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Case study · Website migration

Two platforms, one site, zero ranking loss.

How we moved Prospectus, the UK's first B Corp certified recruitment agency, from Squarespace to WordPress and brought its marketing site and job board under one roof without losing a single Google position.

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prospect-us.co.uk
Prospectus homepage after the move to WordPress: hero, job search and Recruitment, redefined section
Client
Prospectus (prospect-us.co.uk), recruitment for the not-for-profit sector
Client lead
Jeni Syckelmoore, Director of Marketing and Communications
Services
Squarespace to WordPress migration, platform consolidation, ongoing care retainer
Stack
WordPress, Gutenberg, GeneratePress, Matador Jobs with Bullhorn ATS
Timeline
Scoped July 2023, launched September 2023

Results in numbers

0

Google positions lost

2 → 1

platforms merged into one WordPress site

5 / 5

client rating

Since 2023

on a Woofocus care retainer

The client

Prospectus has recruited exclusively for the not-for-profit sector for nearly 70 years and is the UK's first B Corp certified recruitment agency. It supports 300+ charities and nonprofits a year, from ActionAid and Mind to UNICEF and Barnardo's, placing 600+ candidates annually.

For a business like this, the website is the shop floor. Candidates find roles through Google, charities judge credibility by the site, and every lost ranking is a lost application.

The challenge

Prospectus was running two separate websites. The marketing site lived on Squarespace, while the job board ran on a separate WordPress install powered by Matador Jobs and synced with Bullhorn, their ATS.

Two platforms, two logins.

The team maintained content in two places with two different editors.

Split SEO authority.

Service and sector pages sat on one site, the matching live roles on another.

Limited flexibility.

Squarespace made it hard to link pages to live vacancies or control technical SEO.

High stakes.

40+ pages, a full news archive and years of rankings for terms like "charity jobs".

Jeni Syckelmoore, Director of Marketing and Communications, needed one platform her team could run confidently, without paying for it in lost visibility.

Our approach

We treated the migration as an SEO project first and a rebuild second.

  1. 01  Audit and baseline

    • Crawled the full Squarespace site and exported every indexable URL, including unlinked pages and the news archive.
    • Captured baseline rankings, traffic and top landing pages from Search Console, Google Analytics and Ahrefs.
    • Recorded titles, meta descriptions, headings, canonicals and internal links for every page.
  2. 02  Rebuild on a lean stack

    • Rebuilt the design in WordPress with Gutenberg and GeneratePress, keeping the existing look without page builder bloat.
    • Created custom post types for Team and Works, so case studies surface on the right service pages automatically.
    • Migrated all 40+ pages across Services, Sectors and Functions, plus every news article.
  3. 03  Merge two sites into one

    • Brought the marketing site and the Matador Jobs board into one WordPress install, with the Bullhorn sync intact.
    • Linked service, sector and department pages to matching live roles.
    • Kept job posting structured data so roles stay eligible for Google for Jobs.
  4. 04  Protect every URL

    • Built a full 1:1 redirect map, with 301 redirects for every URL that changed.
    • Preserved URL structures wherever possible.
    • Carried over all on-page SEO: titles, meta descriptions, headings, alt text and internal links.
  5. 05  Test before launch, monitor after

    • QA on staging across devices and browsers, including forms, email delivery and job applications.
    • Launched with a fresh XML sitemap in Search Console and redirects checked live.
    • Monitored indexing, crawl errors, rankings and traffic daily in the weeks after launch.
  6. 06  Hand over with confidence

    • Recorded tutorials so the team can add posts, team members and services on their own.
    • Moved Prospectus onto an ongoing care retainer: updates, security, performance and monthly reporting.

Search Console through launch

Search Console clicks, six months around launch A line of clicks over six months that stays level through the launch marker in September 2023, with no dip afterwards. Launch ยท Sep 2023 JunJulAugSepOctNov Clicks
Search Console clicks stayed level through launch. Illustrative chart, shape based on the real data; axis values omitted.

The results

The migration was invisible to Google and to candidates, which is exactly the point.

  • Zero ranking loss.Prospectus held its Google positions through the switch.
  • Flat, stable Search Console.No dip in clicks or impressions, no spike in indexing errors.
  • One site instead of two.One login, one editor, one domain building SEO authority.
  • Pages that sell and recruit.Service and sector pages now show matching live roles.
  • A team that runs its own site.Content, team members and services updated without a developer.
  • Squarespace retired.The old subscription was cancelled once the new site had proven itself.

The project ran from July to September 2023 and closed with a 5 out of 5 rating. Prospectus has stayed with Woofocus on a care retainer ever since.

“Ali was great to work with. He has a lot of expertise in WordPress, communicates well, keeps to timescales and suggests improvements throughout the project. Overall it was a seamless experience. I would highly recommend working with Ali.”
Jeni Syckelmoore · Director of Marketing and Communications, Prospectus

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Related: Website migration · Technical SEO · WordPress maintenance