer follow-up. We start with the business process and use reliable existing systems where they provide a better long-term solution than custom development.

Every website we build includes basic visit analytics. Tracking goes further: it records the calls, forms and bookings that matter, and connects them to the pages and campaigns behind them.

It depends on your traffic and on how much there is to fix. We measure each change as it goes live and report what it did, without promising a number in advance.

You do. They run on accounts and tools your business owns, and they’re documented, so they keep working if anything changes.

Google Ads management starts with a three-month commitment, then continues month to month.

You pay Google directly for your ad spend, and we invoice our management separately, so your whole budget goes to the ads.

SEO starts with a six-month commitment, since search work takes time to show what’s working. After that, it continues month to month.

They do when each post answers a question your customers really ask, better than anyone else does. A good article can meet people long before they’re ready to hire, support the service page it links to, and earn links from other sites. A blog filled just to keep up a posting schedule rarely helps at all.

There’s no magic number. One useful article a month, kept up for a year, does more than a burst of weekly posts that stops after two months. Updating your best articles counts too, since refreshing a post that already ranks is often the best hour you can spend on a blog.

Start with the questions customers ask before they hire you, such as what a job costs and what affects the price, or whether to repair or replace. Local knowledge works well too, like permits, seasons, and the housing in your area, along with checklists, guides, and stories of real projects. Skip holiday greetings and industry news your customers don’t search for.

Before you compare anyone, decide what the site needs to do, who will write the content and supply photos, who will keep it updated, and what budget and timing you have. Then compare designers on relevant live work, a clear process, help with content, search skills if you’re rebuilding, and a plan for care after launch. Make sure your domain, content, and data will be in your business’s name, and get a written proposal with clear pricing.

Be wary of anyone who guarantees rankings or traffic, registers your domain or accounts in their own name, or won’t put a proposal in writing. Promises of “unlimited revisions”, no plan for after launch, and a proprietary system only they can work on are warning signs too. Each of these tends to cost you later, in money, time, or control of your own website.

A freelancer can be a good fit for a well-defined project, as long as you ask how they’ll handle the parts outside their skills, such as writing, search, or hosting. An agency brings several skills under one roof, and continuity if someone leaves. If your needs are simple and you’re happy to do the work yourself, a website builder such as Wix or Squarespace can be enough to start.

A good checklist starts with knowing where you stand, which means tracking calls and forms and knowing how many come in. From there it covers making the next step obvious, earning trust before you ask, saying clearly what you do, keeping forms short, loading fast on a phone, making it easy to find your way around, and testing what you change. Work through it on your most visited pages first, since that’s where a fix reaches the most people.

It means getting more of the visitors you already have to call, book, or request a quote, mostly by removing what stops them. If 2,000 visits bring 40 inquiries, your conversion rate is 2%. Raise it to 3%, and the same traffic brings 60, or 20 more.

Define what counts as a conversion and confirm each one is tracked, then list your top pages by visits and inquiries. Walk through each of those pages on a phone as a first-time customer would, and watch a handful of recorded sessions to see where people hesitate or leave. List the fixes, rank them by impact and effort, and start with the ones that matter most and take the least work.

Design for a phone first, keep the site fast, and offer more than one way to take the next step, such as calling, booking, or requesting a quote online. Be honest and specific, with real photos of your team and work, plain words, price ranges, and reviews close to the buttons people tap. Respect their time too, with no account needed to ask a question and no pop-up the moment they arrive. Make it accessible, and caption any short video and let it play only when tapped.

Large, readable type, real photography and short video, and small animations that confirm an action are worth adopting, and so is a dark version of the site if your brand allows it. Use heavy animation, sliders, and unusual layouts with care, since they can slow a page down or hide your phone number, services, and prices. Slang and memes need the same care, because they date quickly and may not fit your brand.

Keep your name, reputation, and voice, and add options rather than replacing the ones people already use, such as online booking alongside the phone number. Show the real people behind the business. Before you launch, test the changes with a few younger customers and a few long-time ones.

It can be, when four things are true: people search for what you do, a new customer is worth enough to cover what it costs to win one, your landing pages are ready, and you can answer calls and forms quickly. If one of these is missing, fix it before you spend. Then plan for a learning period of a few weeks while you find which searches and ads bring real inquiries.

You set the budget, and search ads charge when someone clicks your ad. Local Services Ads charge for leads instead, such as calls and messages. What a click costs depends on how competitive the auction is and on the quality of your ads and landing pages. As an example, at $12 a click with 1 in 10 clicks becoming an inquiry, each inquiry costs $120, and if 1 in 3 inquiries becomes a job, each job costs $360.

