Clone my old site: how to rebuild an outdated website with AI
“Can I just clone my old site?” is the question we hear most. Usually it means the same thing: the website works, the products are right, the photos are fine — it simply looks a decade old and nobody answers the enquiries. You do not want a blank page. You want the site you already have, rebuilt properly. Here is how that is done with AI, and where it goes wrong.
Why cloning beats starting from scratch
The expensive part of a redesign is almost never the design. It is the content: product names, specifications, certificates, factory photos, contact details, the wording your customers already recognise. On an established site that content took years to accumulate, and retyping it into a fresh template is where redesign projects stall for months.
Cloning inverts the order. The rebuild starts from your live pages, so your content arrives on day one and you spend your effort on the parts that actually need judgement — what to cut, what to rewrite, what to add.
It also protects what search engines already know about you. Keeping your page structure, headings and URL patterns close to the original means far less risk of losing rankings than dropping everything into an unfamiliar template.
What “cloning a website” actually means
It does not mean stealing someone’s code or database. A clone is a rebuild: the crawler visits your pages the way a browser does, reads the visible structure, text, images, navigation and favicon, and produces a new, editable website that reproduces them. Server-side code, admin systems and licensed third-party software are not copied.
That distinction matters legally. Clone only sites you own or have written permission to copy. Reputable tools refuse the rest — Web Salesperson automatically rejects banking and financial-login sites, gambling, adult content, pharmacy and weapons sites, and any attempt to impersonate a brand, before it crawls a single page.
Step by step: cloning your own site
1. Take stock before you clone
Open your current site and list the pages that earn their keep: home, products or services, about, contact, and any page that ranks or gets shared. Note the pages nobody reads. A rebuild is the cheapest moment you will ever get to delete them.
2. Paste the address
The builder crawls the site and reconstructs it as an editable copy — text, images, layout, menus, even the original favicon so browser tabs still look like you. Larger sites take a few minutes.
3. Compare, page by page
Put the original and the clone side by side and read them together. Automated rebuilds usually stumble in predictable places: slideshows, embedded videos, PDF catalogues, pop-up forms and anything that loaded only after a scroll. Fixing them page by page is faster than a general “make it better” pass.
4. Edit like a document
Click a headline and retype it. Click a photo and upload a better one. Select a paragraph and ask the built-in AI to shorten it, translate it or rewrite it for customers rather than for your engineers. This is the step where a clone stops being a copy and becomes an improvement.
5. Make sure it works on a phone
Most old business sites were designed for desktop screens. Check the mobile view before you go live — that is where the majority of your visitors and almost all your WhatsApp enquiries come from.
6. Add the part your old site never had
A rebuilt brochure is still a brochure. The reason to rebuild at all is to add an assistant that reads your whole site and answers visitors instantly — in their language, at 2am, capturing name, phone number, company and what they need, so you wake up to qualified enquiries instead of a silent contact form.
What carries over, and what you should redo by hand
Usually carries over
- Page text and headings
- Photos and product images
- Navigation and page structure
- Favicon and basic colours
- Downloadable catalogues and documents
Check or redo by hand
- Contact and enquiry forms
- Slideshows, sliders and embedded video sizing
- Anything behind a login
- Payment and shopping-cart flows
- Analytics and tracking codes
Before you switch your domain over
- · Click every menu item and button on the clone.
- · Send a test message through each form and confirm it arrives.
- · Keep the same page addresses where you can, and redirect the ones you changed.
- · Give each page a unique title and description.
- · Submit a sitemap in Google Search Console after the switch.
- · Keep the old site reachable for a week in case something was missed.
Common questions
Is cloning a website legal?
Cloning a site you own, or one you have written permission to copy, is fine. Copying somebody else’s site to pass it off as yours is not, and we block it.
Will I lose my Google rankings?
Not if you keep your content and page addresses, and redirect anything you rename. Rankings usually wobble for a week or two after any move, then settle.
Can I keep my domain and email?
Yes. Once you own the rebuilt site you point your existing domain at it, and mailboxes are recreated before the mail records are moved so nothing bounces.
How long does it take?
The clone itself takes minutes. Reviewing and tidying a small business site is typically an afternoon’s work.
Clone your old site and see it for yourself
Building and editing is free. You only pay if you decide to own the finished website.