SEO Case Study — Field Report Sydney, NSW · Independent Practice Project
Case Study

Keyword Research & Technical SEO Audit

Water King Plumbing

Where actual search demand and site readiness were pulled apart, compared, and mapped back together.

Role SEO Specialist (independent audit)
Tools Screaming Frog, manual keyword research
Scope 100 keywords · ~80 crawled URLs
Site waterkingplumbing.com.au

Headline Finding

29/100
Keywords by search intent
of all researched keywords were suburb-level local searches — the single largest category found. The site has zero dedicated suburb pages to catch them.

Objective

Assess the site's on-page and technical health against real customer search behaviour across Sydney and surrounding suburbs, and identify the highest-impact opportunities for organic visibility — not just a list of crawl errors, but a prioritized read on what actually moves the needle for this business.

Process

Two tracks ran in parallel, then were cross-referenced against each other.

Track A — Keyword Research
  1. Mapped the business's real service lines from the site: drains, gas, hot water, roofing, emergency, commercial.
  2. Researched core terms and modifiers for each service line.
  3. Segmented 100 keywords into 15 categories, tagging intent (e.g. "Urgent").
  4. Built a separate 29-term suburb layer for the inner‑west and eastern suburbs near the business's Waterloo base.
Track B — Technical Audit
  1. Ran a full Screaming Frog crawl across ~80 site URLs.
  2. Reviewed on-page elements: H1s, meta descriptions, headings, images.
  3. Reviewed technical health: response codes, security headers, content length.
  4. Tagged each issue by priority and volume of URLs affected.
Cross-referenced to see where demand and site readiness disagreed

Coverage Ledger — Keyword Categories

Segmenting the flat keyword list is what turned it into a strategy. The suburb layer wasn't obvious until it was counted against the service categories directly.

Suburb / Local Area
29
General Plumbing Services
14
Gas Fitting
7
Blocked Drains & Drainage
7
Emergency Plumbing
6
Roofing & Rainwater
6
Taps & Toilet Repairs
6
Commercial & Residential
5
Hot Water Services
4
Sewer Services
4
Bathroom & Kitchen Plumbing
3
Inspections & Safety Checks
3
Pipe & Leak Repair
2
Pipe Relining & Leak Detection
2
Quotes & Contractor Services
2

The 29 suburb terms map to real, distinct suburbs around the business's service area — none of which currently have a dedicated landing page:

Waterloo Newtown Alexandria Redfern Surry Hills Bondi Marrickville Glebe Darlinghurst Zetland Rosebery Erskineville Mascot Randwick Paddington + 12 more

Technical Findings

Pulled from a full Screaming Frog crawl, prioritized by ranking impact rather than sorted by tool defaults.

Priority Issue Impact Fix
High H1 missing — 86.7% of pages (13 of 15) Core on-page ranking signal absent from nearly every service page Add a unique, keyword-relevant H1 to every indexable page
High Meta description missing — 100% of pages Hurts click-through from search results across every targeted keyword Write unique meta descriptions, prioritizing service pages first
Medium No suburb-specific landing pages Largest keyword segment (29 terms) has no page to rank Build pages for the top 8–10 suburbs by service-area priority
Medium Low content pages — under 200 words (8 of 15) Thin content weakens topical relevance for competitive terms Expand with FAQs, process detail, and service-area specifics
Low Security headers missing (X-Frame-Options, CSP, HSTS, Referrer-Policy) — ~99% of URLs Not a direct ranking factor, but a trust and security gap Single server-config change resolves all four at once
Low Image alt text missing (100%) · size attributes missing (55%) Accessibility gap and a contributor to layout shift (CLS) Add descriptive alt text; set width/height on all images

Recommended Sequence

Order matters here — each step is scoped to build on the last rather than compete for the same sprint.

01

Fix the on-page foundation

Add H1s and meta descriptions sitewide. Cheapest fix, touches every page, and every subsequent step depends on it.

02

Build suburb landing pages

Start with the top 8–10 suburbs by proximity to Waterloo and search volume. This is the single largest untapped keyword segment.

03

Expand thin service pages

Bring the 8 sub-200-word pages up with genuine detail — process, pricing signals, FAQs — not filler.

04

Batch-fix security headers

One server-config change clears four separate issues across ~79 URLs. Low SEO weight, high efficiency.

05

Clean up image accessibility

Alt text and size attributes sitewide — supports accessibility and Core Web Vitals (CLS).

What I'd measure next
  • Organic impressions/clicks for suburb-level queries in Search Console
  • CTR shift after meta descriptions go live
  • Core Web Vitals (CLS) after image fixes ship
What I learned

A crawl only reports what already exists. The suburb gap only became visible once keyword demand was mapped against the site directly — technical data and search data had to be read together, not separately.