How Luminary Software Turned a Vancouver Fencing Company from Invisible to Unstoppable

They Were Getting Crushed Online

When a leading Vancouver fencing contractor reached out to us through our website in early 2023, they were pretty much at their wit’s end. Despite being one of Vancouver’s top fence installation companies with over 15 years of experience, their website was a total lead ghost town.

“We’re spending $2,500 a month on Google Ads just to stay afloat, but our organic presence is basically non-existent,” their operations manager told us. “Meanwhile, companies half our size are showing up everywhere when people search for fencing in Vancouver.”

This wasn’t just frustrating – it was threatening their bottom line. They’d invested in a website years earlier, but it might as well have been from a decade ago for all the good it was doing them. While they were doing incredible custom cedar fencing work all across Vancouver, their digital presence was stuck in the stone age.

The Starting Point Was Pretty Rough

Their existing website wasn’t terrible visually, but our audit revealed serious problems beneath the surface. Page speeds crawled at over 8 seconds, the site barely functioned on mobile devices (where most customers were searching), and critical service information was buried deep in confusing navigation pathways. The structure made it nearly impossible for potential customers to find what they needed.

The content was thin as paper – like, literally under 150 words on their homepage and practically nothing about specific services or Vancouver neighborhoods. And don’t even get me started on the technical SEO issues… let’s just say our audit tool crashed twice trying to catalog all the problems.

When we checked their analytics from the previous quarter:

• Under 200 average monthly visitors
• 87% bounce rate (people were leaving immediately)
• 0.3% conversion rate (that’s like 1 lead every two weeks)
• Not ranking in the top 100 for ANY valuable keywords

Our SEO team summed it up perfectly: “Their site was basically digital quicksand – the harder they tried, the deeper they sank.”

Game Plan: Complete Digital Overhaul

After a comprehensive workshop with their team, we mapped out an 8-month battle plan. No bandaid solutions here – this needed a ground-up rebuild.

We set some ambitious but doable targets:

• Rank on page 1 for at least 15 major Vancouver and nearby fencing terms within 8 months
• Increase organic traffic by 400% (from under 200 to over 1,000 monthly visitors)
• Generate minimum 20 qualified leads per month by the end of the campaign
• Slash their Google Ads budget by 60% by shifting to organic traffic

Their operations manager was skeptical but on board: “At this point, we’ll try anything that gets the phone ringing.”

Step 1: Building a Website That Actually Works

We scrapped their old site completely and rebuilt on WordPress. Our design team worked directly with their installers to understand what made their fencing solutions unique. Turns out they had some pretty cool approaches to dealing with Vancouver’s notoriously rainy weather that nobody knew about!

The new structure focused on what customers were actually searching for:

• Residential services (split by material: cedar, vinyl, aluminum, composite)
• Commercial solutions (security, decorative, property line)
• Specific pages for each Vancouver neighborhood they served
• Custom project galleries grouped by property type
• Easy quote request forms on EVERY page (not just buried in “Contact”)

Our development team is kind of obsessed with speed – they got mobile load times down to 1.8 seconds and desktop under 1.3s. The difference was night and day.

The Content Overhaul Was Massive

Instead of generic blah-blah about fences, we created actually useful content. Each service page included:

• Specific Vancouver bylaws for that fence type
• Average costs for Vancouver installations (they were scared to include pricing, but it paid off huge)
• Weatherproofing specific to Pacific Northwest conditions
• Actual project timelines based on season (spring installations take longer due to rain delays)

We interviewed their top installer with 30+ years experience and turned his knowledge into gold. The guy knew EVERYTHING about fencing but had never been asked. We created content around his expertise like “Why Cedar Fences Warp in North Vancouver (And How We Prevent It)” and “The Complete Guide to Fence Planning Permissions in Vancouver.”

The Technical SEO Side Was Brutal But Worth It

Our SEO team had their work cut out. The site needed:

• Complete schema markup implementation (local business, service, and FAQ schemas)
• Neighborhood-specific H1s and title tags
• Custom XML sitemap with priority structure
• Canonical tag fixes (the old site had 23 duplicate pages!)
• 301 redirects from old URLs mapped individually (76 redirects total)
• Image compression and alt text for over 200 project photos
• Mobile-first optimization for ALL pages

Honestly, it was a slog. Took our team about 3X longer than a typical site, but you can’t rush this stuff if you want real results.

Link Building Strategy (The Secret Sauce)

Here’s where we really separated from what their previous agency did. Instead of spammy directory submissions, we built relationships with:

• Several popular Vancouver home improvement bloggers
• Multiple complementary businesses (landscapers, deck builders, etc.)
• The BC Home Builders Association
• Local realtors who needed fence contractors

Each backlink was a manual outreach – no automation. By month 4, we’d secured 17 high-quality, relevant backlinks. By month 8, we were up to 43.

