The short answer. If a marketing company, lead service, or web designer just handed your website back to you, nothing is on fire yet. The site is probably still up and still ranking. What breaks in the first few weeks is usually small and quiet: a contact form still sending to the old company, a phone number that stops forwarding, a domain renewal on a card that no longer exists. Spend one afternoon on the checklist below, then decide what to do with the site. Do not rebuild it in a panic, and do not change its page addresses, because that is how a site loses the rankings it already has.
We wrote this after talking with a demolition company in November 2026 whose marketing company handed its WordPress site back to an account the owner controls. The steps are the same for an excavation, land clearing, septic, or site work company.
The afternoon checklist
1. Collect every login, in your name
You want your own login, with your own email address, for each of these:
- Domain registrar. Where the domain name is registered (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Squarespace Domains, and so on).
- DNS. Often the same as the registrar, but not always. This is where the settings live that point your domain at your website and your email.
- Hosting. Where the website files actually run.
- Website admin. For WordPress, the /wp-admin login with the Administrator role.
- Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
- Google Business Profile, as the owner, not just a manager.
If the company gives you a shared login with its own email address on it, change the email to yours and change the password the same day.
2. Confirm the domain is yours
Look up your domain at lookup.icann.org. The registrant details are often hidden for privacy, but you will see which registrar holds it and when it expires. Then log in to that registrar and make sure the domain sits in an account you control, with your card on file and auto-renew turned on. A lapsed domain takes your website and your email down together.
3. Make a full backup before you touch anything
Ask the host for a backup, or use a backup plugin in WordPress, and save a copy somewhere that is not the same hosting account. If anything goes wrong in the next month, this is how you get back to today.
4. Test the contact form and every phone number
This is the one that costs jobs. Fill out your own contact form and see where the message lands. Forms built by a marketing company often send to its inbox or its software first. Then call every phone number on the site. If one is a tracking number the old company owned, it may stop working when the account closes. Replace it with your own number on the site and on your Google listing.
While you are there, read the footer and the contact page. Old addresses and old phone numbers hang around on handed-back sites more often than you would think, and Google reads them.
5. Do not break your email
If your email address uses your domain (you@yourcompany.com), the DNS settings that deliver it live next to the settings that run the website. When anyone moves the website, those email records must be copied exactly. Ask whoever touches DNS to confirm the mail records before and after.
6. Get Search Console back, even if the old login is gone
Search Console shows which searches bring people to your site and which pages rank. If you cannot get the old access, you can verify yourself as a new owner by adding a DNS record at your registrar. The history comes with the site, not with the person, so you keep the past data.
7. Check who owns your Google Business Profile
Sign in to business.google.com with your own Google account. If the old company is the owner and you are only a manager, or you are not on it at all, ask them to transfer ownership. If they will not respond, Google lets you request ownership. As of November 2026, Google’s help page says the current owner has 3 days to respond before you may be able to claim it. The Google Business Profile guide covers the rest.
What not to do in the first month
- Do not change page addresses. If your pool removal page lives at /pool-removal/ and ranks on page one, keep that exact address in any redesign. If you must change it, set up a permanent (301) redirect from the old address to the new one.
- Do not delete pages because they look old. An ugly page that ranks is worth more than a pretty page that does not. Improve it in place.
- Do not move hosting and redesign in the same week. Move first, confirm everything works, then change the design.
- Do not let a plugin update run unattended on an old WordPress site. Back up first. Old themes and old plugins break on updates more often than new ones.
Moving the site to a new host
If you want the site somewhere you control, the move is usually quick for a small WordPress site: copy the files and the database, test it on the new host, then change the DNS to point at it. The part that matters for Google is that every page keeps the same address and the same content on the day you switch. Rankings follow the addresses, not the host.
If the site is a few years old and you are thinking of rebuilding anyway, a handover is a good moment to do it, as long as the new site keeps every address that already brings in calls.
What a handed-back site is worth
A site that has been up for years usually ranks for something. Before anyone tells you to start over, look in Search Console at the searches it already shows up for. For many contractors we review, two or three pages bring in most of the calls. Protect those, fix the phone numbers and forms, and add pages for the work you want more of.
If you want help checking yours, send us the address. We will look at the site, the forms, the phone numbers, and the Google listing, and tell you what to fix first. Two business days, no charge. Show me what you would fix.