Virginia Beach, VA – Commonwealth Creative Marketing, is a full-service website design and digital marketing firm based in Virginia Beach, VA. Earlier this year a client moved their site off of WordPress and onto Squarespace themselves. After their new site was launched we were still providing them a variety of SEO services. We began to notice drastic changes in their page rankings for keyword phrases (both geo-specific and broad terms) being supported through our SEO services. They began to fall from page 1 on Google to not even ranking in the top 10 pages in a matter of a month.
Our Goal in This Case Study:
To demonstrate the potential negative effects that a business/organization can experience when moving their website off of WordPress.
OUR WORK:
Commonwealth Creative Marketing provided a variety of SEO services that included; link building for a total of 40 key phrases including geo specific and broad terms (generating 90 links a month), keyword support through consistent content creation (blogging at 4 posts a month), and Google Business Listing local optimization & data aggregation, all for a total of 15 months.
RESULTS:
The report below shows the key phrases that were being supported through our SEO services and the Google page ranking indicated either by the page number or “Not in Top 10” (if it was not found in the top 10 pages). The report includes a baseline report from when the client signed up on 11/7/2024 and then subsequent more-recent reports from; 9/8/2025, 11/10/2025, 1/9/2026, 3/9/26 & 5/8/2026. The client’s new site was launched sometime after our January 2026 page ranking report.
| baseline | after new site launched | after new site launched | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11/7/2024 | 9/8/2025 | 11/10/2025 | 1/9/2026 | 3/9/2026 | 5/8/2026 | ||||||||||
| Keyword Phrase | Google page ranking | pos. | Google page ranking | pos. | Google page ranking | pos. | Google page ranking | pos. | Google page ranking | pos. | Google page ranking | pos. | |||
| Preschools | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | mid | 1 | mid | 1 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| day schools | Not in Top 10 | * | 1 | top | 2 | upp | 2 | top | 2 (404) | top | 3 | mid | |||
| pre-K | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| pre K schools | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | upp | 1 | low | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| pre K near me | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | low | 2 | upp | 1 | bot | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| private preschool | Not in Top 10 | * | 1 | mid | 1 | upp | 1 | mid | 2 | upp | 2 | bot | |||
| learning academy | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Montessori preschool | Not in Top 10 | * | 3 | mid | 1 | mid | 1 | mid | 3 (404) | upp | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| preschool learning Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | 4 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| nursery school | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | mid | 2 | mid | 2 | upp | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| jumpstart schools | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| early childhood school Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 5 | low | 3 | top | 2 | low | 6 (404) | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| early childhood learning | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| learning schools near me | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | upp | 2 | upp | 5 | top | |||
| Preschools near me | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | mid | 2 | upp | 1 | bot | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| private daycares | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | 1 | mid | 1 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Daycare near me | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Daycare schools | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | 1 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | 3 | mid | |||
| Childcare near me | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| childcare schools near me | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Private Preschool near me | Not in Top 10 | * | 1 | mid | 1 | upp | 1 | upp | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | bot | |||
| Preschools in Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | bot | 2 | bot | 2 | mid | 3 (404) | low | 6 | bot | |||
| Preschools in Chesapeake | Not in Top 10 | * | 3 | top | 3 | top | 3 | mid | 3 (404) | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Daycare in Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | 3 | bot | 4 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Daycare in Chesapeake | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | 8 | upp | 6 | bot | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Childcare school Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 5 | bot | 5 | mid | 5 | upp | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Childcare in Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 6 | upp | 6 | low | 4 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Childcare in Chesapeake | Not in Top 10 | * | 8 | low | Not in Top 10 | * | 6 | upp | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Best Preschool near me | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | top | 2 | top | 2 | top | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Best Preschool in Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | mid | 2 | mid | 2 | mid | 3 (404) | upp | 8 | upp | |||
| Best Preschool in Chesapeake | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | mid | 2 | mid | 1 | bot | 1 (404) | bot | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Best daycare in Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 5 | upp | 4 | mid | 4 | upp | 7 (404) | upp | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Best daycare in Chesapeake | Not in Top 10 | * | 7 | upp | 6 | mid | 6 | mid | 6 (404) | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Pre-K near me Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 3 | upp | 2 | mid | 2 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | 7 | upp | |||
| Pre-K Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 4 | mid | 5 | mid | 3 | mid | Not in Top 10 | * | Not in Top 10 | * | |||
| Pre-k Greenbrier | 4 | upp | 1 | upp | 1 | upp | 1 | mid | 1 | low | 1 | bot | |||
| Private preschool Virginia Beach | Not in Top 10 | * | 1 | bot | 1 | low | 1 | low | 2 (404) | upp | 2 | upp | |||
| Private preschool Chesapeake | Not in Top 10 | * | 2 | mid | 2 | mid | 2 | top | 2 (404) | top | 4 | low |
Our Analysis:
A total of 40 keywords were being tracked. We took into consideration that phrases like “pre-K” “Childcare near me”, or “Daycare near me” (total of 6) were very broad, topical and also very competitive so we did not expect to see much growth in them anyways. The real and fair sample size is now 34 key phrases that include both geo specific terms and some broad terms. The client’s new site had launched before the next rankings report was ran in March ‘26. In this report we see a significant decrease in page rankings for approximately 20 keyword terms equal to a 58.8% initial loss in overall page rankings. We continued to provide them with SEO services for the next two months. The next report was run in May ‘26 where we observed that for those same 20 terms only 3 of them showed an increase in page ranking, leaving a total loss of 50%.
In Summary:
We observed a large decrease in overall page ranking after the customer had moved off of WordPress and onto a competing CMS platform. Even with strong SEO services in place such as link-building, Google business profile optimization, and consistent content generation through blogging, we still noticed a significant decrease in overall page ranking percentage over a period of 4 months.
According to industry tracking firm W3Techs, WordPress currently powers approximately 42-43% of all websites on the internet. Among websites using a known content management system, WordPress commands nearly 60% of the global CMS market share, that’s more than all the competing CMS platforms combined. So it is safe to say that moving your website off of a content management system that is both widely used, and preferred by search engines can have a potentially negative effect on your page rankings even with SEO services being active. WordPress allows for more robust SEO plugins, integrations, and in general, it provides SEO professionals with complete access to optimize a website versus other content management platforms. Moving from WordPress to a more D.I.Y. builder approach seems to not be a wise decision for an established small business. This was a “backwards” migration by a client who we wished had consulted with us before making this decision.