Behind the Results.

Probably not the same numbers, and I'd be wary of anyone who promised them. The CNC project was a recovery: the demand and the authority were already there, and fixing the technical damage let the site win back what it had lost. A new shop starts with no visibility at all, and an established business may already rank for its main terms. What I can assess before we start is how much search demand exists, who you're up against, where you stand today and how easily changes can be made on your site.

I record when each change goes live and which pages it touches, then compare those pages and their queries with the period before, and with the same weeks last year if your business is seasonal. Pages I haven't changed give a rough baseline. I also ask what else happened: a price change, an ad campaign, a trade fair. More impressions show visibility, not success; what counts is enquiries or sales from organic search. Where I can't connect a result to revenue, I don't claim it.

Only if repairing it would cost more than replacing it, and that's rarer than most people expect. Every migration puts rankings at risk, and a site that has already been through several often carries the damage. On the CNC project the answer was recovery first: fix the technical problems, improve the core service and product pages, and restructure only where the structure was clearly holding the site back. URLs that already rank or attract links stay where they are unless there's a strong reason to move them.

Then the work starts with demand rather than diagnosis. I look at what your customers actually search for and which of those searches you can compete for, then plan pages around them instead of mirroring your internal categories. The technical basics matter more than usual: search engines need to find, crawl and index the right pages from the start, and analytics and Search Console should be in place before launch. Early on, look for indexed pages and growing impressions. Sales from organic search take longer, and nobody can honestly promise when.

Some projects are covered by a confidentiality agreement, and some clients simply prefer not to be named. In those cases I describe the type of business, the problems, how I approached them and the work I did, but not the company, its data, its internal documents or screenshots of its accounts. I can't share that material privately either unless the client agrees. Where an anonymous case study needs a visual, I use illustrative artwork, not original client material, so please read those images as illustrations rather than evidence.