Case study
When the business got narrower, the search strategy had to get sharper.
Family Law closed and a large part of the website went with it. Rather than replace that traffic, we rebuilt search around the work the firm wanted to grow.
The challenge
When we started working with Burke Mead, the site carried more than 700 blog posts accumulated over years. A large share was thin, outdated, off-topic or competing with the pages connected to the firm's actual practice areas. Some of it was attracting searches that had little to do with legal services at all.
Then the business changed. In January 2024, Burke Mead closed its Family Law department. A significant part of the website went with it, and organic traffic fell.
The problem was bigger than a traffic drop. Recovering every lost visit would have rebuilt the footprint of a business Burke Mead no longer was.
- 700+ blog posts, many thin, outdated or off-topic
- Pages attracting searches unrelated to legal services
- Content competing with the practice-area pages that mattered commercially
- A large section of the site removed when Family Law closed in January 2024
The result
A smaller website produced a much stronger commercial search footprint.
From the published reporting period. Traffic is supporting proof here; qualified leads are the result.
- +145%
- Qualified leads Published reporting period
- +1,817%
- Peak organic traffic Engagement start to peak
- +2,078%
- Top-3 ranking keywords Published reporting period
- ~3.9k
- Organic sessions a month Sustained, vs ~300 before
The insight
Burke Mead did not need more content. It needed a clearer reason to be found.
The search footprint was spread across too many subjects, too many weak pages and areas the firm no longer wanted to compete in. The opportunity was to concentrate the website around the legal problems Burke Mead wanted to own.
The strategy
Three decisions. The first is the one the other two follow from.
- Remove the noise.Hundreds of pages were adding little commercial or topical value. Carrying them was a cost, not an asset, so the amount of content stopped being the objective.
- Concentrate the expertise.Build depth around personal injury and compensation, the work the firm wanted to grow, rather than breadth across subjects it no longer wanted to compete in.
- Connect questions to services.Use the questions clients actually ask to support the practice-area pages where commercial decisions are made.
We engaged Firewire to overhaul our SEO. They have incredible knowledge and understanding of SEO and have increased our organic traffic by 680%. Their work is high quality and produces results.
Sheena KearseyOffice Manager, Burke Mead Lawyers This testimonial was given earlier in the engagement, when reported organic growth was 680%. Later reporting reached a peak of +1,817% against engagement start.
What we did
Content rationalisation. More than 700 posts became roughly 80 useful assets. Every page was reviewed against three questions: does it serve a relevant legal query, does it add useful subject-matter depth, and does it fit Burke Mead's current practice? Content was kept, consolidated or removed, and redirected where an appropriate surviving page existed.
Search architecture. The remaining site was rebuilt around personal injury and compensation: practice-area pages for workplace injury, motor vehicle claims, medical negligence and public liability, supporting content built on the questions clients actually raise, stronger internal pathways to the commercial pages, and metadata and structured data underneath.
The Family Law closure. When Family Law closed in January 2024, we planned redirects for the removed URLs, rebuilt the architecture around the remaining practice areas, pointed internal authority toward compensation and personal injury content, and expanded the supporting content there. Within the following twelve months, Burke Mead's reported personal injury rankings reached new highs on a substantially smaller site.
The takeaway
Burke Mead became easier to discover for the legal work it actually wanted, while qualified lead volume increased.
The headline is not that traffic grew 1,817%. Restoring every lost visit would have rebuilt the footprint of a business Burke Mead no longer was; concentrating on the work it wanted to grow produced more qualified demand from a much smaller site.
More work
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eCommerce Shindigs 200 blog posts cut to 40, with organic traffic up 150% and revenue up 40% SEO & search performance · Content & search experience