A complete, behind-the-scenes case study of how Ottawa SEO Inc. rebuilt JaclynBaker.com for Jaclyn Baker of J Baker Media — Toronto's leading digital marketer. We cover the full journey: replacing a slow, plugin-heavy WordPress site with a custom-coded platform, migrating all 69 blog posts without losing a single Google ranking, building a private content management system and cookie-free analytics dashboard, and handling hosting, domain, SSL, and professional email end to end.
Before we get into the build, meet the client. Jaclyn Baker is the founder of J Baker Media and, in our view, Toronto's leading digital marketer — a strategist who has built her reputation on doing the work herself rather than outsourcing it to a junior team. Her practice covers the full modern marketing stack: social media management that builds engaged communities with consistent, high-quality content; influencer marketing that pairs brands with authentic voices who actually align with their values; SEO-optimized blogging that drives organic traffic through well-researched, genuinely useful articles; and email newsletters that bypass the algorithms entirely and speak directly to a brand's most loyal audience. She backs it up with a 5.0 Google rating and a portfolio of client case studies that show real, measurable results.
!J Baker Media logo
!Jaclyn Baker, founder of J Baker Media
Here's the irony that kicked off this project: Jaclyn spends her days making other brands look brilliant online, but her own website — the storefront for all of that expertise — was running on an aging WordPress install that no longer matched the calibre of her work. She writes constantly, ranks well on Google, and depends on her blog as a lead engine. So the redesign had one non-negotiable rule: make the site dramatically better without sacrificing a single ranking she'd earned.
The old JaclynBaker.com had the problems we see on almost every WordPress site that's been alive for more than a few years. It was slow — every page load dragged a stack of plugins, page-builder scripts, and theme bloat behind it, and mobile visitors felt it most. It was expensive to keep alive — managed WordPress hosting, premium plugin renewals, and the occasional 'something broke after an update' developer bill add up to a real monthly overhead for a solo business owner. And it was fragile — WordPress sites need constant plugin updates, PHP version migrations, and security patches, and skipping them is how sites get hacked. Every hour Jaclyn spent wrestling with WordPress was an hour she wasn't spending on client campaigns.
The brief we agreed on was simple to say and demanding to execute: a brand-new, custom-built website that loads fast, looks like the premium brand J Baker Media actually is, costs almost nothing to run, and — critically — keeps every bit of SEO value the old site had accumulated. In other words: change everything, break nothing.
We rebuilt the site from a blank file. No WordPress. No Wix, Squarespace, or drag-and-drop page builders. Every page of the new JaclynBaker.com is custom code written for exactly one client — which is why it looks like nothing else and loads like nothing else. This is the same approach we take on our own web design projects: when there's no theme framework or plugin stack between the browser and the content, pages ship only the code they actually need.
!Website speed and performance concept
The design itself is fresh but faithful to the J Baker Media brand — her signature palette, elegant typography, and a layout that puts her work and her results front and centre. It's fully responsive across desktop, tablet, and mobile, and we tested it on real devices rather than just resizing a browser window. The difference is immediate: pages that used to take multiple seconds to become usable now render near-instantly, and there is no plugin stack left to update, patch, or pay for. The performance gain isn't vanity — page speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor, and it's the first impression every potential client gets.
This was the highest-stakes part of the project. Jaclyn's blog is a working asset — years of SEO-optimized articles that rank on Google and bring in leads every week. A careless migration destroys that: URLs change, Google's index breaks, backlinks 404, and rankings evaporate. We've written before about how much discipline an SEO-safe website migration takes, and this project followed that playbook to the letter.
!Content migration between two website windows
All 69 blog posts came across with formatting, images, and internal links intact — not copy-pasted approximations, but faithful reproductions of each article. Every single existing URL was preserved exactly, so nothing that ever linked to her site breaks and every ranking Google had already awarded carries straight over. Then we went further than the old site ever did: proper meta titles and descriptions on every page, Open Graph and Twitter card tags so links look sharp when shared on social, a complete XML sitemap, and structured data (Schema.org) that tells search engines exactly who Jaclyn is and what each article covers. Finally, every page is pre-rendered — search engines see the full content instantly in the raw HTML instead of waiting for JavaScript, which is a real advantage most custom-built sites get wrong.
The most common objection to leaving WordPress is 'but how will I update my site?' — and it's a fair one. Our answer was to build Jaclyn her own private content management system: a secure admin dashboard, protected by an owner login, that does exactly what she needs and nothing she doesn't.
From that dashboard she can write, edit, and publish blog posts without touching a line of code — with formatting, images, and previews handled in the interface. She can manage site settings and content independently, which means no developer on retainer for day-to-day updates and no waiting on someone else's schedule to fix a typo or ship a new article. It's the part of the project Jaclyn uses most, and it's the difference between a website you own and a website you rent: WordPress gives everyone the same bloated admin built for millions of use cases; a custom CMS gives one person a clean tool built for exactly one.
