How a $750K Plumbing Business Realised Its Website Was Invisible
David Krauter sat down with me on a Tuesday morning after a site visit to Seaview Plumbing in Southport. The owner, Mark, runs a solid operation - 12 staff, roughly $750,000 revenue last year, gcmag.com.au plenty of five-star word-of-mouth work. Yet Mark was still driving to job sites with printed directions from Google Maps because customers called to confirm directions rather than find him online.
That moment - seeing an owner with a thriving business who couldn’t rely on his website or local search listings - changed how I think about local SEO. Most business owners don’t realise that the way Google ranks local results is more about trust signals, local relevance and technical details than fancy keywords.
Seaview Plumbing’s website did the basics: it had a services page, an About page and a contact form. But the site wasn’t showing up for searches like "Gold Coast emergency plumber", "plumber Broadbeach" or even "backflow testing Burleigh Heads". Mark assumed a decent website and a Facebook page would be enough. He was wrong.
The Local Visibility Problem: Why Traditional SEO Alone Wasn't Cutting It
Two things were obvious after a quick audit:
- The Google Business Profile (GBP) was inconsistent - different phone numbers and addresses across directories. The website wasn’t built to capture local intent - missing suburb pages, no structured local data, slow on mobile.
Those are symptoms. The real challenge was this: Google’s local pack and map results favour businesses that demonstrate relevance, proximity and prominence. Seaview had none of those signals in the places that actually matter. Traditional SEO that chases national keywords wouldn’t move the needle on local leads.
Here are the cold facts from the pre-project baseline:
- Monthly organic visits (local keywords): 210 Monthly phone calls from website/GBP: 18 Top 3 local rankings for target suburbs: 0 out of 12 Estimated monthly revenue from online leads: $4,200
An Operational Fix: Targeting the Google Business Profile and Suburb-Level Pages
We decided not to waste time chasing content marketing awards. The strategy was simple and surgical - fix trust signals, capture local intent on the site, and make the GBP impossible to ignore.
The pillars of the approach were:
- GBP overhaul - clean NAP (name, address, phone) and category structure, weekly posts, photos and review management. Suburb-focused landing pages - 12 pages targeting Gold Coast suburbs with tailored content and local schema. Technical work - mobile speed optimisation, clear contact schema, service schema and localBusiness structured data. Review acquisition workflow - SMS + one-click links, reply templates and funneling reviews to high-impact keywords. Local citations audit - fix discrepancies across 30+ directories: Yellow Pages, TrueLocal, local chambers, and niche trade sites.
Think of the strategy as tidying the shopfront, adding clear shop windows for each suburb you serve and training the staff to ask for reviews. The online world rewards tidy, consistent businesses.
Implementing the Local SEO Overhaul: A 90-Day Timeline
We split the job into three 30-day sprints so the owner could still run jobs without disruption.
Days 1-30: Stop the leaky tap - GBP, citations and quick wins
- Claimed and verified the Google Business Profile. Consolidated two old listings into one verified profile. Resolved NAP inconsistencies on 32 directories. Result: consistent phone number and address across major directories. Added 25 high-quality photos - team at work, before/after shots and van shots with registration visible. Installed call tracking for online leads to measure actual phone conversions.
Days 31-60: Build the local shopfront - suburb pages and schema
- Created 12 suburb landing pages (Surfers Paradise, Broadbeach, Burleigh Heads, Southport, etc.). Each page had: Unique copy with service-specific headings, local references (e.g. "backflow testing for cafes in Broadbeach"), a map embed and FAQ addressing suburb-specific issues. Added LocalBusiness schema and Service schema for each page, plus geo-coordinates. Optimised images - geotags and compression for mobile speed.
Days 61-90: Turn visitors into customers - reviews, tracking and link-building
- Launched an SMS review flow. Team asked every satisfied customer for a review and we sent a one-click link to the GBP. Built five locally relevant links: two from Gold Coast business directories, one from a local trades association, one from a charity sponsorship, one from a community blog. Set up monthly reporting: calls, website form submissions, GBP queries and ranking snapshots for the 12 target keywords.
