Vitaliy Photography: A Wix-to-WordPress migration proposal for a Cleveland wedding photographer — and what it verified

Oct 11, 2023 min read

The situation

Vitaliy Pysmennyy operated a wedding photography business in Cleveland, Ohio with a site built on the Wix platform — approximately 40 pages (22 posts, 5 category pages, and the remainder regular pages) [site audit, Jun 2022]. His question was direct: was it worth trying to rank the existing Wix site, or did he need a complete rebuild?

Engagement: June 14–15, 2022 + September 4, 2022 follow-up.

The assessment

The audit delivered its assessment: the Wix platform was insufficient for meaningful SEO results and WordPress was the correct foundation [site audit, Jun 2022]1.

Competitive benchmark: mikestaff.com (Mike Staff Productions, Detroit) was audited as the standard to close the gap against [competitive audit, Jun 2022].

Live proof: robtetrault.com was referenced as a working example of the same methodology applied to a national-reach site [engagement records].

The proposal

Four months. $4,000 total. Includes a $500 link-building budget [proposal on file, Jun 2022].

PhaseTimelineScope
Phase 1Weeks 1–3Wix-to-WordPress migration, base site build, theme, GMB optimization, semantic SEO copywriting
Phase 2Weeks 4–9Local citation building, strategic backlinks
Phase 3Weeks 10–12Expected ranking changes for primary Cleveland wedding photography keywords

What it verified

On June 14, 2022, the $1,000/month TWAG retainer rate was disclosed directly to Vitaliy as a pricing reference point [engagement records, Jun 14, 2022]2. This independently corroborates the TWAG billing rate at that point in the engagement — confirmed in a separate prospective client conversation, not in a TWAG document.

The outcome

A follow-up on September 4, 2022 indicated the proposal had not yet converted [engagement records, Sep 4, 2022]. Engagement status: proposal stage, no confirmed close.

Sources


  1. Wix. Wix SEO — Limitations and Capabilities. support.wix.com. Wix’s platform constraints around URL structure, canonical tags, and technical SEO customization are documented in their official support materials. ↩︎

  2. Engagement records. June 14, 2022 consultation notes on file. $1,000/month rate stated to Vitaliy Pysmennyy as a reference pricing point during proposal discussion. ↩︎