Client name withheld under NDA.
The company ran in-house workshops for other businesses, covering communication, leadership and workplace skills. Work came mostly from referrals and repeat clients, and the founder wanted a steadier flow of new enquiries from search. The website had one long page listing every workshop, a contact form that asked for too much, and a blog that had not been touched in over a year. Only about nine enquiries a month were good fits for the team.
Before choosing an SEO agency, the founder asked three for proposals. Two quoted fixed monthly packages with a set number of pages and links, and neither looked at the site first. Both were reasonable offers, but she could not tell from them what the work would fix. We proposed something different: a paid audit on its own, a 90-day plan based on what it found, monthly reporting tied to enquiries, no long lock-in, and full access to her own accounts. She paid for the audit first and decided on the work after reading it.
We audited the site's technical health, page structure, keyword coverage and backlinks, and checked who ranked for the workshop topics her clients searched. The founder received a written report and a 90-day plan that ranked the fixes by effort and likely effect. She also had admin access to Search Console, Analytics and the website from day one.
The audit let her judge us on evidence, not on a sales pitch. She could have taken the plan to any agency. Owning every account also meant she could leave at any point without losing her data.
The single workshop page became separate pages for communication, leadership and workplace skills, each with who the session suits, the format, group size and a short outline. We cut the enquiry form to six fields and added a field for headcount so the team could sort enquiries quickly. Titles, headings and internal links were rewritten to match how companies search.
Buyers search for a topic, not a catalogue. One page per workshop gave each topic something to rank for, and a shorter form made it easier for a busy HR manager to ask.
We built a content plan from the questions HR and operations managers ask before booking: how long a workshop should run, how to measure whether it helped, and how to plan for remote teams. The team wrote the first drafts from their own session notes. We edited them, added structure and linked each post to the matching workshop page.
Facilitators knew the subject better than any outside writer. Their notes made the posts specific, and the links sent readers who were already thinking about training to the pages that could convert them.
We pursued links that suited a business-to-business trainer: industry associations, HR community sites, event listings, client case mentions with permission, and Singapore business directories. We also tidied the company profile on Google so local searches showed the right services and hours. Each month we sent a list of links won and links declined.
Links from relevant business sites carry more weight than a large number of weak ones. We turned down several offers because the sites looked paid or off topic, which slowed the count but kept the profile clean.
Every month the founder received a one-page report showing qualified enquiries, the pages and searches behind them, and what we would change next. We tested page titles, moved the form higher on service pages and merged two weak posts into one stronger guide. At the end she chose to continue on a rolling monthly basis.
Reporting on enquiries kept the work honest. When traffic moved but enquiries did not, we could see it and change course, and she was never asked to commit to more than a month at a time.
Eight months in, qualified enquiries had grown from 9 to 24 a month. Organic visits rose from 1,900 to 4,300, keywords in the top 10 from 11 to 52 and referring domains from 31 to 94. Enquiry form conversion on service pages moved from 1.4% to 2.6%. The first three months showed little movement in traffic, because the early work was fixes and rebuilds that search engines needed time to reassess. The lift began in month 4 and built from there.
Paid audit delivered, 90-day plan agreed, service pages rebuilt, enquiry form shortened. Traffic barely moved.
Content plan publishing, links being won, visits and top 10 keywords climbing.
Titles and form placement tested, weak posts merged, rolling monthly arrangement agreed.
A fixed package quoted without looking at the site cannot say what it will fix. A separate audit gave the founder a plan she could judge, and it showed that the biggest gain was splitting one page into several, not adding more links.
Visits went from 1,900 to 4,300, but the number that mattered was qualified enquiries, which went from 9 to 24 a month. Reports that stop at rankings and traffic leave you guessing about the business result.
Nothing in the first three months looked like a result, and an agency that promises otherwise deserves questions. Keep access to your own accounts and avoid long lock-in, so you can check progress and step away if it never arrives.
How we plan and run SEO for Singapore businesses.
The paid audit that comes before any ongoing work.
Working with an SEO consultant and what to expect.
A different SEO story, about protecting rankings through a site move.
Tell us about your site and your enquiries. We will explain what an audit covers and what a realistic 90-day plan looks like.