They’re Google ads for local service businesses, such as plumbers, roofers, and tow companies, that charge for leads like calls and messages rather than for clicks. They run only after Google checks the business, which can include its licenses and insurance where they’re required, and businesses that pass can show a Google Verified badge in most categories. That badge replaced the older Google Guaranteed, Google Screened, and License Verified badges in October 2025.

Ask every customer, in person first, when the job is done and they’re happy, then follow up once by email or text. Make it easy with the short review link and QR code your Business Profile gives you, and ask about their experience rather than for stars. Reply to every review, since it shows future customers you’re listening.

They can. Google says review count and score factor into local ranking, and that more reviews and positive ratings can improve it. Reviews are part of what Google calls prominence, which sits alongside relevance and distance, so they help most when your profile is complete and you serve the area people search from.

No. Google’s policies ban offering incentives for reviews, and Google can remove those reviews and restrict a profile, for example by blocking new reviews for a time or showing a warning to people who view it. In the US, the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews also bans offering a reward for a review that has to be positive or negative. Ask every customer for an honest review instead.

Start by tracking every call, form, and booking, then find where visitors drop off, using your analytics, recordings of real sessions, your team, and your customers. Turn what you find into ideas you can test, fix anything broken first, and rank the rest by impact, confidence, and effort. Make one change at a time, or run an A/B test if you have enough traffic, then measure each month and repeat.

There’s no single number, because it depends on your industry, your prices, where visitors come from, and how ready they are to buy. Your own rate, tracked over time and by traffic source, is the most useful benchmark you have. Divide inquiries by visits to find it, so 50 inquiries from 2,500 visits is a 2% rate, and watch the quality of inquiries as well as the number.

The biggest gains usually come from a clear offer at the top of each page, proof such as reviews and project photos near the point of decision, and pricing that’s as open as you can make it. Less friction helps too, with shorter forms, one-tap calling, and online booking, along with fast pages that work well on a phone. Ads should lead to landing pages that match them, and every inquiry deserves a quick reply.

Compete on what the big portals can’t match, which is your knowledge of the places you work. Aim for searches for your own name, for the towns and neighborhoods you know, for buyers’ and sellers’ questions, and for the map results when people look for an agent nearby. A complete Business Profile, neighborhood pages worth reading, steady reviews, and video tours are how you show up there.

Yes. Google’s guidelines let individual practitioners in public-facing roles, such as real estate agents, have their own Business Profiles, separate from the brokerage’s. Keep yours complete, with accurate hours, the areas you serve, and real photos of you and your team, and ask your own clients for reviews.

The Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to publish any notice, statement, or ad about the sale or rental of a home that indicates a preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin. So describe the property and the place, such as parks, commute times, housing styles, and amenities, not the people who live there or who an area is “good for”. Link to official sources for school information instead of describing schools yourself, and follow your brokerage’s compliance guidance.

Local SEO comes down to six steps: a complete Business Profile, a website that’s clearly local, a steady flow of reviews, consistent listings, local links and mentions, and content about the places you serve. Start with the Business Profile, then work down the list. None of it is a one-time job, so plan to keep your profile, reviews, and listings current.

Google weighs three things: relevance, distance, and prominence. Relevance is how well a business matches the search, distance is how far it is from the person searching, and prominence is how well known it is, based on information from across the web, including links and reviews. You can’t change distance, so local SEO works on relevance and prominence, through a complete, accurate profile and a steady flow of reviews, links, and mentions.

For most businesses that serve a defined area, yes. It’s worth less if nearly all your customers come from referrals and you can’t take on more work, or if you sell nationally. Even then, an accurate Business Profile helps, since a referred customer who looks you up should find the right number and hours.

Make a page for a place only when you work there regularly, people search with that place’s name, and you have something specific to say about it. Each page should show real local work and knowledge, not a template with the town’s name swapped in. A handful of strong pages does more than a hundred thin ones.

They can. Google’s spam policies name doorway abuse, which includes pages aimed at specific cities or regions that funnel visitors to one page. A stack of town pages that differ only by the town’s name risks looking like that, so build pages only where you have something real to say.

Start with your own records: the jobs you’ve done there, the team members who work the area, and photos, used with the customer’s permission. Add reviews that mention the town, the local rules and conditions that affect the work, and the questions customers there ask most. If you can’t find enough for a town, cover it on a broader page, such as one for the county.

