Case study / Local Media & Events · WordPress → Next.js Rebuild
America's Economic Forum.
Migrated a Mobile, AL economic-forum media brand off WordPress onto a video-led, schema-rich 15-page Next.js site — with its existing CRM lead capture kept intact.
fig. 01 — Homepage — video hero, 'For The People Building The Gulf Coast'
What the build
actually covers.
Measurement window pending — see §08 for the 30/60/90 reporting plan.
What the project
needed to do.
America's Economic Forum is a Gulf Coast media brand out of Mobile, Alabama that convenes the entrepreneurs and business leaders building the regional economy through monthly in-person forums. Campbell Digital Studio migrated it off an aging WordPress/Elementor site onto Next.js 14 on Vercel, live since July 2026, growing it from a handful of pages to a 15-page editorial platform: a video-led homepage, a Featured Voices hub with individual leader profiles, a Gulf Coast Economy content hub, dedicated Events, Venue, Speaker, and Sponsor pages, and more. The client's #1 asset — email capture into GoHighLevel — was preserved untouched so submissions keep flowing straight into their CRM. Every page emits a single JSON-LD @graph (Organization, WebSite, VideoObject, FAQPage, Person, Event) that passed Google's Rich Results Test, and titles, meta, and schema are bound to one source of truth so they can never drift.
America's Economic Forum was running on an aging WordPress/Elementor site, and the client's single most important asset was the email list that fills the room at each monthly forum. The rebuild had to deliver a faster, more credible media brand — video-led, findable in search, structured so Google understands what the forum is — without breaking or migrating the lead-capture pipeline the business depends on, and without a risky, irreversible cutover.
The one thing the client cared most about — the email list — kept working through the entire migration, with zero pipeline changesWhat moved the needle
What it looks like,
on screen.
The deliverables,
line by line.
Campbell Digital Studio rebuilt the site on Next.js 14 and shipped it to Vercel, live since July 2026. The lead pipeline — GoHighLevel forms feeding the client's CRM — was preserved exactly as it was, so not a single submission route changed. Around it the studio built a 15-page editorial platform: a video hero re-encoded from the client's own footage, a Featured Voices hub with individual leader profiles, a Gulf Coast Economy content hub, and dedicated Events, Venue, Speaker, and Sponsor pages, each driven by single-source data files so nothing can fall out of sync. The search layer is a per-page JSON-LD @graph (Organization, WebSite, VideoObject, FAQPage, Person, Event) that passed Google's Rich Results Test, with titles, meta, and schema all reading from one source of truth. The DNS cutover was documented with a one-click rollback to the old host before the flip.
- WordPress/Elementor → Next.js 14 rebuild on Vercel, with a documented DNS cutover and a preserved one-click rollback path to the old host
- Lead capture kept intact — the client's existing GoHighLevel (LeadConnector) forms flow straight into their CRM, untouched by the migration
- Video-led homepage — the client's founder promo re-encoded into a muted, looping, caption-free hero, with a full captioned 'see the room' film and a reduced-motion poster fallback
- Featured Voices hub with individual Gulf Coast leader profiles, driven by a single data file so home-page excerpts and full profiles can never disagree
- Gulf Coast Economy content hub — a set of on-the-record economy pages establishing topical authority for the brand
- Dedicated Events, Venue, and Speaker pages, with event schema that auto-emits once a confirmed date and venue are set
- One JSON-LD @graph per page (Organization / WebSite / WebPage / BreadcrumbList, plus earned VideoObject, FAQPage, and Person entities) — Google Rich Results Test: PASS
- SEO-mirror invariant — every page's title, meta description, and schema read from one PAGES source of truth, so metadata and structured data cannot drift apart
- $0 keyword foundation — a keyword universe grounded in real Google Autocomplete, scored by intent and difficulty, with one primary and two secondaries per page and no cannibalization
- Sitemap, robots, and Indexing-API submission wired for search from launch
- Next.js 14 / React 18 / Tailwind on Vercel
How the build
earns the call.
Every page ships a single JSON-LD @graph with @id-nested entities, so America's Economic Forum, its website, its monthly event, its venue, and its featured voices resolve as one connected organization rather than a set of unrelated pages — and earned entity types (VideoObject on the film, FAQPage on the questions, Person on each leader profile) attach only where they're true. The whole set passed Google's Rich Results Test with zero issues. Titles, meta descriptions, and structured data are bound to a single PAGES source so they can't drift, the keyword foundation was built at $0 from real Google Autocomplete with no page-to-page cannibalization, and the sitemap was submitted and pinged through the Indexing API at launch. Conversion is deliberately funneled to one action — joining the email list — through the preserved CRM forms.
Gives a Gulf Coast media brand a modern, video-led site that reads as the real thing instead of a page-builder template — while protecting the one asset the business runs on, its email list, straight through the migration. The site is newly launched, so this is the foundation, not a results report: a faster platform, a search layer Google can actually parse, and a content architecture (voices, economy, events) that can compound as the forum grows. Because the cutover shipped with a documented rollback, the whole move was reversible from minute one.
The client came in on WordPress/Elementor with one goal that mattered above all others — grow the email list that fills the room. So the rebuild kept the lead pipeline exactly where it already worked (GoHighLevel forms flowing straight into the client's CRM) and rebuilt everything around it on Next.js: a faster, video-led site that reads as a real media brand instead of a page-builder template. The harder, invisible work was structure — every page ships a single JSON-LD @graph so Google reads America's Economic Forum, its events, its venue, and its featured voices as one connected entity, and every page's title, description, and schema are locked to a single source of truth so they can't drift apart. Campbell Digital Studio ran the migration, the content architecture, and the search foundation end to end.Studio rationale
Metrics, captured
at 30 / 60 / 90 days.
Tracking dashboard captures GSC + GA4 at 30 / 60 / 90 days. Report publishes here on day 90 — view tracking spec