My favorite win? Getting their recent downtown project featured on a major Vancouver urban design blog with impressive domain authority after connecting with the editor at an industry event. Sometimes old-school networking beats digital!

Month-by-Month Results

We’re big believers in transparency, so here’s exactly how it played out:

Month 1: New site launched. Traffic actually DROPPED while Google recrawled everything. Their team was freaking out a bit, not going to lie.

Month 2: First signs of life. Traffic: 230+ visitors. 4 online quote requests. Started ranking for some super long-tail terms.

Month 3: Rankings improving. Traffic: nearly 400 visitors. 7 quote requests. Hit page 2 for “vinyl fencing vancouver” – first major keyword movement!

Month 4: Things picking up steam. Traffic: 500+ visitors. 11 quote requests. Also first neighborhood-specific rankings on page 1.

Month 5: Major progress! Traffic: almost 700 visitors. 16 quote requests. 5 keywords now on page 1, including “cedar fence installation Vancouver.”

Month 6: Google algorithm update actually HELPED us. Traffic: almost 900 visitors. 22 quote requests. 9 keywords on page 1!

Month 7: Broke 1,000 visitors! Traffic: 1,047 visitors. 27 quote requests. 12 keywords on page 1, including some major commercial terms.

Month 8: Officially crushed all goals. Traffic: over 1,250 visitors (that’s a 401% increase!). 35 quote requests. 18 keywords on page 1, including the ultra-competitive “Vancouver fence company.”

By the next month, they actually had to hire 2 new installation crews to keep up with demand. Talk about a good problem to have!

The Business Impact Was Insane

The numbers are cool, but the business impact is what matters. After 8 months:

• Quote requests went from 1-2 per week to 8-9 per week (and much higher quality leads)
• Cost per acquisition dropped from $312 to just $47
• They cut Google Ads budget by 70% and still got more leads
• Average project value increased by 34% because they were attracting homeowners in better neighborhoods
• Their commercial project pipeline went from 2 pending to 11 pending
• They raised their prices 15% and STILL had a backlog

The company was kind enough to share that their revenue jumped 127% year-over-year following our campaign. Their owner’s message said it all: “Best money we ever spent. Period. We’re booked solid for months.”

Lessons We Learned

This project taught us some valuable stuff too:

1. Location specificity is EVERYTHING for local service businesses. The neighborhood pages outperformed service pages 3-to-1 for conversions. People want fencing experts in THEIR part of Vancouver.
2. Actual pricing info is scary to add but converts like crazy. The “Vancouver Fencing Cost Guide” page became their #2 lead generator despite the team’s initial resistance.
3. The technical foundation matters more than we thought. When we temporarily broke the schema markup in month 3 (oops!), rankings dropped overnight. Fixed it and they bounced right back.
4. Too many agencies focus on vanity metrics. Previous agency showed them impressive “traffic” numbers that were actually bots and spam. Real traffic converts!

Where They Are Today

It’s been about 5 months since we completed the initial 8-month project, and this Vancouver fencing company is absolutely crushing it online. They’re now ranking #4 for “Vancouver fence company” and #2 for “fence installation Vancouver” – those two keywords alone bring in about 700 visitors monthly.

Their organic traffic hit over 1,700 visitors last month, and they’re averaging 41 quality quote requests monthly through the website. That’s roughly $160,000 in new business opportunities every month from organic search alone.

Best part? They don’t need our intensive help anymore. We’ve switched them to our maintenance plan where we just update content and monitor rankings. Their foundation is so solid that they’re maintaining their positions even as competitors try to catch up.

The owner’s perspective says it all: “We went from being invisible to being the company everyone finds first. I’m just mad we waited so long to do this right!”

Summary

This Vancouver fencing company went from digital disaster to dominating local fence searches through:

• Complete WordPress website development with killer UX and speed
• Super-targeted content specific to Vancouver neighborhoods and fence types
• Proper technical SEO implementation (boring but crucial)
• Strategic link building with actual relevant sites
• 8 months of consistent effort (no shortcuts!)

Results after 8 months:

• 401% increase in organic traffic
• 18 major keywords on page 1
• 35+ monthly quote requests (up from 2-3)
• 127% year-over-year revenue growth
• Cost per new customer acquisition dropped 85%

Luminary Software specializes in web design and SEO for service businesses across Western Canada. As a leading digital agency in Calgary, we’ve helped dozens of local companies transform their digital presence from liability to lead-generating machine. If your website isn’t bringing in business, let’s grab a coffee and talk about how to fix that.