Website redesign in Morocco: when to rebuild, what it costs, how to keep your Google rankings

“Our website is six years old, it’s slow, it looks broken on a phone, and the agency that built it no longer answers.” That, almost word for word, is the message we receive most often from businesses that already have a site. Many are run by founders or managers who moved to Morocco, inherited the website with the company, or had it built by someone who has since disappeared. The temptation is to throw everything away and start again. That is often the right call, on one condition: you must not lose what the old site still gives you, namely its Google rankings, its domain name and your email addresses.

This guide is written for a busy owner. It gives seven measurable tests to decide whether your site needs rebuilding, what a redesign costs in Morocco by type of provider, the rules Google itself publishes for moving a site without losing search traffic, how to get your domain and logins back from a previous provider, and a timeline and checklist. We are an agency, Bzaf Studio. How we handle a redesign is described at the end, together with the cases where it is the wrong fit.

Redesign, refresh or new domain: what are we talking about?

Three very different jobs often go by the same name. Telling them apart stops you paying for a redesign when a refresh would do, or launching three projects at once without realising it.

• A refresh. The existing site is corrected: a phone number, opening hours, oversized photos, adding HTTPS. The structure and technology stay the same. It takes hours, not weeks.
• A redesign. A new website is built for the same business, usually on the same domain: new design, new page structure, often new technology. Content that works is kept, rewritten or expanded. This is what this guide covers.
• A domain change. Moving from your-company.com to your-company.ma, for example. Every URL on the site changes. For Google, this is a full site move.

Google is explicit about this in its documentation on site moves: change one thing at a time. Its example is precisely an owner who wants to move to a new domain, switch content management system and adopt a new layout; Google recommends making one change, then the next. For a small business the safest rule follows: keep the same domain during the redesign, and handle any domain change later, as a separate step.

7 measurable signs your website needs a redesign

You don’t need to pay for an audit to know where you stand. These seven tests take about fifteen minutes in total, with your phone and a computer. Mark each one green, amber or red.

1. The phone test

Open your site on your own phone, on mobile data rather than the office Wi-Fi. Read the home page without zooming. Open the menu. Tap the phone number: does it start a call? Scroll a service page to the bottom. If you have to pinch to read, if the page slides sideways, if a button is too small for a thumb, the site was not built for phones.

This is not a detail. According to ANRT, at the end of March 2026, 89.82% of internet subscriptions in Morocco were mobile, against 6.82% for fixed-line internet. Google itself reads your site as a phone does: it uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking, which it calls mobile-first indexing, and it announced in October 2023 that the switch was complete.

A common trap: many guides still recommend Google’s “Mobile-Friendly Test”. That tool was retired on 1 December 2023, along with the Mobile Usability report in Search Console. Google now points to Lighthouse, Chrome’s audit tool. Even simpler, PageSpeed Insights, Google’s online tool, analyses a page on mobile and desktop with nothing to install.

2. Speed, measured rather than felt

Your site feels fast because you open it every day on the same computer with a good connection. Your customers discover it on an average phone, on 4G. Paste your address into PageSpeed Insights and look at the “Mobile” tab.

Three figures matter, the ones Google calls Core Web Vitals. LCP measures how long the largest visible element takes to appear: Google recommends under 2.5 seconds, and PageSpeed Insights rates anything above 4 seconds as “poor”. INP measures how quickly the page responds when you tap: under 200 milliseconds. CLS measures elements jumping around while the page loads: under 0.1. When a brochure site shows a mobile LCP of 6 or 8 seconds, the causes are nearly always the same: photos weighing several megabytes, a theme loaded with features nobody uses, plugins piled up over the years.

3. The HTTPS padlock

Look at Chrome’s address bar. Since July 2018 and Chrome 68, the browser marks every HTTP site as “Not secure”. A prospect who sees that warning above your contact form thinks twice before leaving a number. Google’s page experience guidance also asks directly whether your pages are served securely. Check that a certificate has not expired, too: a site that shows a red warning page loses nearly all its visitors.

4. Out-of-date information

Read your site with your Google Business Profile open alongside. Phone number, address, opening hours, services, prices, team: everything must match and be correct. The signs of an abandoned site are easy to spot: a 2019 copyright line, news from two Ramadans ago, a service you no longer offer, a city you have left, a Facebook link to an empty page. A customer who finds wrong information does not call to check. They move on.

5. Visibility on Google

Two searches are enough. First, type site:your-domain.ma into Google: you will see roughly which pages Google knows. If it finds two or three out of twenty, there is an indexing problem. Then search for your trade and your city as a customer would: “air conditioning Casablanca”, “accountant Rabat”, in French too if that is how your customers search. If your site is missing from the first pages while your direct competitors are there, the site is not working for you.

