From 154 to 721 Monthly Clicks: Rebuilding a London Property Certificates Site

All Landlord Certificates (ALC), a London-based property compliance company operating under SR Maintenance Ltd, provides safety certifications to landlords, letting agents, and property managers across London and the M25 area. Their services span Gas Safety Certificates (CP12), EICR electrical reports, Fire Risk Assessments, EPC certificates, PAT testing, fire alarm certificates, and emergency lighting compliance. The market is high-intent and legally driven, yet the site had been losing ground on Google for two straight years. When Khan IT took over, organic traffic had fallen to around 154 monthly visitors. Twelve months later the site records 721 monthly clicks and 107,000 monthly impressions in Google Search Console.

The challenge

When we audited the site, the data told a clear story. Semrush showed a red downward trend stretching across two full years, with traffic dropping from roughly 1,700 monthly visitors to just 154. The domain had age and history. The execution was the problem.

On the website itself, the design was outdated and not built for conversion, service page content was thin, and critical pages were missing entirely. Searches for specific certificates in specific London boroughs returned nothing from this site. On-page fundamentals were ignored: weak title tags, missing or duplicated meta descriptions, and inconsistent heading structure. Internal linking was poor, pages sat in isolation with no hierarchy, and the mobile experience fell below standard in a market where most landlords search on their phones.

Off the page, local citations were inconsistent. The business name, address, and phone number varied across directories, which damaged local search trust signals. The backlink profile was shallow, no blog or content strategy existed, and the Google Business Profile was not fully optimized for the range of services offered. In one sentence: a legitimate, established business in a high-demand local market was invisible on Google because the site gave search engines nothing to work with and gave visitors no reason to trust it.

Our strategy

We built a multi-phase local SEO strategy covering technical foundations, content, authority signals, and local visibility. All five phases ran across the 12-month engagement.

Phase 1: Foundation fix

• A full technical SEO audit covering crawlability, indexation, Core Web Vitals, and site architecture.
• A conversion-focused website redesign with a clean layout, fast load speed, mobile-first structure, and a clear booking flow.
• Content rewrites across all core service pages with proper keyword targeting, heading structure, and internal links.
• Meta titles and descriptions written from scratch for every key page, each targeting a specific real search query.
• A cleaned XML sitemap, submitted and monitored in Google Search Console, plus LocalBusiness, Service, and FAQ schema on all key pages.

Phase 2: Keyword research and content gaps

Research across primary service terms, location variants, and long-tail compliance queries revealed clear gaps. Primary terms like "gas safety certificate London" and "EICR London" had strong volume but intense competition. Borough-level terms carried strong local intent with far less competition and became a priority. HMO-specific searches were underserved across the entire competitive landscape, and several important service pages were simply missing.

Phase 3: New pages and content creation

• Dedicated pages for each certificate type with full service descriptions, transparent pricing, accreditation mentions, and clear calls to action.
• Borough landing pages targeting high-demand London areas, capturing landlords searching in their specific location.
• An HMO compliance page for the distinct legal requirements of Houses in Multiple Occupation, plus a commercial certificates page for business property owners.
• Blog posts built around the compliance questions landlords actually type into Google, written to rank and to convert. Our SEO-friendly website structure principles shaped how these pages linked together.

Phase 4: Local SEO and citation building

We ran a full NAP audit across every major UK directory, correcting or removing inconsistent listings, then built new citations across authoritative UK business directories, local London directories, and property and trade platforms. We optimized the Google Business Profile with full service categories, updated descriptions, photo uploads, and Q&A responses, and implemented a review strategy to grow verified customer feedback. A consistent citation footprint is the backbone of any local SEO program, as our local SEO checklist lays out.

Phase 5: Link building

• Targeted outreach to UK property blogs, landlord associations, and compliance resource sites.
• Guest content placements on relevant UK trade and property websites.
• Local business and trade directory submissions across the gas, electrical, and fire safety sectors.
• A strengthened internal link architecture so authority flowed from strong pages to weaker ones.

The results

The Google Search Console data shows the outcome. Both the before state (a Semrush domain overview showing a two-year decline to 154 monthly visitors) and the after state (721 monthly clicks and 107,000 monthly impressions) are unedited screenshots from the actual client account.

The geographic split confirms the fit: 80% of organic visitors come from the UK, matching the service area directly, with a further 15% from the United States (likely UK expats or diaspora landlords with London properties) and the remaining 5% spread across other markets. GSC confirms 721 total clicks and 107,000 total impressions in the tracked period, a 0.7% average CTR, a 40.1 average position, and consistent daily traffic with no artificial spikes.

Key takeaways

• A two-year declining traffic trend is reversible. Consistent, methodical execution beats any shortcut.
• Content gaps are the biggest missed opportunity for established local businesses. This site had domain history but not the right pages, and adding the right content moved the needle faster than anything else.
• Local citation consistency matters more than most owners realize. Fixing inconsistent NAP data had a measurable impact on local rankings, a pattern we see repeatedly in small business SEO work.
• The 0.7% CTR points to the next opportunity. With 107,000 monthly impressions, lifting CTR to 1.5% would more than double clicks without earning a single new ranking.
• An average position of 40.1 is a starting point, not a ceiling. The keyword footprint is established, and the next phase moves the strongest pages into the top 10.

If your established business is invisible in a market where demand already exists, the fix is usually the site and the content, not the market. Request a free SEO audit and we will show you where the gaps are and how our local SEO team would close them.