We’d usually start in this order: a complete Google Business Profile, a website that turns visits into inquiries, steady reviews with replies, local SEO for the towns you serve, and paid search when you need results sooner. Social media and video, community ties, and staying in touch with past customers build on that base. You don’t need every channel, just the few that work for your customers, done well.

Word of mouth still matters, but it works best with something to back it up. A referred customer who looks you up should find an accurate Business Profile, recent reviews, and a website that makes it easy to get in touch. If you want more work than referrals bring, you’ll also need channels that reach people who haven’t heard of you yet.

Ask every new customer how they found you, and write the answer down. Track calls and form submissions by source in your analytics, so you can see which channels bring inquiries. Then compare what each channel costs with the work it brings in, and move time and money toward the ones that pay off.

A mobile-friendly website is easy to read and use on a phone: text you can read without zooming, buttons you can tap with a thumb, menus that fit the screen, and pages that load quickly on mobile data. Nothing important should be missing or hidden on the small screen. A responsive layout helps, but it isn’t enough on its own, since a responsive site can still be slow, cramped, or confusing.

Yes. Google primarily crawls the web with a smartphone crawler and uses the mobile version of a site’s pages for indexing and ranking, which it calls mobile-first indexing. Only the content on your mobile pages is used for indexing, so text, images, or reviews that appear only on the desktop version may not be seen at all.

Start with your own phone on mobile data, then ask someone who doesn’t know the site to try calling or booking without help. Google retired its Mobile-Friendly Test and Search Console’s Mobile Usability report in December 2023. Instead, PageSpeed Insights runs Google’s Lighthouse checks on any page, and both it and Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report show how real visitors experience your pages, if your site has enough traffic.

A tag on your website, such as the Google tag or the Meta Pixel, records visitors, and you build lists from them, for example everyone who viewed a particular service page. In Google Ads these lists are called your data segments, and on Meta they’re website custom audiences. Your ads then show to the people on those lists, and in Google Ads you can exclude people who already converted, so someone who called doesn’t keep seeing the same ad.

Match the window to how long your customers take to decide, which might be days for an urgent repair and months for a remodel. Google Ads can keep a visitor in a segment for up to 540 days, but a shorter window usually fits a service business better. Cap how often ads show where the campaign type allows it, rotate several ads, and stop showing them to people who haven’t come back after a reasonable time.

It can, but the lists need time to fill. Google Ads needs at least 100 active visitors or users in the last 30 days before a segment can serve on Display, Search, or YouTube, so a site with few visitors may wait a while. Until then, search ads and a stronger website usually do more, and remarketing can follow as traffic grows.

Start with what you own: a complete Google Business Profile, a page for every service and for the towns you serve, an easy way to request an estimate, and reviews after every job. Show your work with photos and video, along with the credentials homeowners look for. Then add Google Ads and Local Services Ads for urgent searches, social ads for past visitors and homes near your jobs, referral partners, and regular contact with past customers.

Get ready before storms hit, with a storm damage page that explains what homeowners should check and how claims generally work, and Google Ads campaigns you can switch on for the affected areas. After a storm, check in with past customers, and help homeowners avoid storm chasers rather than acting like one, which means never pressuring anyone to sign. Don’t act as the homeowner’s adjuster. In Texas, Colorado, Minnesota, and Florida, for example, roofing contractors can’t adjust a homeowner’s insurance claim, which is a licensed public adjuster’s job, though Colorado lets a roofer with a valid contract discuss the scope of repairs with the insurer.

Google search ads usually come first, since they reach homeowners searching for a roofer right now, followed by Local Services Ads, which charge per lead. Facebook and Instagram ads fit remarketing and reaching homes near your jobs, then come direct mail, yard signs, and truck graphics, with lead services last. Track the cost per job for each channel, move money toward what brings jobs at the best cost, and keep building the channels you own, like your website and reviews, which bring work without paying for each click.

Start with local search: a Business Profile if you have an office clients can visit, reviews from borrowers after closing, and a page for each market you serve with real local detail. Then add pages for the loans and situations borrowers search for. Because people are trusting you with a financial decision, show the real people behind the advice, with their names, licenses, and experience, and keep every page accurate and current.

Yes, because Regulation Z, which implements the Truth in Lending Act, treats any commercial message that promotes credit as an advertisement, in any medium, websites included. A page that mentions certain terms, such as a down payment or a payment amount, must also state the down payment, the terms of repayment, and the annual percentage rate (APR). Any rate you show must be stated as an APR, and a simple interest rate can appear beside it only if it’s no more prominent. Some states, including New York, California, and Minnesota, also require your NMLS number in your advertising, so have whoever handles compliance check new pages before they go live.