If you have access to Search Console, open the “Performance” report: it shows your site’s clicks and impressions in Google, by query and by page. A site with no impressions on the name of your trade is invisible, however good it looks. Our complete guide to SEO in Morocco explains how to read these figures.

6. Enquiries that never arrive

Send yourself a test message through the contact form, then through the WhatsApp button if there is one. Does the form reach an inbox someone reads? How quickly? We regularly see forms that have been sending to a former employee or a former agency for years. A site that triggers no calls, messages or quote requests is not doing its job, however attractive it is.

7. Control over your own site

Try to change your opening hours yourself, or ask your provider what that change costs and how long it takes. If nobody has the logins, if the provider no longer answers, if every edit turns into a quote, or if the software running the site has not been updated for years, you no longer really control your website. This is often the sign that triggers a redesign, and the one that complicates it most: more on that below.

Sign	The test	Red if…
1. Phone	Open the site on your phone, on mobile data	Text unreadable without zooming, page slides sideways, menu or buttons unusable
2. Speed	PageSpeed Insights, “Mobile” tab	LCP above 4 s, or all three metrics in amber
3. HTTPS	Chrome’s address bar	“Not secure”, or an expired certificate
4. Information	Read the site next to your Google profile	A wrong number, opening time, address or service
5. Google	site:your-domain.ma, then “trade + city”	Few pages known, absent from the first pages
6. Enquiries	A test message by form and WhatsApp	Message lost, no WhatsApp button, no way to reply
7. Access	Change your hours, or ask the price of a change	No logins, provider unreachable, every edit billed

Our rule of thumb, from the sites we take over: one red flag can usually be fixed without a redesign. Two or three are worth discussing, depending on the age of the site and the cost of the fixes. From four red flags, or as soon as signs 1 and 7 are red together (a site that doesn’t work on phones and that you can no longer edit), a redesign nearly always costs less than repeated fixes.

Fix or rebuild: when a redesign is not needed

A redesign should not be a reflex. If your site is recent, works well on phones and already brings you customers, rebuilding it is an unnecessary risk. In these cases a targeted fix is enough:

• Only HTTPS is missing. An SSL certificate and a redirect from the old HTTP address to the new HTTPS one solve the problem. Free, automated certificate authorities such as Let’s Encrypt exist.
• Only the information is wrong. Update the content, then check it every three months.
• Only speed is lacking, on an otherwise well-built site: compress the images, remove unused plugins, change hosting. Google treats a hosting change that leaves the visible URLs untouched as a separate operation from a site move, with its own guide.
• The site is sound but thin. It needs service pages, city pages and articles, not a new design.

On the other hand, rebuilding is the right choice when the problems are in the foundations: a site built before the smartphone era, a theme or content management system that is no longer updated, a structure where every service sits on a single page, or a site nobody can edit any more. In those cases every fix costs money, and so does the next one. A new, well-structured site often costs less than two years of patching.

How much does a website redesign cost in Morocco?

A redesign is priced like a new build. The provider builds a new site; the existence of an old one almost never lowers the price, and can raise it if the content and URLs are carried over properly. Here are the market ranges in Morocco for a brochure (showcase) website.

Type of provider	Price of a showcase site	Usual timeframe	To clarify for a redesign
Freelancer	from ~5,000 DH	2 to 4 weeks	Content migration, redirects, hosting and domain, often extra
Traditional agency	15,000 – 45,000 DH	1 to 3 months	Audit of the old site, the redirect map, the maintenance contract
Online site builder	a monthly subscription, plus your time	depends on your evenings	Whether old URLs can be redirected; the site stays on the platform
All-inclusive plan (Bzaf Studio)	no build fee; 399 DH incl. VAT a month, or 4,550 DH incl. VAT a year	5 working days from the complete brief	12-month commitment, then month to month

These figures cover building the new site. A redesign adds lines that a quote for a new build often leaves out. They are what separates a smooth redesign from one that costs you customers for six months.

The lines specific to a redesign

• An inventory of the old site: its pages, those that receive visits from Google, and the PDFs and images that are found in search.
• The redirect map: every important old URL sent to its new one. This is the line that protects your rankings, and the one most often missing.
• Content migration: keeping the text that works, rewriting what is out of date, translating if a second language is added.
• Recovering the domain and logins when they sit with a previous provider. Allow time, and sometimes exit fees written into the old contract.
• Email addresses on your domain. They depend on the same settings as the website; a badly prepared switch cuts them off.
• Two hosting accounts in parallel during the transition: the old one is cancelled only once the new one has been checked.
• Your time: gathering logins, proofreading, approving. A few hours, but plan for them.

