Worked example
Worked example: a Southampton plumber’s first ninety days, modelled on a real garage account
A worked example, labelled as one: the plumber is a composite, because we do not yet have a Southampton trade client to publish. What is real is the plan and the scale, both taken from a Cheshire garage we have run since July 2026 and published, named, on our garage site. Those figures are marked wherever they appear here, and they belong to a different trade in a different city.
The starting point is the one most Southampton trades have: a one-page site, a profile with two reviews, and work that comes from Checkatrade and word of mouth.
By Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 6 October 2026
42 to 110
clicks in 28 days, before and after, on the reference account
21.8 to 4.7
position for the head term, reference account
1 to 21
Google reviews in ten weeks, reference account
15
enquiry actions in a month, reference account
The ninety days, week by week
What was done on the reference account, translated to a plumber
| Weeks | On the reference garage account | For the Southampton plumber |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 2 | Site rebuilt: a page per service, a page per town genuinely covered, the number one tap on a phone | Boiler repair, boiler installation, emergency plumber, bathrooms: one page each, plus Shirley, Bitterne, Totton and Eastleigh only if genuinely covered |
| 3 to 4 | Google Business Profile finished: category, every service, hours, photographs of real jobs | Same, with Gas Safe registration number on the profile and the site, linked to the register |
| 5 to 8 | Reviews asked for at the handover; one became twenty-one in ten weeks | Asked at the moment the heating comes back on, which is the best moment in any trade |
| 9 to 12 | One guide a month on a search people actually make; the MOT guide reached 8.2 | A guide on the boiler fault code people search in October, and one on the landlord gas safety certificate |
What the reference account actually did
Clicks 42 to 110, the head term from 21.8 to 4.7, and fifteen enquiry actions in a month
On the garage account the 28 days before the retainer brought 42 clicks from Google and the latest 28 brought 110. The head search went from an average position of 21.8 in the first fortnight to 4.7 in the latest four weeks. The profile went from one review to twenty-one. In the month from 3 September to 2 October the site recorded fifteen enquiry actions: nine WhatsApp taps, four calls and two forms, with 89 of 123 visits coming from organic search. The owner\u2019s own words and the honest column, including what did not work, are on that case study.
Translated to a Southampton plumber, labelled as expectation: the service pages and the profile showing within weeks, reviews building from the first month if they are asked for at the right moment, the head term moving over three to six months and more slowly than in Chester because the field is larger. The first number to watch is not clicks; it is enquiry actions, because a plumber\u2019s phone is the whole point.
Judge the method, not the story
The free audit runs the same measurements on your site
Every number on this page came from Search Console, the coverage sweep or a page-by-page crawl, and all three are free to repeat. The audit we run before quoting a Southampton business does exactly that, and you get the figures whether or not you hire us.
How to read this page
- The plumber is a composite; no Southampton plumber is named, described or implied.
- Every figure in the statistics and the table is from the Cheshire garage account, published on garageseo.co.uk with its own caveats, and is quoted here for scale only.
- A plumber in Southampton competes with more firms than a remapper in Chester, and we would expect the head term to move more slowly. Expectation, not promise.
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