The business is a UK construction group with seven divisions covering plant hire, ready mix concrete, aggregates, demolition, earthworks, vehicle rental and sales. I joined in mid-March 2026 as Group SEO Executive, working remotely, with SEO as the core remit and Google Ads as supporting scope.
Period: mid-March to August 2026
Scope: 7 divisions, one website
Channels: organic search
Tools: GA4, Search Console, Ahrefs
Baseline and tracking. Ran the site audit, built the keyword research and launched Ahrefs Rank Tracker on a fixed 251-keyword list on 10 April.
Technical fixes. Resolved 13 or more issues across pagination, heading structure, redirect chains, PageSpeed (LiteSpeed Cache), image alt text and security headers.
On-site optimisation. Built a 41-page programme and published updates to the seven core division pages on 16 June. Completed the internal-link map for the rest.
Content briefs. Wrote more than 40 briefs, each mapped to the commercial page it supports.
GEO and AI search. Built the content briefs for AI-answer retrieval: early comparison answers for featured snippets and AI Overviews, FAQ schema, entity coverage and first-hand expertise requirements. Added AI Overviews and AI Mode reporting to the monthly report.
Supporting scope. Audited the Google Ads account and designed a restructure that an independent specialist reviewed before it went live on 25 August.
Reporting. Produced a 24-slide monthly report and a 19-slide six-month review.
Rankings moved when work was published. Average position improved from 18.0 to 15.0 in the month the core pages went live, then eased to 16.1 by August.
Rankings step up, then hold. Most of the gain on the tracked list arrived around 5 May, when new local pages came online.
Organic search converts well. Organic Search was 24.6% of August sessions and close to half of all key events, with a 5.03% key-event rate.
Limits. Search Console clicks ended near the March baseline (5.31K to 5.06K).
Organic Search: 7,339 sessions, 24.6% of sessions, 5.03% key-event rate
Other channels were outside the scope of the SEO programme, so results are quoted for Organic Search only.
Each programme starts from the pages that carry commercial intent, ties every piece of content to one of them, and reports numbers from the platform of record.
Plant hire 14, Demolition 11, Ready mix 7, Aggregates 5, Earthworks 2, Vehicle rental 1, Vehicle sales 1. Seven core division pages were published on 16 June. The other 34 pages were prepared and in the client's review queue at the end of August.
404 audit. Cross-referenced Ahrefs Web Analytics with GA4 landing pages and found 68 broken URLs, mostly sold-vehicle listings. The /disclaimer/ page was still receiving 162 real sessions a month.
Cost mismatch. GA4 showed about 35% more Google Ads cost for August than Google Ads itself, with identical clicks and impressions. I reported the platform figure and flagged the import.
Verify before escalating. A rank-tracker export appeared to show broken URLs. I checked the live pages and their canonical tags first, found nothing wrong and did not raise it.
For September 2026 to February 2027 I scoped 42 on-site pages at seven a month and 30 content briefs that mix informational, commercial and transactional intent. Each brief names the page it supports.
A brief for a contractor-focused guide on the aggregates muck away service page (July 2026). Each brief covers: target keywords, target audience, search intent, core message, featured snippet answer, metadata and URL, competitor pages reviewed, H2 content structure, internal linking plan, E-E-A-T requirements, image and FAQs, schema and done-when checks.