Case study
Renovation SEO Case Study: Three Times the Traffic in Six Months
Of the nine engagements published here, this renovation SEO case study is the one closest to an Australian trade business. Same category of buyer, same kind of job value, same reliance on being found at the moment somebody decides to spend money on their house. The market is American and the local mechanics are missing, but the shape of the problem is recognisable.
- $990
- Entry price, published in full
- 30 days
- Notice to leave. No lock-in
- 1pm to 6pm
- AEST, senior-led, contactable
- Organic traffic
- 9,700a month
- Keywords
- 4,700ranking
- Top three
- 541positions
- Referring domains
- 442
- Domain rating
- 37
- Traffic value
- $9,900a month
Six months, and a curve that turned quickly
The chart runs October 2023 to April 2024. Traffic goes from roughly 3,000 organic visits a month to 9,700.
That is a faster turn than the year-long engagements in this set, and there is a reason it can happen in a home services category. The searches are finite. There are only so many ways to ask about a bathroom renovation cost, a kitchen timeline, a permit question or a contractor comparison, and once a site has covered them properly there is not much tail left to chase. Contrast the parenting site, where 26,700 ranking keywords were still climbing after two years because the category has no floor.
Finite categories reward completeness, and they reward it faster. That is good news for a renovation business and bad news for anyone selling you an indefinite content retainer in a small niche.
The efficiency number: 541 top three positions on 442 referring domains
This is the ratio worth staring at. More top three rankings than referring domains, on a domain rating of 37.
Two things produce that. The searches being won are ones where competing pages are thin, and the pages built for them answer the question properly rather than circling it. In home services specifically, an enormous amount of the ranking content is written by people who have never done the work: cost pages with no real numbers, process pages that skip the permit, comparison pages that will not name a downside.
A builder who publishes what a job actually costs, what it actually takes and when it actually goes wrong outranks that material without needing authority, because the bar is low and specificity is rare.
That is not a content strategy so much as a willingness to put real numbers in public. Most builders will not, because a published price range invites an argument with a customer who read the low end. The ones who publish the range and then explain what moves a job from one end of it to the other get the ranking and a better calibrated enquiry at the same time.
Where the traffic value sits
$9,900 a month against 9,700 visits, so roughly a dollar a visit. That is solidly commercial, well above the sixteen cents on the parenting site, below the $1.83 on the car rental engagement.
For a trade that reads correctly. Renovation searches mix research with intent. Somebody pricing a bathroom in six months and somebody booking a quote next week use overlapping terms, and the traffic value averages the two.
The practical version for an Australian builder: the research traffic is not waste. It is the fourteen month window before the job, and the business that answered the early questions is the one on the shortlist when the quote goes out. That is the argument made in full on the SEO for builders page.
What is missing from this chart, and it is the important part
None of this was local search. 95.8 per cent of the traffic is United States, and the engagement did not involve a Google Business Profile, a map pack position, service area targeting or review velocity.
For an Australian renovation business that is most of the job. A builder in Geelong is not primarily competing on national content. They are competing in the three-pack for the suburbs they serve, and on organic pages tied to real places. The technical and content method on this page transfers directly. The local half is a separate body of work, described on the local SEO page.
So read this as evidence that the content and structural side has been run properly in a comparable category, not as evidence about map pack performance, which it cannot speak to at all.
What this costs
A renovation business covering one service area usually starts on Local at $990 a month. A builder working several suburbs with more than one service line typically needs Growth at $1,990, because the page count and the link work both go up. Published in full on the SEO pricing page, with no lock-in and 30 days notice.
Run the arithmetic on your own margin rather than your revenue. On a $45,000 bathroom at a 25 per cent gross margin you are making $11,250 a job, so Growth at $23,880 a year needs roughly two extra jobs to clear, and one to cover most of it. If your average job is smaller than that, the honest answer may be Local or nothing at all.
Questions
Questions we get asked
Straight answers, including the uncomfortable ones. Anything else goes to the person who does the work.
Ask your own questionSix months seems fast. Is that normal?
It is fast, and the category is why. A finite set of searches can be covered quickly. A broad category takes far longer, and the parenting case study in this portfolio sat flat for about eighteen months before it moved.
We already rank for our own business name. Is that enough?
No, and it is the most common mistake in trades. Ranking for your name captures people who already know you. Everything on this chart is people who did not.
Would you publish our numbers like this?
Only with your permission, and only the ones that are real. None of the clients on this site are named because none agreed to be. If you want to be a named reference later, that is a conversation, not an assumption.
Our work is all referral. Why bother?
Sometimes you should not, and we will say so. Referral businesses with full books and no growth plan rarely need this. The case for search is when referrals are lumpy, or when the jobs coming in are smaller than the jobs you want.
How many pages did this take?
The number is less useful than the coverage. What mattered was that the finite set of real questions in the category ended up answered properly, rather than a page count being hit for its own sake.
Does this prove you can rank us in our suburbs?
No. It proves the content and technical side works in a comparable category. Map pack performance is a different argument, and the city and trade pages on this site are where it is made.
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No automated PDF, no obligation, no sales call unless you ask. If your market is too thin to justify paying anyone, that is what it will say, and you will have lost nothing but the four fields.
- Turnaround
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- Follow-up
- No sales call unless you ask
What clients say
In their own words
Upwork reviews, reproduced unedited apart from the spelling of Arbaz’s name.
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