We kept the approach iterative: make a change, measure, tweak. No guesswork.
From 18 Calls to 85 Calls: Measurable Results in Six Months
Here are the results after six months, measured conservatively using call-tracking and CRM records.
- Organic local visits: +320% (from 210 to 882 per month) Phone calls tied to GBP and website: +372% (from 18 to 85 per month) Top 3 local rankings: 9 out of 12 target keywords Monthly revenue from online leads: increased from $4,200 to $32,400 New customer acquisition cost for online leads dropped from an estimated $235 to $42 GBP review count rose from 12 to 78, average rating 4.8
To put numbers on the financial impact: Seaview Plumbing closed 20 jobs sourced from online leads in month six. Average job value was $1,600. That’s an additional $32,000 in revenue that month. Project cost was $3,850 for the 90-day build plus $450/month ongoing for review management and monthly reporting. Payback happened inside the first month of results.
3 Local SEO Lessons Gold Coast Business Owners Need to Know
Here are the rules we learned the hard way - short, practical and tested on the ground.
Consistency wins before content. Google trusts businesses that look the same everywhere. Fix the phone number and address first. Think of citations as your business’s ID documents. If they conflict, Google hesitates. Suburb pages beat broad city pages for local intent. A "Gold Coast plumber" page competes with regional players. A "plumber Burleigh Heads - same-day service" page speaks directly to search intent and converts better. Reviews drive visibility and conversions. Reviews are not vanity metrics. A flow that turns 25% of satisfied customers into reviews will consistently bump your local rankings and increase calls.Analogy time: think of your online presence as a row of shopfronts along the Gold Coast highway. If some fronts show street numbers, others don’t, and one has a cracked window, customers go past. Make every shopfront tidy, clearly numbered and inviting.
How Your Business Can Replicate This Exact Local Search Success
If you run a tradie business, café or local service on the Gold Coast, you can follow this checklist. Small shops can implement most of it themselves. If you hire someone, make sure they prove results with numbers, not jargon.
Quick checklist to start this week
- Google Business Profile - verify and ensure exact NAP. Use the principal phone number, not a mobile that changes. Create suburb-specific pages for your top 8-12 service areas. Keep each page under 700-1,200 words with local details. Install call tracking and a CRM or at least a spreadsheet to record where leads came from. Ask for reviews in person and follow up with SMS links. Aim for 15+ in 90 days. Audit 20 major directories for inconsistent details and fix them. Add LocalBusiness and Service schema to service and contact pages. Compress images and check mobile speed - target under 3 seconds on 4G.
Intermediate moves that separate the serious from the hopeful
- Use structured FAQ schema on suburb pages for 'near me' questions. It helps capture featured snippets and voice search. Geo-target images - name files using suburb names, and include location captions. It’s a small signal that stacks up. Build partnerships with local suppliers and chambers for links and referral traffic that Google can count as endorsements. Track the intent behind queries - are they "emergency plumber" or "cheap plumber"? Use that data to price and pitch appropriately.
Applying these steps is like tuning an engine - little improvements add up into a noticeable performance boost.
Final Notes - What I Told Mark Over Coffee
I told Mark two blunt things that morning:
- You can’t treat your online presence like a brochure. It needs to actively work for you every day. Small, measurable fixes often beat giant content projects that never get finished.
Six months later, Mark stopped printing directions. He noticed fewer random calls asking "where are you based?" and more calls booking same-day work. The business feels more resilient - when a big commercial client drops off, the pipeline from local searches helps smooth the blow.
If you’re on the Gold Coast and run a local business, pick one suburb that matters most, fix the GBP and build a single well-optimised local page. If you want, I’ll walk through your listing and spot three quick wins you can do this week. No fluff - just practical fixes that put your phone back in the hands of customers, not your receptionist.