Being findable when nobody searches for a contractor. 320% more monthly clicks, up every month.
This general contractor rebuilds apartment and condominium buildings, often after construction defect claims. Its buyers rarely type contractor into Google, and much of its work is tied up in litigation, so it cannot be shown off. I picked up the SEO at the start of 2026, at a point where the site barely registered. From February to August, monthly clicks grew 320%, and every month beat the one before it.
Results
Google clicks
Google impressions
A good average on almost no data
February 2026, the first complete month on record, brought only a modest number of clicks from roughly 1,600 impressions. The average position looked healthy at around 9, but on numbers that small it said very little about reach. In the first three months of data, the site appeared for only a few hundred different queries.
The harder problem was who buys. Projects tend to begin with an engineering investigator, a defect attorney, or a resident who spots water damage and reports it to the board. None of them start by searching for a builder. On top of that, the work is often confidential because of litigation, there was no blog yet, and project write-ups were off the table.
Follow the referral chain back to the first search
The work began with what could and could not be said in public, then traced each referral back to the person who first goes looking.
- 01
Agree what can and cannot be said
Onboarding in January 2026 recorded the core services: putting right construction defects and repairing building exteriors, capital works on ageing buildings, and jobs with difficult access. It also listed the audiences, from engineers and attorneys to property managers and institutional owners, and set one firm rule: no project details. The client's goal was simple: anyone looking for a firm like this should find it.
- 02
Map three layers of buyer
I split the audience into three: the professionals who refer the work, the boards and owners who approve and pay for it, and the residents who notice the damage first. Each layer needed its own entry point, because a defect attorney and a worried unit owner phrase the same problem in completely different ways.
- 03
Plan the site around intent
I produced a page-by-page plan of more than fifty URLs and their target keywords: service pillars, pages for the major metro areas served, and pages for each audience and property type. Over thirty primary keywords were matched to pages according to what the searcher wants, so each page has one clear job.
- 04
Write for situations, not services
I added more than eighty informational keywords in about a dozen clusters, built around real moments such as a roof leaking into a unit or an engineer's report landing on a board's desk. A blog plan of roughly fifteen topics, all safe to publish given the litigation, was split by audience and backed by a content gap review. A mid-year performance review followed in July.
Top-three rankings up 610%
Clicks went up in each of the six months from March to August, reaching 320% above February's level in August. Average position ended almost where it started, near 9 or 10, but on roughly 2,800% more impressions, which is a very different achievement. Comparing the first three months of data with the latest three, top-three keywords grew 610%, page-one keywords 360%, and clicks per window about 200%.
The resident layer earned its place. One article, about rainwater getting into a condo unit from above, drew roughly 730 clicks over the whole period, and only the homepage did better. The resident who first notices damage is often where a reconstruction project really begins, long before a board appoints anyone.
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