CMS DEVELOPMENT

Your WordPress Site is Hemorrhaging Traffic. We're Your London-Based Lifeline.

If you're a London founder watching your Core Web Vitals crater while competitors overtake you in Search Console, you've found the team that stops the bleeding.

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CMS DEVELOPMENT AT A GLANCE
  • Next.js
  • WordPress REST API
  • WPGraphQL
  • Vercel
  • Cloudflare
  • Supabase
  • 95+LIGHTHOUSE AVG
  • 12+ yrsSENIOR-LED
  • Fixed feeNO SCOPE CREEP
  • 200+PROJECTS SHIPPED
CLUTCH 5.0 VERIFIED

Overview — 01

London-based headless Next.js migration with 301 redirects, zero downtime, and full SEO preservation. GBP pricing, UK compliance, led by Aryan Shah.

WordPress to Next.js Migration

A WordPress to Next.js migration replaces a database-driven CMS with a headless, statically generated architecture that serves pages faster and scores higher on Core Web Vitals. The process preserves every existing URL, passes authority through verified 301 redirects, and replicates content workflows so editorial teams keep publishing without interruption. The result is a production site on a modern stack with measurable improvements in load speed, Lighthouse scores, and organic search retention.

The gap — 02

What is holding your current website back?

Common gaps we find in nearly every audit.

Your WordPress site scores below 50 on mobile Core Web Vitals and you are losing ground to faster competitors in London local search results every week.
Risk: Google's page experience signals directly influence rankings; a sustained poor score compounds into organic traffic loss that paid search cannot fully compensate for.
A previous migration or plugin update wiped out redirect chains and you now have hundreds of 404 errors that were previously ranking pages.
Risk: Every unresolved 404 discards the accumulated link equity and crawl budget that took months or years to build, and recovery without a structured redirect audit takes significantly longer.
Your development team is spending more time patching WordPress security vulnerabilities and plugin conflicts than shipping features that grow the business.
Risk: A headless architecture removes the CMS from the public attack surface entirely, but staying on a patched WordPress install while deferring migration extends that exposure window indefinitely.

Safeguards — 03

How we build this right

Every safeguard, built in from Day 1.

UK GDPR Data Residency

All staging environments and data processing agreements are structured to comply with UK GDPR requirements, including documented lawful bases for any analytics or form data collected during and after migration.

Zero-Downtime Cutover Protocol

DNS changes are executed during verified low-traffic windows with real-time uptime monitoring active. Rollback procedures are tested before the cutover date so restoration to the live WordPress site can be completed within fifteen minutes if needed.

301 Redirect Audit and Verification

Every URL from the crawl export is accounted for in a signed-off redirect map before go-live. Post-launch we run a full crawl against the production Next.js site and verify HTTP response codes, confirming no redirect chains exceed two hops.

Scope — 04

What we build

Purpose-built features for your industry.

Structured 301 Redirect Mapping

We crawl your existing WordPress site, export every indexed URL from Search Console, and build a complete redirect map before a single line of Next.js code is deployed. Each redirect is tested in staging and verified against expected HTTP status codes so no historic ranking page reaches production as a 404.

Core Web Vitals Optimisation

The Next.js build is configured from the start with image optimisation via next/image, font subsetting, route-level code splitting, and static generation where content allows. We benchmark LCP, CLS, and INP against your current WordPress scores and target measurable improvements before handover.

Headless CMS Integration

Your editorial team continues publishing through a structured content API, whether that is Sanity, Contentful, or a headless WordPress instance acting as a data source. We map existing post types, custom fields, and taxonomies to the new content schema so no historical content is orphaned during the transition.

Post-Launch SEO Monitoring

For four weeks after go-live we monitor Search Console for crawl errors, ranking shifts, and index coverage changes. Any anomalies are triaged within one business day and resolved without the client needing to raise a separate support ticket.

Stack — 05

Built on a modern, secure stack

Next.jsWordPress REST APIWPGraphQLVercelCloudflareSupabaseScreaming FrogGoogle Search Console

Process — 06

Our development process

From discovery to launch. Quality at every step.

01

SEO and Technical Audit

1 week

We crawl the live WordPress site, pull Search Console data, and produce a full inventory of indexed URLs, existing redirects, structured data, and Core Web Vitals baselines. This audit becomes the migration brief and is shared with the client before any development work begins.

02

Architecture and Content Schema Design

1-2 weeks

We design the Next.js routing structure to match the existing URL pattern exactly and map WordPress post types and ACF fields to the chosen headless CMS schema. The redirect map is built in parallel and requires client sign-off before we proceed to build.

03

Build, Migration, and Staging Verification

2-4 weeks

The Next.js application is built against the staging CMS environment with all content migrated and redirects active. We run automated and manual QA covering page rendering, redirect chains, structured data output, and Lighthouse scores across a representative sample of page types.

04

Cutover and Post-Launch Monitoring

1-2 weeks

DNS is updated during a scheduled low-traffic window with uptime monitoring active throughout. We verify index coverage and crawl behaviour in Search Console over the following four weeks and address any ranking or crawl anomalies as part of the project scope.

Social Animal

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Related resources — 07

Solution WordPress Migration Agency London Solution WordPress to Nextjs Migration Solution WordPress Migration Agency Los Angeles Solution WordPress Migration Agency Sydney Solution WordPress Multisite Migration Solution WordPress Migration Agency Nyc

Questions — 08

Frequently asked questions

Not if redirects are handled properly. We map every indexable URL and implement server-side 301 redirects in the Next.js config. After launch, we watch Search Console for crawl errors and ranking shifts for 6 weeks. Our clients keep 95%+ of their organic positions within the first 30 days.
A site with under 200 pages typically goes from audit to go-live in 5-6 weeks. Larger sites with WooCommerce, multilingual content, or complex custom post types can take 8-10 weeks. Every proposal includes a fixed timeline -- no open-ended sprints.
Yes. WordPress becomes your headless CMS. Editors keep the Gutenberg editor, custom fields, and media library they're already used to. The only thing that changes is the frontend -- instead of PHP themes, Next.js fetches content via WPGraphQL and renders it at the edge, dramatically faster.
Your new Next.js site deploys to a staging URL while the live WordPress site keeps serving traffic. Once everything checks out, we switch DNS via Cloudflare in under 5 minutes. No maintenance page, no 503 errors, no gap in analytics.
Every quote is in GBP -- no currency conversion surprises. UK GDPR compliance is built into every migration. We handle cookie consent management, update privacy policies for the new stack, confirm data processing agreements are in place, and verify ICO-compliant consent flows before anything goes live.
Aryan Shah is the lead developer at Social Animal, based in London. He personally runs every WordPress migration -- from the initial SEO audit through redirect mapping, headless build, and post-launch monitoring. You get direct Slack access during GMT hours, not a project manager relaying messages to someone offshore.

More solutions — 09

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Need enterprise scale?

200+ employee company? Complex multi-tenant, auction, or multi-location requirement? We have a dedicated enterprise capability track.

View Enterprise Hub

Get started — 10

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