Total ranking keywords, before → after
59 → 1,380A Dubai fit-out contractor trading since 2011 had a beautiful portfolio and almost no search footprint. A twelve-month programme took ranking keywords from 59 to 1,380, clicks up 643.5% year over year, and put thirty of their pages inside ChatGPT’s answers.
- Clicks (YoY, 28 days)
- 223 → 1,660
- Impressions (YoY)
- 8.3K → 193K
- Average position, all keywords
- 54.4 → 20.2
- Keywords in top 3
- 3 → 35
The problem
The contractor had been trading since 2011 and had the domain to match, but the search footprint was almost nil: fifty-nine keywords ranking at all, three of them in the top three, and an average position of 54. The portfolio was strong and none of it was reachable. Google had no picture of what the company did, where it operated, or which projects proved it.
What we did
We ran an entity audit first: what Google understood about the brand, and what was missing. From there we built a semantic map of the fit-out category — commercial, residential, joinery, MEP coordination, handover — and gave every cluster a page with one job and one owning entity.
Information gain came from the client's own project data: real budgets, real timelines, real material specifications that no competitor was publishing. Then technical execution — schema, internal linking, entity linking and crawl hygiene — made all of it legible to search engines and to AI assistants.
Impressions went from 8,260 to 193,000 in the same 28-day window a year later — a 2,240.5% increase.
SEO strategy for interior fit-out
Fit-out is a considered, referral-heavy purchase with long lead times — so the strategy was never about volume. It was about making one contractor unambiguously legible to Google as the entity that delivers a specific kind of project, in a specific market, to a specific standard.
- Lead with the entity, not the keywordBefore a single page was written we made the brand resolvable: one name, one address, one set of credentials, one project record — consistent across site, listings and trade directories.
- Cluster by scope, not by adjectiveCommercial, residential, joinery, MEP coordination and handover each became a defined scope with deliverables, not a paragraph of "bespoke, luxury, turnkey".
- Publish the project recordCompleted builds carried budgets, programme lengths and material specifications. That is the information gain competitors would not publish — and what AI assistants now cite.
- Make it machine-readableOrganisation, Service and Project schema plus entity linking tied every page back to the contractor, which is why thirty of its pages became ChatGPT sources.
Clicks, before and after, in matched windows
Source: the client’s 8-month performance report — Google Search Console clicks and impressions, keyword positions verified in Ahrefs.
- Long-tail rankings
- Month 2
- Primary keywords on page one
- Month 5
- Engagement
- 12-month contract
Where it started: every page with any visibility
Three months of Search Console before the work began. Twenty-seven pages drew an impression, eleven of them never drew a click, and the homepage took four clicks in every five.
Google Search Console, 12 October to 11 January, before the programme started.
The service architecture we proposed
Interior design
Residential detail
The other eight categories
What the engagement actually contained
The programme ran as a seventeen-step sequence from week one of month one to week one of month three, each step tracked to completion in a shared workbook. The volumes underneath it are the part that is hard to fake.
- 285 competitor keyword positions analysed before anything was written
- 124 client keywords expanded into 266 topical clusters across nine categories
- 34 service URLs proposed, from interior design down to kitchen and bathroom
- Main menu and footer restructured around those categories
- 174 keywords put under rank tracking
- 281 internal links mapped by source, target and anchor text
- 208 content items taken through approval before publishing
- Meta tags, image optimisation, schema, sidebar and technical SEO as their own steps
- Tracked delivery steps
- 17Tracked delivery steps
- Topical clusters built
- 266Topical clusters built
- Internal links mapped
- 281Internal links mapped
Keyword positions, start → end of contract
Ahrefs, 1 January 2025 against 3 September 2025.
Visibility inside AI search
The same entity work that fixed Google visibility made the brand quotable to language models. HTS now holds top spots on LLM search engines for its core fit-out queries — a channel that did not exist in the original brief.
Where the pages rank now
Four of these hold the AI Overview rather than a numbered position, which is the entity work paying out twice.
Ahrefs, client domain. Volumes are monthly search volume for the tracked market.
How it unfolded
- Month 1
Entity audit
Mapped what Google already associated with the brand — and the gaps competitors owned.
- Month 2–3
Semantic map and content build
Service, sector and location clusters published against the fit-out category map.
- Month 4–6
Information gain and technical execution
Project data published; schema, entity linking and internal linking rebuilt.
- Month 7–12
Compounding and AI citation
Page-one coverage multiplied by month six; the site picked up citations across five AI surfaces.
Where they rank now
Turnkey fit-out for offices, retail and F&B. Project timelines, budget ranges and material specifications for every completed build…
Illustrative SERP layout.
Engagement note
Our engagement with this client has concluded, and search activity for the account has since been managed by the client's in-house team. The figures presented here cover the period of our involvement and the reporting window immediately following it. Any subsequent movement in the site's visibility sits outside the scope of our work and reflects a materially different competitive environment — sustained investment by competitors in the fit-out category, together with successive Google algorithm updates as search behaviour has shifted toward conversational and AI-generated answers. We publish this case study on the basis of the results achieved during the engagement, and are happy to discuss the full reporting history on request.
Digidot has worked wonders on my website over the past three years. The team’s resourcefulness and problem-solving skills have made my business much more visible online. Digidot gained my trust by helping me connect with more clients.
Maria EnajeHTS InteriorsThe verdict
A portfolio business that used to rely on referrals now gets found — on Google, and inside the AI assistants its clients ask first. Same projects, same team; the difference is that search engines finally understand them.
The part we don’t publish
We haven’t shown you the techniques. We’ll take you through them live.
A case study shows the outcome. The method behind it — the keyword architecture, the competitor gaps we exploited, what is working in your niche right now — is the part that is actually worth your time. Book a demo and we will open the live website and walk you through all of it.
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- The live site, walked throughScreen-shared end to end — what we changed, where, and why it moved.
- The full keyword setEvery term we ranked, with positions, volumes and intent — not a curated five.
- The competitor analysisWhat the incumbents were doing, and the gap we found to get past them.
- What is working in your nicheWhat your own competitors are being rewarded for right now, and which of it would transfer to your site.