Turning a local handyman site into a measured growth channel.
Simple Handyman is a small local trades business. There was no dedicated engineering team — the job was hands-on: SEO, site structure, customer research and reporting, done directly inside WordPress and Google Analytics, to turn a website that "existed online" into a channel that could be measured, understood, and improved on a rhythm.
What I inherited
A local service website with unclear page structure, a limited measurement rhythm, weak visibility into the booking flow, and no consistent way to connect SEO activity to business outcomes. The site existed — it wasn't yet being managed as a channel.
The instrument panel
Four connected workstreams
Getting found for the right searches
Reviewed keywords, titles and service pages against what people were actually searching — "handyman near me," "furniture assembly," local repair terms — and rewrote pages to answer that intent directly.
A journey people could actually follow
Restructured navigation and service pages so the path from landing to booking was obvious — less clutter, clearer information, a straighter line to contact.
Listening before changing anything
Gathered 50+ customer and competitor inputs — direct feedback plus a review of local service sites — to find real friction: unclear pricing, missing trust signals, too many steps before booking.
Making the site ad- and revenue-ready
Checked pages against Google Ads landing-page requirements and supported the operational groundwork that made ad-driven revenue possible.
My role vs. not my role
SEO review, WordPress page/template changes, customer and competitor research, analytics tracking, the weekly reporting rhythm, and booking-journey improvements.
Backend engineering, paid media ownership, and any full technical rebuild of the site.
Before → intervention → outcome
From ad hoc checks to a weekly rhythm
Before this, performance was checked randomly — "let's see how the site's doing." There was no standing way to compare one month to the next.
Built a lightweight reporting process in Google Analytics and Excel that tracked the same metrics every cycle: traffic sources, top and weak pages, engagement behaviour, and Google Ads compliance status. Simple by design — the value was making performance visible and repeatable, not building a dashboard for its own sake.
Where customers dropped off — and what closed the gap
Evidence & process layer
Analytics review
Used to identify where visitors entered, dropped off, and which service pages needed clearer structure.
WordPress changes
Reworked page templates and booking paths so users could understand services faster and reach contact options with less friction.
Reporting rhythm
Set up a simple Excel reporting process to track the same performance signals consistently rather than checking the site ad hoc.
Note: Original screenshots are not shown because they may contain client, customer or account-level data. This section summarises the workflow artefacts rather than exposing private material.
"Simple Handyman was a small business, so the role was hands-on across growth and operations — not software engineering. The work was understanding where users dropped off, making the WordPress site clearer, tracking performance properly, and shortening the path to booking."
The measurable outcomes — +30% organic traffic, +20% website engagement — followed the SEO, structure and template changes tracked here. Framed honestly: contribution, not a lab-controlled proof.
I can take an unstructured small-business problem, diagnose the growth bottleneck, make practical changes with limited resources, and turn performance into a repeatable operating rhythm.
This project mirrors a core consulting habit: diagnosing a commercial problem, identifying operational friction, prioritising practical interventions, and tracking measurable improvement — with limited resources and no dedicated technical team.