Worked example: the first year

Take a service company in Casablanca whose 12-page site dates from 2019. It wants to rebuild it in French and English. The amounts below are working assumptions, chosen within market ranges, to show the method. Replace them with the figures in your own quotes.

First year	Freelancer	Traditional agency (quote excl. VAT)	All-inclusive plan
New website	6,000 DH	18,000 DH	no build fee
Second language	1,500 DH	3,000 DH	included
Inventory and redirects	1,000 DH	2,500 DH	your inventory, attached to the brief
Domain, hosting, SSL	900 DH	1,800 DH	included
Maintenance and edits	1,200 DH	3,000 DH	included
Total, first year	10,600 DH	28,300 DH excl. VAT	4,788 DH incl. VAT (12 × 399 DH), or 4,550 DH incl. VAT paid yearly

An honest reading: in the first year, the subscription needs the least cash, because there is nothing to pay up front. But it carries on afterwards, whereas a build paid once then only costs hosting and maintenance. The line-by-line three-year comparison is in our article on the real cost of a website in Morocco.

The real risk of a redesign: losing your place on Google

An existing site, even an ageing one, has often built up something valuable: pages Google knows, ranks for certain searches, and that other sites link to. Your Google Business Profile, old press articles, directories, your social media posts and sometimes your business cards point to specific addresses on your site.

The scenario we see most often is simple. The new site is live, better looking and faster. But its pages have new URLs, and nobody redirected the old ones. Google comes back to the old URLs and finds error pages. So do customers who click in the results. Within weeks, rankings built over years are gone, and the business wrongly concludes that “the new site doesn’t work”.

Google describes exactly how to avoid this in its documentation on site moves. The points that matter for a showcase site:

• Map every old URL to its new one. Google calls this a URL mapping, to be prepared before the move.
• Use server-side permanent redirects, in practice 301 redirects. A permanent redirect tells Google to show the new URL in its results, and Google states that 301 redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank.
• Don’t send everything to the home page. Google advises against it explicitly: it may treat mass redirects to one page as soft 404 errors. However, when several old pages have been merged into one, they can all point to that new page.
• Let removed content go cleanly. A page with no equivalent on the new site should return a 404 or 410 error.
• Avoid redirect chains. Redirect straight to the final destination; if a chain cannot be avoided, Google recommends ideally no more than three hops.
• Keep the redirects for at least a year, and longer still for visitors, as Google advises.
• Submit the new sitemap in Search Console, and remove any indexing block (noindex, robots.txt) used during development before going live.
• Expect some instability. Google warns that rankings can fluctuate during a move, and that it can take a few weeks for most pages of a small to medium site to be processed.

Two useful details. Search Console’s Change of Address tool is only needed if you move to a new domain or subdomain; it is not needed to switch from HTTP to HTTPS or to reorganise pages within the same domain. And for small and medium sites, Google recommends moving all URLs at once rather than one by one: that covers almost every showcase website.

Before touching anything: an inventory of what works

The best redirect is the one you don’t need. If the URLs on your old site are clean and readable, keeping them on the new site removes most of the risk. To decide, you first need to know what the old site brings in. This inventory takes an hour or two and comes before the brief.

1. Pages that get clicks

In Search Console, the “Performance” report shows the last three months by default; widen the date range as far as it goes, open the “Pages” tab and use the “Export” button. You get the list of pages that receive clicks and impressions, and the searches that bring people there. Without Search Console, your site’s analytics or the server logs give a first idea.

2. The complete list of URLs

The sitemap, if there is one, gives most of them. The content management system often provides a list. Google recommends adding images, videos and downloadable files such as PDFs: a catalogue or price list in PDF sometimes gets more visits from Google than a page.

3. Pages that receive links

Search Console’s “Links” report shows which pages of your site are cited by other sites. Their URLs must survive, either as they are or through a redirect.

4. Sorting: keep, rewrite, merge, remove

What the inventory shows	Decision	On the new site
Page with clicks, text still accurate	Keep	Same topic, text kept and expanded, same URL if possible
Page with clicks, text out of date	Rewrite	Same topic and search intent, information updated
Several thin pages on the same service	Merge	One complete page; old ones redirected to it
Ended promotion, discontinued service, empty page	Remove	404 or 410 error, no forced redirect
Key service with no dedicated page	Create	A new page, with its own title and description for Google

An often overlooked point: a page that ranks well for a search must keep answering that search. If your old “Air conditioning in Casablanca” page is on Google’s first page, the new version must keep that topic, those words and that city, even if the design changes completely. Changing the substance of a page that works means starting from scratch on that search.