Give each loan type you offer its own page, such as conventional, FHA, VA, USDA, jumbo, refinance, cash-out, home equity, and reverse mortgages, and do the same for the borrowers you help, such as first-time buyers, self-employed borrowers, veterans, and investors. Add pages on the process, covering pre-approval, documents, closing time, and closing costs, and on state and local first-time buyer programs. Each page should say who it’s for, how it works, the typical requirements, and the next step, and explain what affects rates instead of publishing rates you can’t keep current and compliant.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the work that helps your website show up in Google’s regular results when people search for what you do. For a small business, that means a clear page for each service, a site that’s fast and easy to read, a strong local presence, honest links, and useful content, measured and improved over time. We don’t promise rankings, but steady SEO can bring you people who are already looking for what you offer.

E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, the qualities Google uses to describe helpful, reliable content. It isn’t a specific ranking factor, but Google’s systems aim to reward original, high-quality content that shows them. For a small business, that means showing who does the work, what they’ve done, and why customers trust them, with real names, real projects, and real reviews.

Not much. Google says the same SEO practices apply to its AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that you don’t need new machine-readable files, AI text files, or special markup to appear in them. The fundamentals still hold: clear pages that answer real questions, a business people can trust, and a site that’s easy to read.

For urgent searches like “tow truck near me”, your Business Profile is your storefront, so start there, with towing as your main category, hours that are true, photos of your real trucks, and a phone that’s answered day and night. Your website should put the phone number at the top of every page, give each service and each area you cover its own page with real local detail, and load fast on a phone. Then collect reviews steadily, since they tell drivers who actually shows up.

Show it only if customers come to it. If they don’t, Google’s guidelines say to hide the address and set a service area listing the towns or counties you cover. If the yard is staffed and customers do visit, for example to collect their vehicles, the address can show along with a service area.

Report them to Google. Use Suggest an edit on the listing in Google Maps, or Google’s Business Redressal Complaint Form when a listing uses a fake name, phone number, or website. Meanwhile, keep your own profile accurate and active, so customers can tell the real local company from lead sellers posing as one.

Don’t try to beat them on general searches. Choose niches you know well, such as honeymoons on the Amalfi Coast, give each its own page, and write about destinations from your own experience instead of reusing supplier content. Show who’s behind the agency, answer the questions people ask while they plan, and make it easy to send an inquiry.

It depends on how you meet clients. Google’s guidelines require in-person contact with customers during your stated hours, so a business that works only online isn’t eligible. If you meet clients at their homes or elsewhere, you can hide your home address and set a service area instead.

Some do. California and Florida require sellers of travel to register, unless they’re exempt, and to show their registration number in their advertising. Those rules can apply based on where your customers are, not only where your business is. Check with each state where you sell, or with a lawyer who works with travel businesses, to see what applies to you.

Start with a complete, accurate Google Business Profile, with your hours, services, and real photos. Then make sure your website’s first screen says who you are, where you are, which animals you see, and how to call or book, with a page for each service, information for new clients, your team, and your accreditations. Ask for reviews after good visits, and keep every page fast on a phone.

Say clearly whether you see emergencies, with an emergencies page that gives your hours, where to go after hours, and the phone numbers to call. If you run an emergency or specialty hospital, keep your hours and current availability up to date, answer the phone, and explain what to expect on arrival, including triage, waiting times, costs, and deposits. Add a page for each specialty and clear referral information for family vets.

Reply to every review, the good ones and the hard ones. Never mention a pet’s history or treatment in a reply, even if the reviewer did, and offer to continue the conversation by phone. A calm, kind reply to a hard review shows future clients how you treat people.

It depends on how soon you need inquiries and how your customers search. Google Ads suits a new business or service and urgent or seasonal demand, since ads can reach the right searchers right away. SEO suits steady demand and customers who research before they decide, since it builds visibility that keeps working after the work is done. Many businesses do best with both, letting the ads show which searches bring inquiries so SEO can target them for the long term.

Google runs an auction every time someone searches, and an ad’s position depends on its Ad Rank. Ad Rank weighs your bid, the quality of your ad and landing page, the minimum thresholds an ad has to meet, how competitive the auction is, the context of the search (such as the person’s location, device, and time of day), and the expected impact of extras like your phone number or links to other pages. That’s why a highly relevant ad can win a higher position at a lower price than a competitor with a higher bid.

