A post-rebuild SEO crisis, turned into category dominance.
How we recovered Leah Jay's SEO after a website rebuild hurt rankings, then layered Google Ads to grow organic traffic 252% and cut cost-per-lead 38%.
Where Leah Jay was when we walked in.
Leah Jay are the most awarded property management agency in New South Wales, with more than three decades of investor specialism and a brand equity that few competitors in the category can match. When they came to Firewire in late 2021, that brand reputation wasn't the problem. A recent website rebuild was. The new site had inadvertently broken non-brand SEO almost overnight, and high-value rankings the firm had built over years were quietly disappearing.
The brief was a two-phase recovery. First: a deep technical SEO overhaul to fix the structural damage from the rebuild, covering crawl depth, indexation, internal linking, and performance. Then: a strategic content programme aimed at restoring (and then surpassing) the firm's pre-rebuild authority. Once organic was stable and climbing, we layered a Google Ads programme targeted at the two specific buyer profiles that drive Leah Jay's pipeline.
- Post-rebuild crawl + indexation issues quietly stripping non-brand visibility
- Years of accumulated topical authority undercut by the new site's architecture
- Site speed + Core Web Vitals regressions from the rebuild's design choices
- Highly specialised investor services not communicated clearly in the new content
- Saturated market with aggressive competitors bidding the same high-intent keywords
- Google Ads either inactive or burning budget on broad terms without conversion focus
Three moves that turned a post-rebuild crisis into category dominance.
- 01
Diagnosed and fixed the post-rebuild damage
Crawl, index, perform.
The new site looked beautiful and crawled badly. We did the unglamorous foundation work first: crawl-depth fixes, indexation cleanup, internal linking restructure, performance optimisation. Within a few months the technical foundation was solid; everything downstream would now compound rather than leak.
- 02
Rebuilt content authority around the investor buyer
Specialist content for a specialist audience.
Leah Jay's audience isn't general consumers. It's property investors who need expert management. We built a content programme aligned to the investor's decision journey: building portfolios, switching managers, navigating tax and compliance, scaling to multi-property holdings. The content gave the firm topical authority across exactly the queries the right buyer was searching.
- 03
Re-engineered Google Ads for two buyer profiles
Switchers and first-time investors.
Once organic was stable, we re-engineered the paid programme around the two profiles that drive Leah Jay's pipeline: property owners considering switching managers, and new investors looking for their first property manager. Tighter targeting, conversion-focused landing pages, and ongoing optimisation cut cost-per-lead 38% while improving lead quality.
- Post-rebuild technical SEO audit + recovery Phase 1
- Crawl + indexation fixes, internal linking Phase 1
- Investor-focused content strategy Phase 2
- Authoritative service-page rebuilds Phase 2
- Google Ads re-engineering (switchers + new investors) Phase 3
- Conversion-optimised landing pages for paid Phase 3
- Monthly performance + lead reporting Ongoing
The full picture, by the numbers.
Quarterly average organic sessions. The pre-engagement period (Dec 2020 – Sep 2021) shows the pre-rebuild baseline. Engagement begins Nov 2021; the chart shows the recovery and subsequent compound growth through Sep 2025.
How the recovery actually happened.
Four years of partnership across three workstreams: technical SEO recovery, investor-focused content authority, and a paid programme tuned to two buyer profiles.
Technical recovery Fixing the rebuild damage before adding anything new
Website rebuilds often quietly destroy SEO. The team that designed the new site optimised for visual impact and content management ease; what they couldn't see was the structural damage to crawl, indexation, and internal authority flow. Our first phase was unglamorous diagnosis and repair.
- Crawl-depth fixes: important pages that were now 4+ clicks from the homepage moved back into shallow positions
- Indexation cleanup: duplicate URL variants, parameter pollution, and orphaned pages addressed
- Internal linking rebuilt to restore authority flow into the key service pages
- Core Web Vitals + page speed regressions from the new design's bloat were resolved
The damage took months to repair. Some of the lost rankings came back as soon as crawl and indexation stabilised; others required the subsequent content work to fully recover. By mid-2022 the foundation was clean and the trajectory was up.
Investor content authority Built topical authority around the investor decision journey
Property management content is mostly written for retail consumers. Leah Jay's audience isn't retail. It's investors. We built a content programme aimed squarely at the queries investors actually search, with the depth and specificity their decisions require.
- Portfolio-building content for investors scaling from one property to multiple
- Switching content for owners considering changing managers (one of the two highest-converting buyer profiles)
- Tax + compliance content addressing the genuine investor concerns around income, depreciation, and reporting
- Market-specific content for Newcastle and Hunter region investment dynamics
The content lifted topical authority across exactly the queries that produce qualified leads. The 236% growth in top-3 rankings came from this work: the firm now dominates the SERP for the investor-intent queries that the rest of the market is still treating as generic property management terms.
Paid re-engineering Two buyer profiles, two campaign architectures
The previous Google Ads programme was treating Leah Jay's market as one audience. It isn't. We split it into the two profiles that actually convert at scale (owners switching managers, and first-time investors) and built distinct campaign architectures for each.
- Switching campaigns: targeted competitor-comparison queries with copy emphasising service quality + transparency
- First-investor campaigns: targeted education-stage queries with copy + landing pages designed to build trust
- Negative-keyword discipline removed the retail-tenant queries that were burning budget without converting
- Conversion-focused landing pages mapped tightly to each campaign's buyer profile
Cost-per-lead came down 38% as the targeting tightened and the landing pages converted at higher rates. The 38% reduction isn't just a paid efficiency number. It's the equivalent of free capacity, letting Leah Jay scale spend into both profiles without diluting unit economics.
Burke Mead Lawyers
Newcastle's leading personal injury and compensation law firm. Built category authority across the practice areas that pay.
Legal Hamilton Janke Lawyers
NSW's specialist criminal defence firm, with strategic content direction layered onto strong in-house writing.
Home Improvement HCB Solar
Newcastle's leading solar designer and installer, with category authority built through educational content, supported by a high-ROAS paid engine.
Tourism Visit Newcastle
The official destination marketing organisation for Newcastle, promoting the city's tourism, events, food and coastal experiences to a national + international audience of travellers.
Want a similar result?
30 minutes with a senior Firewire lead. We'll diagnose where your post-rebuild (or post-anything) SEO is leaking authority, and tell you honestly whether we're the right partner to recover it.
- A category-authority view of your search opportunity
- A first-pass diagnosis of your technical + content blockers
- Honest view on fit. We'll tell you if we're not right
- No deck, no pitch, no commitment