301 redirects: the redirect map, with an example

The redirect map is a simple two-column table: old URL, new URL. It is the single most important document in a redesign. Ask your provider for it, whoever they are, and keep a copy. Here is what it looks like for our fictional air-conditioning company.

Old URL	New URL	Action
http://your-company.ma/ (and every HTTP page)	https://your-company.ma/ (same path)	301, general rule
/index.php?page=services	/services/	301
/climatisation-casablanca.html	/climatisation-casablanca/	301; text kept and expanded
/entretien.html and /maintenance.html	/entretien-climatisation/	301 for both; pages merged
/docs/tarifs-2022.pdf	/tarifs/	301; the price list becomes a page
/promo-ete-2021.html	none	410 (or 404); offer ended
/contact.php	/contact/	301

Once the new site is live, test the map line by line: every old URL typed into a browser must lead, in a single hop, to the right new page. Search Console’s URL Inspection tool shows how Google sees a given address. In the following weeks, watch the indexing of the new URLs in Search Console and any unexpected rise in “not found” errors.

Getting your domain and logins back from a previous provider

This is the step that stalls the most redesigns in Morocco, and it has to be settled before anything else. A new site cannot go live at your address if you don’t control the domain name.

1. Who is the registrant?

The registrant (in French, the titulaire) is the legal owner of the domain name. For a .ma, ANRT, which manages the extension, defines it as the individual or legal entity that registered the name through a registrar. The registrant’s name appears in the WHOIS database of the .ma registry. For a .com, a search on ICANN’s lookup tool shows at least which registrar holds it; if the registrant’s details are hidden, ask your provider for a written copy of the domain record.

This check is not a formality. In its annual report on .ma domain names, ANRT says that most of the complaints it handles concern names registered by intermediaries in their own name, rather than their client’s. If your domain is in the name of the old agency or a former employee, sort it out before starting the redesign. One point that matters if you are based abroad: a .ma can be held by a foreigner, provided an administrative contact established in Morocco is designated, according to the same ANRT report.

2. You are the registrant: switch provider

According to ANRT, the registrant of an active .ma can change registrar at any time, subject to the .ma rules and their contractual commitments, and keeps the remaining registration period. It is common: 1,804 registrar changes were recorded in 2025. For a .com, the transfer uses an authorisation code, called the AuthInfo code; according to ICANN, your registrar must provide it within five calendar days of your request.

Two checks before starting the transfer. First, the expiry date: according to ANRT, 93.5% of .ma names registered in 2025 were registered for one year only. A domain that expires during a dispute with the old provider can slip away. Second, the lock: a .ma can be locked by the registrar, at the registrant’s request, against a change of registrar. It has to be lifted for the transfer, then put back once the domain has arrived.

3. The domain is in someone else’s name

Ask in writing for the domain to be transferred to your name. An active domain name can be voluntarily transferred from its registrant to a third party: ANRT recorded 711 such transfers in 2025. If the current registrant refuses or doesn’t reply, ANRT receives complaints about the registrant name shown in the WHOIS database of a .ma. Keep every piece of evidence: invoices, contract, messages showing the domain was bought for your company. Our domain name page explains how we take over an existing domain without taking the site offline.

4. The logins to gather

Access	What it is for during the redesign	What to obtain
The domain account	Changing settings, transferring	You as registrant, the expiry date, the transfer code if needed
The DNS zone	Pointing the domain to the new site without breaking anything else	A copy of every record, including the mail (MX) records
The hosting	Backing up the old site before any switch	A full backup of the files and the database
The site’s admin	Exporting text and images	An administrator account, or a content export
Email	Losing no messages	The list of addresses and where they are hosted
Google Business Profile	Updating the website link	The owner role in your name
Search Console and analytics	Taking inventory, monitoring the move	Owner access in your name

Email addresses deserve special attention. If your contact@your-company.ma mailboxes are hosted by the old provider, they depend on the mail (MX) records in your DNS zone, which ANRT describes as the domain’s mail relays. Pointing the website elsewhere without copying those records cuts off your email on launch day.

5. The message to send the old provider

Keep it factual, written and dated. A message like this is enough in most cases:

“Hello, we are preparing the redesign of our website your-company.ma. Please send us by [date]: the registrant name and expiry date of the domain, the transfer code or the logins to the domain account, a copy of the DNS zone, a full backup of the site and the list of email addresses. Please do not delete anything before our written confirmation.”

