Custom themes beat page builders for local businesses
PageSpeed 90+ on a content-heavy site is impossible with Elementor or Divi. Custom themes make it routine.
Case Study · Renovation Contractor · Vancouver, BC
Family-owned renovation contractor
Family-owned renovation contractor
gets a custom site that ranks.
A family-owned renovation contractor in Coquitlam, British Columbia had grown from a single-service operation to 13 services across 8 BC locations. Their existing website couldn't keep up — and the agency that built it had locked them into a page builder they couldn't maintain.
What we walked into
- ⨯ Existing site built on a heavy page builder — slow, hard to edit, and locked in.
- ⨯ 13 services and 8 locations but only generic "Services" and "Locations" pages on the site.
- ⨯ No schema markup. No proper meta tags. Forms going through a third-party that was leaking PII.
- ⨯ GSC data showed 278 URLs that needed mapping if they switched sites — high risk of losing equity in a migration.
- ⨯ Owners wanted brand colors locked: Black, White, Gold (#FFB500), Dark Navy, Light Grey — and a custom logo treatment.
What we did
No silver bullet. Just the methodical, unfashionable work that moves rankings for local service businesses.
01
Custom WordPress theme
Built from scratch — no Elementor, no Divi. Flat URL architecture (max depth 2). All meta and schema hardcoded.
02
13 service pages + 8 location pages
Each service got its own deep page. Each location got its own LocalBusiness-schema page. Internal linking compounded.
03
Native form handler
WordPress AJAX-based form sending to multiple recipients with auto-reply confirmation. No third-party data leakage.
04
278-redirect map
Every URL from GSC export mapped to a corresponding new URL. Zero ranking loss during migration.
05
JSON-LD schema across all templates
Organization, WebSite, Service, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage, LocalBusiness — all hardcoded per page type.
06
DNS migration strategy
Pre-staged MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC records on new DNS before nameserver switch to prevent email outages.
Takeaways
If you're in a similar situation, these are the patterns we'd want you to know about.
Migration redirects can't be afterthoughts
The 278-redirect map was built before the new site went live. That's the only way to migrate without ranking loss.
Service-area businesses need both service AND location pages
Not just one or the other. The cross-product is what ranks for "[service] in [city]" queries.
Client name not disclosed by request. All details accurately reflect real work performed. Specific metric ranges anonymized to protect client identity in a competitive market.