A consultant's website has one commercial job: turn readers into conversations. The new site takes that seriously. The contact form feeds directly into a message-management view inside her admin dashboard, so every inquiry is captured, timestamped, and kept in one place instead of getting lost in an inbox. And because Jaclyn is active on video, we built a YouTube channel showcase that automatically pulls in her latest uploads — the site always shows fresh content without her lifting a finger, which quietly signals to both visitors and search engines that the brand is alive and busy. Combined with clear calls-to-action pointing at her discovery call booking, the site now works as a lead engine, not a brochure.
Most site owners bolt on Google Analytics, accept the cookie banners and privacy headaches that come with it, and then never open the reports because GA4 is genuinely confusing. We built Jaclyn something better: a private, cookie-free analytics dashboard baked directly into her admin area.
!Analytics dashboard with rising charts
It shows exactly what a business owner actually wants to know: traffic trends over time, the top pages people are reading, where visitors come from (search, social, referrals), and what devices they're on. Because it's cookie-free and stores no personal visitor data, it's privacy-friendly by design — no consent banners, no third-party trackers, nothing shipped off to an ad company. Jaclyn can open one clean dashboard and see at a glance whether last week's article is pulling traffic. That's what analytics should have been all along.
The last mile of a website project is the part nobody sees and everybody depends on. We moved the site onto modern cloud hosting with automatic scaling — if an article goes viral, the infrastructure grows to meet the traffic and shrinks back afterward, with no server for anyone to babysit. The custom domain and SSL certificate were configured so the site runs securely on HTTPS everywhere, and we set up professional email on Google Workspace so her business address lives on infrastructure built for deliverability. We also did the unglamorous forensic work: auditing and cleaning up years of accumulated DNS records, and fully migrating off the legacy WordPress hosting so there's no zombie server quietly billing her every month. Launch was a controlled cutover, not a leap of faith — old site up until the moment the new one answered, and verified within the hour.
Here's where the project landed. Load times dropped dramatically — custom code with no plugin overhead simply outruns a WordPress stack. Monthly overhead effectively went to zero: no plugin subscriptions, no premium theme renewals, no maintenance retainer, no managed-WordPress hosting bill. Every existing Google ranking carried over because every URL survived the migration, and the on-page SEO is now stronger than the old site ever managed. Jaclyn owns 100% of her content and her platform, publishes on her own schedule through her private dashboard, and checks her traffic in a clean analytics view over morning coffee.
If you're a consultant, creator, or business owner sitting on an aging WordPress site and nodding along to the 'starting point' section above, this is what the alternative looks like. Browse our web design portfolio, look at what our packages cost, or just get in touch and tell us about your site — the first conversation is free and there's no sales pressure. And if what you actually need is someone to run your social, influencer, content, or email marketing at the highest level, you already know who we'd point you to: Jaclyn Baker of J Baker Media, Toronto's leading digital marketer.
A new theme only changes how a WordPress site looks — it keeps the plugin stack, the update treadmill, the security exposure, and the performance ceiling. A custom rebuild removes all of that: the site ships only the code it needs, there's nothing to patch monthly, and the design isn't constrained by what a theme framework allows. For JaclynBaker.com, the rebuild also let us build a private CMS and analytics dashboard that WordPress could only approximate with more plugins.
The core rule is URL preservation: every existing address on the old site must resolve to the same content on the new one, so Google's index and every backlink stay valid. On top of that we migrated all 69 posts with formatting and images intact, rebuilt meta tags and structured data, submitted a fresh sitemap, and pre-rendered every page so crawlers see full content immediately. Rankings carried over because, from Google's perspective, the content never moved — it just got faster.
It means a private, password-protected dashboard where the owner writes, edits, and publishes posts and manages site content without touching code — but purpose-built for their site instead of being a generic platform. Day-to-day updates need no developer, and there are no plugin updates or compatibility issues to manage, because there are no plugins.
Cookie-free analytics measures traffic — visits, top pages, referral sources, devices — without placing tracking cookies or storing personal visitor data. That makes it privacy-friendly by design: no consent banners, no data shipped to third-party ad companies, and reports simple enough that the owner actually reads them. JaclynBaker.com's analytics are built directly into her private admin dashboard.
It depends on content volume and features, but a project of this scope — custom design and build, 69 posts migrated, a private CMS, analytics, and full hosting/DNS/email migration — typically runs several weeks from kickoff to cutover. The migration and launch are staged so the old site stays live until the new one is verified, meaning zero downtime for visitors.
Jaclyn Baker is a Toronto-based digital marketer offering social media management, influencer marketing, SEO-optimized blogging, and email newsletter campaigns, along with digital strategy. Her full service breakdown is at jaclynbaker.com/expertise, and her client results are documented in her case studies section.