Do not cancel the old hosting until the new site is live and checked and your email works. Google follows the same logic for a hosting change: you shut down the old infrastructure only once nobody, neither visitors nor Google’s crawler, is using it any more.

Step by step: timeline and checklist

Here is the order we recommend, whoever your provider is. Only the build time changes with the type of provider.

When	What	Who
2 weeks before	The seven tests; check the registrant and the domain’s expiry date; request logins from the old provider	You
1 week before	Inventory: pages with clicks, links, PDFs; full backup; copy of the DNS zone	You and the new provider
Day 0	Complete brief: text, photos, pages to keep, logins	You
Build	New site on a test address, blocked from Google; redirect map	The provider: 5 working days on a subscription, 2 to 4 weeks with a freelancer, 1 to 3 months with an agency
Before the switch	Every page approved; forms tested; redirects ready; indexing block removed; email checked	You and the provider
Switch day	A quiet day for your business: domain pointed to the new site, redirects live, sitemap submitted	The provider
Week 1	Redirect map tested line by line, URL inspection, form, Google profile link	The provider, then you
Months 1 to 3	Track clicks, impressions and indexed pages; fix unexpected 404 errors	The provider
12 months and beyond	Redirects kept; old hosting cancelled as soon as everything is checked	You and the provider

The checklist

Print it, or keep it on your phone, and go through it with your provider before launch.

• The domain is in your name and does not expire in the next three months.
• You hold a full backup of the old site.
• The DNS zone has been copied, mail records included.
• The inventory of pages with clicks and links is done.
• Pages that work keep their topic, and their URL where possible.
• The redirect map covers every important URL, PDFs and images included.
• No mass redirect to the home page.
• Removed pages return a 404 or 410 error.
• Every page has its own title and description for Google.
• The site displays well on phones, and all three speed metrics are green.
• HTTPS is active everywhere, and the old HTTP address redirects to HTTPS.
• The form and the WhatsApp button reach someone who replies.
• The indexing block on the test version has been removed.
• The new sitemap has been submitted in Search Console.
• Your Google Business Profile links to the right page.
• You have approved every page before launch.

A redesign on the 399 DH a month plan: how it works

Having set out the rules for everyone, here is how we apply them. A redesign at Bzaf Studio goes through the same All-Inclusive Plan as a new build: 399 DH incl. VAT a month with a 12-month commitment, then month to month, or 4,550 DH incl. VAT paid yearly, which is 238 DH less than twelve monthly payments. There is no build fee: the first month is paid when you order, by bank transfer, with our bank details sent in the confirmation within 24 hours.

• Timeframe: 5 working days from the complete brief. Our terms of sale spell out what “complete” means: the text, the visuals, the information and the logins needed. For a redesign, access to the domain and the old site is part of it, which is why the recovery step described above comes before, not during.
• You approve every page before launch. Nothing is published without your written agreement; an email or a WhatsApp message is enough.
• The domain stays in your name. You are the declared registrant; we are only the technical contact. If your domain is with a previous provider, we take it over and the site stays online throughout; if it is registered in someone else’s name, we help you recover it before any transfer.
• The new site launches optimised for Google: titles, descriptions, speed, structured data and Search Console, on every page. Attach the inventory of your old site and the list of pages to keep to your brief: that is what lets us carry over what already works.
• What the plan includes: a showcase website of up to 30 pages, a custom design built for phones first, a blog, an FAQ, a contact form, a WhatsApp button, SEO on every page, a second language (French and Arabic, or French and English), your Google Business Profile, the legal pages, the domain name, hosting and maintenance with SSL, backups and small edits, and one blog article written for you every month.

Under our terms of sale, once paid in full, the site, its content and the domain name belong to you. If you order as a private individual, Moroccan law 31-08 gives you 7 days to withdraw.

It is the wrong fit in these cases, and we would rather say so up front:

• Your current site is an online shop, with a cart, payments and stock. The plan covers a showcase website; redesigning a shop is a different project.
• Your site has hundreds of indexed pages, a catalogue or a directory. Moving a large site is prepared section by section and goes beyond the plan’s 30 pages.
• You need custom development: a client area, a link to your management software, an app.
• Only one of the seven signs is red: a targeted fix is enough, and a redesign would be an unnecessary risk.
• You want to pay once and manage it yourself for five years or more: a one-off build by a reliable freelancer will cost less over time, provided you handle the updates.

We work from Marrakech for businesses across Morocco, from Casablanca to Tangier, and we reply within 24 hours on WhatsApp. Run the seven tests, note your red flags, then send us your website’s address: we will tell you whether a redesign is justified. To start yours, the order page takes five minutes.