WHAT'S IN THIS CASE STUDY
The Challenge
This Adelaide plumbing business had decent, genuinely useful content on their site, but rankings had been flat for over a year despite steady effort. A technical audit revealed the real problem: duplicate pages created by a faulty URL structure, an unoptimised image library dragging load times past 5 seconds on mobile, and crawl errors preventing several service pages from being properly indexed at all.
No amount of additional content was going to fix rankings while Google itself was struggling to crawl and trust the site's basic structure.
The Strategy
We prioritised technical fixes first, since content and local SEO work would have been wasted effort on top of a broken foundation.
URL Structure & Duplicate Content Fix
Resolved a faulty URL parameter setup that was generating duplicate versions of the same pages, consolidating ranking signals onto single canonical URLs.
Site Speed Overhaul
Compressed and resized the entire image library, implemented lazy loading, and removed render-blocking scripts, cutting mobile load time significantly.
Crawl Error Resolution
Fixed broken internal links and server errors that had been blocking Google from properly indexing several key service pages.
XML Sitemap & Schema Cleanup
Rebuilt the XML sitemap to reflect the corrected structure and added proper schema markup, helping search engines understand the site accurately.
Timeline: Month by Month
Technical Audit
Full crawl and technical audit identified duplicate URLs, crawl errors, and speed issues capping rankings.
Structure & Speed Fixes
Resolved the URL duplication issue and began the site-wide image compression and speed overhaul.
Crawl Errors Resolved
Fixed broken links and server errors; resubmitted the corrected sitemap for recrawling.
Early Movement
First ranking improvements appeared as Google recrawled and reprocessed the corrected site structure.
Results Confirmed
12 keywords reached #1 position, with organic traffic up 165% and phone enquiries up 90% from the starting baseline.
The Results
| Metric | Before | After (5 Months) |
|---|---|---|
| #1 Keyword Rankings | 0 | 12 |
| Organic Traffic | Baseline | +165% |
| Phone Enquiries | Baseline | +90% |
"We'd been writing content for a year with barely any movement. Once the technical issues were sorted, rankings started climbing almost every week."
Key Takeaways
Technical issues cap everything else.Good content can't rank if search engines can't properly crawl and trust the site's structure.
Speed fixes compound with everything else.Faster load times supported better crawl efficiency and user experience simultaneously.
Results take a recrawl cycle to show.Technical fixes needed to be reprocessed by Google before their ranking impact became visible.
Growth was steady, not a spike.Rankings improved consistently month over month rather than jumping all at once.
Frequently Asked Questions
How did this plumbing business reach #1 rankings for 12 key terms?
By identifying and fixing technical SEO issues — including crawl errors, duplicate content, and slow page speed — that had been quietly preventing the site from ranking despite reasonable content quality.
What are technical SEO issues and why do they matter?
Technical SEO issues are problems with how a website is built and structured — such as broken links, slow load times, duplicate pages, or crawl errors — that prevent search engines from properly indexing and ranking otherwise good content.
Why did results take time to build rather than happening immediately?
Technical fixes need to be recrawled and reprocessed by Google before their ranking impact shows, which is why this case study's growth was steady and compounding rather than an instant jump.