GeniusDigitalLabs
Case study

Three specialist pest brands / Search-preserving rebuild

Three rebuilds. Nothing given back.

Wasps Removal, Bedbugs Gone and Mice Pest Control each drew about 8,000 organic visits a month before migration. Genius Digital Labs replaced their ageing WordPress sites with one shared Astro system serving 237 static pages across 46 counties, while preserving ranking URLs and moving the brands one at a time.

01 The problem

The traffic was the asset.

The group's smallest brands carried its largest search risk.

Wasps Removal, Bedbugs Gone and Mice Pest Control are single-pest specialists, built to be found when the need is immediate. Each attracted roughly 8,000 organic visits a month, while the group's flagship received around 900.

These were not neglected brochure sites. They were the group's most valuable search estate, running on ageing WordPress, hotlinking images from another domain and carrying little structured data.

Every ranking URL, title and H1 was treated as load-bearing until the evidence said otherwise. SEO preservation shaped the build from the start.

Rebuilding a site people already find is an archaeology job first.

02 The approach

Measure the estate before moving it.

Map it, then move it.

Search Console exports identified the URLs and queries responsible for traffic. Sitemap inventories, existing content and media extracted through the WordPress REST API became a preservation map for every later decision.

The sites were structurally alike, so one shared template was instantiated three times. Each brand owns its configuration, content and theme tokens, while fixes to the common layer reach all three.

  • Turn the existing regional phone table into structured data for 46 counties and 47 towns
  • Write genuine local detail for geo pages, avoiding town-name substitutions
  • Send forms through a same-origin function into the group's portal and quote intake system
  • Pass brand, region and pest attribution through the full lead route
  • Load the AI sales agent as a non-blocking React island with site context
  • Add LocalBusiness, Service and FAQPage schema, entity markup and explicit crawler rules
bedbugsgone.co.uk/londonThe Greater London bed bug treatment page, showing a London-specific headline and the local 020 telephone number drawn from the location dataset
A geo page: local headline, local number, LocalBusiness schema
micepestcontrol.co.ukThe Mice Pest Control areas index, listing counties as cards with a telephone number on each, including distinct local numbers for Derbyshire and Devon
The regional phone table as readers meet it: one card per county, each with its own number

03 The migration

One site at a time, with DNS held as the kill switch.

Parity before cutover.

Each old site was crawled against its replacement. URLs, titles, H1s, canonicals and internal links were diffed until the ranking pages held parity.

The lowest-risk site moved first and was watched in Search Console. Only when it held did the next domain move. Ranking slugs stayed in place, and genuinely changed paths received one-to-one redirects.

You can't A/B test a migration. Either the rankings hold or they don't.

04 What we built

One system, three identities.

The shared layer stops repetition becoming drift.

All three brands now use the same components, performance budget and lead pipeline. The theme, pest and regional phone table change, but the operating system beneath them does not.

Put the three homepages side by side and the system is visible: the same header, hero, quote path and trust strip, each wearing its own colour, logo and pest. That sameness is the point. A fix or an improvement lands once and reaches every brand.

The resulting estate serves 237 static pages with no database, plugin surface or WordPress installation left to patch. LocalBusiness, Service and FAQPage schema now run across the geo estate.

  • 78 pages for Wasps Removal
  • 71 pages for Bedbugs Gone
  • 88 pages for Mice Pest Control
  • Per-brand lead attribution carrying source, region and pest
  • A staggered publishing queue for 61 guide and location pages
Wasps Removal on a phone: call bar, logo and quote button above the stacked hero headline and lede
The same skeleton on mobile, in amberwaspsremoval.co.uk
Bedbugs Gone on a phone, the same stacked layout in crimson with its own number in the call bar
The same skeleton, in crimsonbedbugsgone.co.uk
Mice Pest Control on a phone, the same stacked layout in teal, down to the trust badges
The same skeleton, in tealmicepestcontrol.co.uk
waspsremoval.co.ukWasps Removal homepage with a close-up wasp photograph behind the headline Wasp nest removal you can rely on, an amber quote button and a row of trust badges
The first instance of the shared template, in Wasps Removal amber
bedbugsgone.co.ukBedbugs Gone homepage with the same layout as its sister sites: a macro bed bug photograph, the headline Bed bug treatment you can rely on and a crimson quote button
The same skeleton in Bedbugs Gone crimson, down to the trust strip
micepestcontrol.co.ukMice Pest Control homepage with a low-lit mouse photograph, the headline Mouse and rat control you can rely on and a teal quote button above the trust badges
The third identity on the same system, in Mice Pest Control teal
waspsremoval.co.uk/guidesThe Wasps Removal guides index, listing published advice articles with summaries beneath a Guides and Advice heading
The staggered publishing queue, surfaced as a guides index

05 Where it stands

Live, with the search watch window still open.

Shipped facts are separated from results still being measured.

All three domains resolve to the static build. The migration is complete, the ranking slugs are preserved and submissions report separately by brand.

Post-cutover impressions, positions and clicks are still being compared with the pre-migration baseline. Those results need a full Search Console watch window, so they are being measured rather than claimed early.

micepestcontrol.co.ukA published Mice Pest Control guide titled How to Get Rid of Mice, with a free quote form sitting beside the article body
A published guide from the queue, live on the static build, with the quote path kept beside the advice
Google Search Console exports before migration and build output across all three sites.

The numbers.

~8k
Organic visits before rebuild

Approximate monthly figure, per site

237
Static pages

Across all three brands

46
Counties

Structured location dataset

3 to 1
Shared template

Three brand instances on one system

0
Legacy systems left

Databases, plugins or WordPress installations

All three sites live. Post-cutover search performance is still being measured.

“You can't A/B test a migration. Either the rankings hold or they don't, so we measured everything before we touched anything and moved one site at a time.”
James GaleFounder, Genius Digital Labs

The three brands are part of the same group as JG Pest Control, which shares ownership with Genius Digital Labs.