{"id":100384,"date":"2020-03-05T14:09:17","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T20:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/?p=100384"},"modified":"2025-05-14T13:32:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T18:32:34","slug":"genesis-for-small-businesses-a-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/case-studies\/genesis-for-small-businesses-a-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Genesis for Small Businesses: A Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Rebecca Gill<\/a> is a well-known leader in the WordPress community, and she\u2019s been building websites and offering SEO expertise for more than 15 years. While numerous tech trends have come and gone over that period, The Genesis Framework<\/a> has remained a constant for her since her agency\u2019s launch in 2009. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those new to the WordPress ecosystem, Genesis<\/a> is the most popular framework for building WordPress themes in the market today. At its core, Genesis is a code framework library and toolkit used to facilitate the development of performant WordPress themes, but it\u2019s really much more than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike other theme frameworks, Genesis offers both designers and developers a quick and easy way to build beautiful, professional-grade WordPress themes that load super fast, and its sleek, simple approach to theme creation is one of the reasons it\u2019s become so popular. Today, Genesis-built themes are among the most widely used within the WordPress community and Genesis itself has a global and active community of developers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Digital marketing executive and SEO Consultant Rebecca Gill has been building websites and offering SEO expertise for more than 15 years<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Rebecca, Genesis has also been central to her consulting business, which has helped thousands of clients over the years. Those clients have ranged from small, mom-and-pop shops in need of their first website, all the way to enterprise-level customers looking for help refreshing their outdated, legacy web properties. No matter what they\u2019re looking for, Rebecca said, Genesis-built themes are often the right fit for the project. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGenesis themes are just so flexible,\u201d she said, \u201cthey let me build really great-looking sites and get my customers up and running incredibly fast.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent example of this was a client Rebecca took on in late 2019, who had requested an SEO website audit. It didn\u2019t take long to see that this particular client was in need of more than a quick SEO check-up. The website infrastructure was so outdated, a complete refresh was required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe site was really kind of a hot mess,\u201d Rebecca said. \u201dIt was being hosted by another party, so the client didn\u2019t have full control, and basically, they needed me to move them over to a new environment and do some serious clean up.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, she did just that. Rebecca moved the client to a new hosting provider, and then, working in a staging environment, she used the Genesis-built Mai Law<\/a> theme as the foundation for a new site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was able to bring all the existing content over as is, and make the site more usable\u2014for both humans and search engines, because both were clearly having trouble doing so previously,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebecca also performed additional, minor maintenance, which included cleaning up the client\u2019s overrides for red blue text, tweaking existing meta titles, and configuring Yoast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut at the heart of the website clean up,\u201d she said, \u201cit was really just the theme.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 And for such a relatively light lift, the results paid dividends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe site saw an immediate burst of traffic,\u201d Rebecca said, \u201cand it wasn\u2019t just at that moment, this was sustained traffic.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, after the new site launched in December, the traffic boost was so significant, the site saw a 1000% increase in page views between November 2019 and December 2019 and December 2018 and December 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

November to December 2019 Growth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

December 2018 to December 2019 Growth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The underlying reason, Rebecca said, was the strong code base found in Genesis-built themes like Mai Law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGenesis has an incredibly strong code base, and it\u2019s solid from both an SEO and a security standpoint,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has everything you need to launch a healthy website.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also makes for quick work. The client mentioned above came in as a lead in mid-October, and the site relaunch went live on December 2.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy clients usually come to me because they need help cleaning up a mess,\u201d Rebecca said. \u201cIt\u2019s a usability issue, it\u2019s code they can\u2019t easily change, maybe they\u2019re struggling with their current developer.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like I get to liberate them from those problems and many more. Using a Genesis-built theme, I\u2019m able to give them the freedom to do what they truly want with their sites because suddenly, they have an independent theme that\u2019s easy to tweak and customize to fit their needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want to find out more about the Genesis Framework and the ways you can put it to use? Visit <\/em><\/strong>WP Engine<\/em><\/strong><\/a> to find out more and check out our whitepaper: <\/em><\/strong>Getting Started with the Genesis Framework<\/em><\/strong><\/a> for an in-depth guide to using Genesis for your website. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebecca Gill is a well-known leader in the WordPress community, and she\u2019s been building websites and offering SEO expertise for more than 15 years. While numerous tech trends have come and gone over that period, The Genesis Framework has remained a constant for her since her agency\u2019s launch in 2009.  For those new to the…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"featured_media":73502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1295],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genesis"],"yoast_head":"\nGenesis for Small Businesses: A Case Study<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"See how digital marketing executive and SEO consultant Rebecca Gill uses the Genesis Framework to quickly build fast, great-looking sites for her clients.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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