David Taubman: rebuilding a business coach's website and SEO from a locked platform
Client location: Melbourne VIC
- Highest search impressions in over 16 months, after two previous agencies had worked on the site
- Average rank of 1.3 for “Small Business Coaching Melbourne”
- 10+ keywords and phrases now appearing, up from effectively just his own name
- PageSpeed scores over 70 on mobile and 90 on desktop
David Taubman came to me in April 2020 after a genuinely frustrating few years with his website. It had originally been built on WordPress around two and a half years earlier by a young developer in Cairns. The site looked fantastic, and everyone who saw it loved it, David’s own conversion rate when introducing prospects to the site was high, but it was crippled by speed: a 7% score on speed tests, with no SEO foundation at all, no meta tags, no keyword targeting, effectively zero organic traffic.
After 20 months of frustration, David found a local contractor in Clayton who promised to fix both speed and SEO. He genuinely improved the speed, up to 57%.
What David didn’t know at the time was that the contractor had migrated the entire site off WordPress onto a completely different, much more limited CMS, copying the code across line by line overnight so it looked identical on the surface. David was left with full access to his own site, but on a platform that gave him almost no scope to actually improve it. Not long after, that contractor’s own business folded due to pandemic conditions, and he disappeared from the picture entirely.
On the recommendation of one of his own business coaching clients, who specifically suggested moving back to WordPress and Elementor as the simplest, most cost-effective, long-term sustainable option, David found me through the Elementor Experts directory. At the same time, he was repositioning his business from mentoring and speaking toward dedicated business coaching in Melbourne.
The project had three parts:
- Get him back onto a platform he could actually control.
- Rebuild the site around his new direction.
- Make sure it could genuinely be found in search.
What my digital audit found
David had engaged other contractors before me, and the results showed it:
- Under 1,500 visitors in two years, with bounce rate climbing above 70% recently
- Almost no visibility beyond his own name. His personal reputation drove some direct traffic, but the site wasn’t ranking for the actual services he offered, a clear sign the SEO work paid for previously hadn’t been done properly
- Under 15% of traffic from organic search, with 56% direct and just over 20% from LinkedIn and Facebook combined
- No SEO optimisation on page titles, wording or content, unsurprising given the traffic numbers above
- Little depth of content, despite 20+ years of corporate experience, almost nothing showcased the actual transformations he’d delivered for clients
Business coaching was also becoming a genuinely more competitive category, more owners turning to coaches amid tougher, more saturated markets, and more competition from established players and overseas alternatives. David needed to stand out, not just be present.
What I actually did
- Migrated the site from a custom CMS platform to WordPress, rebuilding it on a staging environment first so nothing went live until it was approved
- Ran industry and category keyword research, competitor review, and consumer insight gathering into the real questions people ask about business coaching
- Repositioned the site around a specific audience: business owners in their 30s and 40s in Melbourne, with punchy, high-energy content built around David’s actual corporate background
- Rewrote page titles, wording and structure for genuine SEO performance
- Delivered a full content plan, including new service pages, revised testimonials and more than 20 new content topics
- Set up and tested Google Analytics, Search Console and Google Business Profile properly
The results
- Highest search impressions David’s site had received in over 16 months, after two previous agencies had already worked on it
- 10+ keywords and phrases now appearing, including an average rank of 1.3 for “Small Business Coaching Melbourne”
- A complete, clean migration of every image, page and piece of content from the old CMS to WordPress
- PageSpeed scores over 70 on mobile and 90 on desktop
- A full content plan built directly from real consumer questions about business coaching, not guesswork
Real visitor behaviour backs this up directly and the contrast in raw numbers makes the point on its own.
BEFORE – 18 months prior to the rebuild – the site earned 918 page views total (July 2018 to January 2020)
AFTER – In just the first two months from launch – it earned 212 page views total
That is a real, direct sign of how much had changed in a fraction of the time.
Average time on site grew from around 2 minutes 35 seconds to 7 minutes 15 seconds
Pages viewed per visit grew from 3 to 5,
Bounce rate fell from 42% to 30%.
All of it real, reported data straight from David’s own Analytics account that proved to him the work I had completed was solid.
What David said the moment the work was done
“A brilliant experience Paul!! You do not disappoint. Incredible attention and intensity to the end game. It will be a pleasure on-selling your services to every one of my clients. Got another interested party Shane this afternoon.
The speed tests are beyond my wildest dreams and the 80+ Rank Math score for major pages is the type of platform I could only hope for.
I will take your advice on creating social media posts for my 2 new blogs, to get links out there. Also, will submit my business to that list of directories. So comprehensive. I will follow your lead and make sure every submission is perfectly aligned to the same wording.
That was an area I hadn’t even considered.”
David Taubman, Director, The Path to Great Culture
Within hours of the project wrapping up, David had already referred a colleague, Shane, based purely on the result.
What David actually said
“Paul completely changed my perception on what could be done from our very first discussion. He was incredibly detailed oriented. Skilled in contemporary marketing strategy. He drove me to new benchmarks. I thought I was driven and goal oriented until Paul showed me that he had gears I hadn’t seen before.
He created a list of tasks and content for me to rip into. He was on me every day to get it done. He guided me on best practice and gave me wonderful suggestions when I hit an impasse.
Meanwhile he was rebuilding my website with a stronger presence for SEO and organic growth, better content and with a niche in the business coaching market. The site was lightning fast. Paul wouldn’t rest until the job was done. It was so seamless.
Something worth noting is Paul’s huge experience in photography so he has an elite eye for imagery and branding.”
David Taubman, Director, The Path to Great Culture
What every small business website should have
- Basic reporting: how many visitors a month, which city they’re coming from, and how that compares over time
- Real awareness of what people actually search for. An agency promising you’ll rank first for a specific, low-volume phrase is a much smaller win than ranking anywhere for a phrase 10,000 people search
- A genuinely optimised Google Business Profile, a name and phone number alone won’t generate local search traffic
If your website has you locked out of your own platform, or repositioning your business isn’t reflected in what people can actually find, get in touch and I’ll help you fix both.
I build a site around a genuine audience and real search demand, whether that’s a full platform migration or a repositioning project. If you’re stuck on a platform you can’t control, see how I could help.
