WordPress: keep it, fix it, or leave it.
WordPress runs a large share of Upstate business sites and most of them are slow and unmanaged.
Trusted by businesses running WordPress across the Upstate and beyond.
What we do on WordPress
WordPress runs a large share of Upstate business sites and most of them are slow and unmanaged. We publish SEO pages into WordPress through our connector, fix the speed, and tell you plainly when a rebuild would cost less than another year of plugins.
Get found
SEO pages published into WordPress from our engine (205 live for one client)
Get called
Speed and plugin cleanup with before-and-after scores
Get booked
Migration to Next.js with a full redirect map when it is time
WordPress alone, and WordPress with GDS
| Dimension | WordPress alone | With GDS |
|---|---|---|
| Page speed | Lighthouse 40 to 70 on mobile | Above 90 after cleanup, or a rebuild |
| Plugins | 15 to 50, updated weekly | Trimmed to what the site uses |
| New pages | Written by hand, rarely | 5 or 10 a month from our engine, published automatically |
| Security | Plugin surface | Hardened, monitored, backed up |
| Ownership | Yours | Still yours |
Where a builder stops and code keeps going
These are the tradeoffs a buyer should see before choosing, with the numbers we measure on real sites.
| Dimension | WordPress | Custom-coded by GDS |
|---|---|---|
| Page weight | 2,000 to 5,000 KB with a theme and plugins | 50 to 300 KB |
| Lighthouse mobile | 40 to 70 | 95 to 100 |
| Plugins | 15 to 50, updated weekly | None. Features are code |
| Attack surface | Plugins, themes, core | Only what the site uses |
| Schema | Plugin-dependent, partial | Full linked graph on every page |
| AI readiness | Depends on plugins | llms.txt, entity schema, IndexNow built in |
| Editing | WP admin | A small admin tuned to your content, or our team |
| Customization ceiling | Theme and plugin compatibility | None. The code does what you need |
| Five-year cost | $8,000 to $25,000 in licenses, patches, and fixes | Build once, hosting included in plans |
Stay on WordPress
Keep WordPress if you publish a lot of editorial content or your team lives in the WP admin.
Move, or add
Move when plugin costs and speed fixes exceed what a rebuild would cost, usually around year three.
Results from businesses like yours
Every number here is tied to a named client and a date.
Steele T. Williams Law
A solo litigation attorney needed local search dominance against established firms with dedicated marketing budgets, in a market where 90% of clients start with Google.
Read the case studyUniversal Projections
A specialty AV and projection installer needed local search visibility across a wide service radius without paying per-city for a dozen separate sites.
Read the case studyHow we work
Audit
Rankings for every service and city term, the five businesses above you, a technical crawl, your Business Profile, and the calls you are missing. Written report in two business days, free either way.
Plan
One page of priorities with real numbers: which system first, what it costs, and what changes in 90 days.
Build
Pages, agents, and automations ship in weeks. Every change goes through code review and your approval before it touches your business.
Measure
Rankings, calls, bookings, and AI citations in one monthly report. When a number stalls, we fix the system, not the story.
What owners say after the first quarter
Sixty days to #1 for our money keyword. Past agencies took eighteen months and never got there.
They shipped a full K-12 lesson planning AI for me. Six generators, real production users, in under a month.
Make search your most reliable revenue channel.
Running on WordPress? The free audit shows what your stack can do before you spend anything.
Running on WordPress?
Free audit first. A person replies within one business day with a plan and a price.
WordPress: common questions
Will I lose rankings if I leave WordPress?
Not with a redirect map for every URL, which is the migration job. We verify in Search Console for 60 days after.
Do you use Yoast or SeoPress?
Either. Our publisher writes titles, descriptions, and schema into the plugin you already have.
Can you speed up my WordPress site?
Usually to above 90 on mobile. If the theme fights us, we say so and quote the rebuild.