A real estate agency came to us with a website that had not been touched since 2019. It looked dated, loaded in over 8 seconds on mobile, had no SSL certificate on its property listing pages, and was generating exactly zero enquiries from Google. Six weeks later, it was ranking on page one for three target suburbs, loading in under 2 seconds, and generating 12 to 15 qualified enquiries per month. Here is exactly what we did — and why.
The Brief
The client was a boutique real estate agency serving a mid-sized residential market. Their existing website had been built by a now-defunct local agency and ran on an outdated WordPress theme with no active maintenance. They had tried Google Ads briefly the year before but found the cost-per-lead unsustainable. Their goal was simple: stop paying for leads and start earning them organically.
Their budget was mid-range — not unlimited, but enough to do the job properly. The brief was: fast, mobile-first, Google-friendly, and built to convert browsers into enquiries.
Problem 1: The Site Was Painfully Slow
The first thing we did was run a full performance audit using Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. The results were not surprising for a site this age: a PageSpeed score of 24 on mobile, with Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) of 9.2 seconds. The culprits were predictable:
- Uncompressed images — some property photos were over 4MB each, uploaded directly from a phone camera
- No caching layer whatsoever
- Three abandoned plugins still loading scripts on every page
- Hosting on a shared server with response times regularly exceeding 800ms
What we did: Migrated to a LiteSpeed-powered host, installed LiteSpeed Cache with aggressive image and CSS optimisation, ran the entire media library through ShortPixel (compressing images by an average of 73% with no visible quality loss), and stripped out every deactivated plugin. Post-migration PageSpeed score: 87 on mobile, 96 on desktop. LCP: 1.8 seconds.
Problem 2: Zero Local SEO Infrastructure
The site had no schema markup, no Google Business Profile integration, inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data across directory listings, and page titles that all read some variation of “Homes For Sale — [Agency Name]” with no suburb or location targeting.
What we did: Rebuilt the site architecture around suburb-level landing pages, each targeting a specific combination of service and location (“buy a home in [suburb]”, “sell my house in [suburb]”). Added RealEstateListing and LocalBusiness schema markup via Rank Math. Audited and corrected NAP data across 14 directory listings. Claimed and fully optimised the Google Business Profile. Within eight weeks, three of the new suburb pages had reached page one of Google for their target queries.
Problem 3: The Site Generated Visitors But No Enquiries
Analytics showed the old site received around 400 visitors per month but had a bounce rate of 84% and an average session duration of under 45 seconds. There was one contact form, buried on the Contact page, with six required fields including “Message” — which meant it required effort at exactly the wrong moment.
What we did: Redesigned the conversion flow entirely. Every property listing page got a sticky sidebar with a two-field enquiry form (name + phone, nothing else). The homepage hero section got a prominent “Get a Free Appraisal” CTA that triggered a simple popup form. We added social proof — real client testimonials with photos and suburb mentions — directly below each CTA. Result: enquiry form submissions went from near-zero to averaging 12–15 per month within the first 60 days.
Problem 4: Accessibility Failures
An accessibility audit using WAVE and manual keyboard testing revealed significant issues: property listing images had no alt text, the contact form had no label associations, colour contrast on the light-grey body text failed WCAG 2.2 AA minimum ratios, and the navigation was not keyboard-navigable. These were not just compliance issues — they were also suppressing search performance, since Google uses accessibility signals as part of its page experience assessment.
What we did: Implemented descriptive alt text on all property images (property type, key features, suburb). Added proper for/id label associations to all form fields. Adjusted body text colour from #999 to #555 to pass WCAG AA contrast ratios. Added keyboard focus styles and skip-navigation links. Full WCAG 2.2 AA compliance achieved on all primary pages.
The Results: 6 Weeks Later
| Metric | Before | After (6 weeks) |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile PageSpeed Score | 24 | 87 |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 9.2 seconds | 1.8 seconds |
| Monthly organic visitors | ~400 | ~1,100 |
| Bounce rate | 84% | 51% |
| Monthly enquiries from site | 0–2 | 12–15 |
| Google keyword rankings (page 1) | 0 | 3 suburb-level queries |
| WCAG 2.2 AA compliance | Failing | Compliant |
What You Can Take From This
This project is a good example of what we see repeatedly: the biggest wins in web performance rarely come from building something new. They come from fixing what is broken. Speed, local SEO structure, conversion flow, and accessibility are four levers that almost every small business website has room to improve — and improving all four together produces compounding results that no single fix can replicate.
If your website is generating traffic but not enquiries, or generating neither, the issues are almost always diagnosable and fixable. The question is whether you are working with someone who knows where to look.
If your website has problems like the ones above, we would be glad to take a look. Get in touch for a free website audit.