No. Google doesn’t accept payment to rank pages higher in its organic results. What you can buy is an ad, which Google labels as sponsored. To rank better, build pages that answer what people search for, on a site and from a business they can trust.

A user-friendly website lets visitors find what they came for and take the next step without thinking about how. That comes from organizing the site around customers’ needs, using labels people recognize, making the most important thing the most visible, staying consistent, and using patterns people already know. Add text written for scanning and easy to read, a design that works for every visitor, forgiving forms, and pages that load fast on every device.

Ask a few people who match your customers to complete real tasks on your site, such as finding a price or booking a visit, and watch without helping. Research from Nielsen Norman Group found that watching five users try a site typically turns up the most common usability problems, and that small tests repeated after each round of fixes work better than one big study. Fix the spots where people hesitate or get lost, then test again.

Yes. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), from the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative, call for things like text alternatives for images, labels or instructions for form fields, pages that work with a keyboard alone, and captions for prerecorded video. The same features help people without disabilities too, such as someone using a phone in bright sunlight or watching a video with the sound off.

Website maintenance is the ongoing work that keeps a site safe, working, and accurate: tested updates, backups stored away from the site, security, monitoring, hosting, and checks that forms and site emails still arrive. Skipping it risks a hacked site, inquiries lost to a form that quietly stopped sending, and outdated pages that tell visitors nobody is minding the business. Like servicing a vehicle, it’s easy to put off until the day something breaks.

Monitoring and backups run all the time, and software updates (tested first) and security scans are weekly jobs. Each month, test every form, check key pages on a phone, review your analytics, and fix broken links. Each quarter, update your team, services, and photos, check speed, and review your Business Profile, and once a year, check your domain’s renewal, review your legal pages and accessibility, and plan improvements.

Keep the platform, plugins, and theme updated, and remove what you don’t use. Protect every account for the site, hosting, and domain with a strong, unique password and two-factor authentication, and give people only the access they need, removing it when they leave. Keep several versions of backups off the server and test a restore now and then, use HTTPS with a certificate that renews automatically, protect your forms from spam, choose secure hosting, and know who to call if something goes wrong.

Usually it’s one of a handful of things: huge images, too many plugins and scripts, a heavy page builder or theme, slow or crowded hosting, no caching, or video, fonts, and third-party embeds like maps and booking tools that hold up the page. The fixes that usually help most are resizing and compressing images, removing what you don’t need, adding caching and a content delivery network (CDN), and choosing good hosting. Test your key pages in PageSpeed Insights and on your own phone, on mobile data, to see where to start.

Core Web Vitals are Google’s measures of three parts of a page’s experience: Largest Contentful Paint (how quickly the main content appears), Interaction to Next Paint (how quickly the page responds to a tap or click), and Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the page jumps around while it loads). Good scores are 2.5 seconds or less, 200 milliseconds or less, and 0.1 or less, measured for real visitors at the 75th percentile of page loads, separately on mobile and desktop. Interaction to Next Paint replaced First Input Delay on March 12, 2024, and you can see your scores in PageSpeed Insights and in Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report if your site has enough traffic.

Yes, but relevance comes first. Google’s ranking systems use Core Web Vitals, yet Google still aims to show the most relevant content, even when a page’s experience is below par. Speed won’t make up for a page that doesn’t answer the search, but for the people who do arrive, especially on a phone, a fast page is part of good service.

Ignore the usual “every two to three years” rule and ask whether your website still does its job. Common signs that it doesn’t are a site that no longer represents your business, is hard to use on a phone, stays slow after fixes, can’t be updated without breaking something, runs on outdated technology, or doesn’t bring inquiries. One or two signs usually call for targeted fixes, while several at once usually mean it’s time.

A refresh updates content, photos, and some design details on the same foundation, which is right when the structure and technology are sound. A redesign changes how the site looks and how its pages are organized, sometimes on the same platform, while a rebuild replaces the foundation, from the platform and structure to the content model and design. Rebuild when the technology or the structure is the problem, and know that the more of the foundation you replace, the more planning the move needs, especially for search.

It’s usually because pages disappear or change address without a redirect, not because of the new design. Google recommends permanent server-side redirects, such as 301s, from each old address to its new one, so list your current pages first and keep the ones that bring visits or inquiries. Even when a move is done right, rankings and traffic can fluctuate for a while before they settle, so watch Search Console for a few months after launch.