Overview
Client type: a local service business with a website that exists but barely gets found. Goal: qualified organic enquiries, not vanity traffic. Timeframe: 90 days. This is a sample plan built the way I would run a real audit — the numbers at the end are illustrative targets, not achieved results.
The challenge
- Service pages target no clear keywords — titles and headings describe the business, not what buyers search for.
- Technical debt: slow pages, crawl errors, thin internal linking, missing schema, no location pages.
- Blog content answers nobody’s question — it talks about the company instead of the buyer’s problem.
- No measurement: rankings and enquiries are not tracked, so nobody knows what is working.
Strategy
Fix what blocks ranking first, then publish what buyers search for, then earn authority. In that order — content on a broken site is wasted effort.
- Weeks 1–2 — Technical fixes: crawl errors, page speed, mobile usability, indexation, internal links, FAQ schema on money pages.
- Weeks 3–4 — Keyword map: 60 commercial + informational keywords grouped by service page, location page and blog. One primary keyword per page, no cannibalisation.
- Weeks 5–8 — On-page + content: title/meta rewrites, H-structure, image alt text, internal links, and 8 buyer-question articles.
- Weeks 9–12 — Authority + reporting: local listings and citations, review acquisition, and a weekly Search Console report (clicks, impressions, rankings, enquiries).
What success is measured on
- Organic clicks and impressions (Google Search Console), keyword rankings, qualified visits, and enquiries from organic search.
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals before vs after fixes.
Illustrative targets (not achieved results): +40% organic sessions in 90 days; top-10 rankings for 15 money keywords; a measurable enquiry flow from organic by week 10.
Key takeaway
SEO is not “publish more content.” It is technical soundness + useful information matched to search intent + a site that helps visitors take the next step — and enough time to judge it, because organic gains do not arrive in a week.