A content programme cannibalising itself, rebuilt around intent.
How we reversed Backyard Grannys' 12-month traffic decline and grew organic traffic 134%.
Where Backyard Grannys was when we walked in.
Backyard Grannys are Newcastle's premier granny flat designer and builder, with more than a decade in the market and over 1,000 projects shipped. When they came to Firewire, their organic traffic had been declining for 12 straight months. The category was theirs to lose, and they were losing it.
An earlier engagement on site speed gave both teams a working relationship. When the wider problem became clear (keyword cannibalisation, search-intent drift, and a legacy WordPress build that resisted optimisation), Backyard Grannys asked us to take on the full SEO programme.
- 12 straight months of organic traffic decline with no clear cause in the SERP
- Multiple pages competing for the same queries: classic keyword cannibalisation
- Content written without intent mapping, missing the actual buyer questions
- Outdated WordPress build constraining on-page optimisation and Core Web Vitals
- No topic-cluster structure: every page sat orphaned from the rest of the site
- No coherent strategy across the buyer journey from research to quote request
Backyard Grannys "After a run of bad experiences with other competitors, Firewire were able to deliver results, doubling our organic leads, and have been a pleasure to work with. We highly recommend."
Three moves that turned the category back around.
- 01
Audited the technical foundation first
Crawl, speed, architecture.
Before any new content shipped, we ran a full technical audit covering site speed, crawl efficiency, internal linking, and on-page architecture. The legacy WordPress build was constraining what was possible. We methodically removed those constraints so every later optimisation compounded instead of being absorbed by the foundation.
- 02
Rebuilt content around buyer intent
Topic clusters, not orphan pages.
We mapped every existing page to a query and a buyer-journey stage, then restructured into topic clusters that matched the granny flat search funnel, from "do I need council approval" through "granny flat designs Newcastle" to "quote". Cannibalising pages were merged or repurposed. Net new content filled the genuine gaps.
- 03
Aligned every page to a single intent
Research, comparison, or conversion.
Each page now serves exactly one buyer-journey moment. Research pages educate without pushing for a quote. Comparison pages handle the trade-offs honestly. Quote-intent pages get out of the way. The result: better rankings, longer sessions, and a measurable lift in qualified leads.
- Full technical SEO audit Mo 1
- Site speed + Core Web Vitals fixes Mo 1–2
- Content architecture restructure Mo 2
- Keyword cannibalisation cleanup Mo 2–3
- Topic cluster content programme Mo 3–ongoing
- Intent-mapped page optimisation Mo 4–6
- Monthly performance reporting Ongoing
The full picture, by the numbers.
Quarterly average organic sessions. Pre-Firewire baseline shown in grey; engagement begins Apr 2022.
How the recovery actually happened.
Three areas of work, all running in parallel after the technical foundation was in place.
Technical SEO Fixing the foundation before adding floors
The legacy WordPress + theme combination was the single biggest blocker to growth. Site speed was hurting Core Web Vitals, crawl budget was being wasted on low-value pages, and the on-page architecture made internal linking painful. We addressed each in order.
- Image compression, JS deferral, and selective code cleanup to lift Core Web Vitals
- Crawl budget reclaimed by canonicalising duplicate query-string variants and pruning thin pages
- Internal linking restructured into a hub-and-spoke pattern around the topic clusters
- Schema markup added for HomeAndConstructionBusiness, FAQPage, and Service to support rich results
Once the foundation was solid, every content win started to compound. Internal links carried authority faster, crawl coverage improved, and Core Web Vitals stopped pulling down rankings.
Content strategy From orphan pages to topic clusters
The site had grown over years through a series of one-off pages, with no clear topic structure. We rebuilt it around three core clusters that matched the way buyers actually search for granny flats.
- Designs & inspiration: visual research stage, top-of-funnel
- Council approval, costs & process: comparison stage, mid-funnel
- Quote-intent location + service pages: bottom-of-funnel
Each cluster has a pillar page and supporting articles, internally linked. The previous cannibalisation, where multiple pages competed for the same query, was resolved by merging or repurposing the weakest performer in each conflict.
Intent alignment One page, one job
Even after the structural work, many pages tried to do everything: educate, compare, and convert in the same scroll. We rewrote the surviving pages so each had one job.
- Research pages: no quote forms, just answers and internal links forward
- Comparison pages: honest trade-offs, including when Backyard Grannys isn't the right fit
- Quote-intent pages: minimal friction, single CTA, fast quote turnaround
This is the move that lifted the lead-generation number. The 112% growth in leads isn't from sending more traffic to the same form. It's from sending the right traffic to the right form, and trusting the upper-funnel pages to do their job.
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Want a similar result?
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