NEW BUILD · ALLIED HEALTH · JANUARY 2026
In January, she didn’t exist online.
No website, no Google Business Profile, no search history of any kind. Seven months later, Being and Becoming OT sits on page one for the single most valuable phrase in its market — and 85% of the people finding it have never heard Maddy’s name.
A genuinely blank page
Maddy was opening a new practice. There was no old website to improve, no Business Profile to tidy up, and nothing at all on Google. Starting from zero sounds like the easy version — no mess to untangle — but it means nothing is carrying you while the new thing finds its feet. Every visitor has to be earned from scratch.
A crowded, specific market
Newcastle has no shortage of occupational therapists, and every one of them wants the same handful of search terms. Maddy’s practice is neuroaffirming and works across children, adults and other practitioners — three different audiences searching in three completely different ways.
WHAT WAS COMPLETED
Built to be found, not just to look good
A page per audience — children and young people, adults, and professional supervision each got their own page instead of one catch-all services list.
Titles written the way people search — location, service and funding type in plain language, not clinical terminology.
A Google Business Profile from scratch — categories, service areas and details built to match the site exactly.
A blog with a job to do — answering the questions parents and newly diagnosed adults type into Google long before they’re ready to book.
Business Profile posts scheduled ahead — so the profile keeps working without Maddy having to think about it.
Analytics and Search Console connected — so every claim on this page is a number, not a feeling.
WHAT CHANGED
Seven months from nothing
Clicks climbed from 24 in April to 78 in July and held there. Fourteen enquiries have come through the contact form, and the site now appears in front of someone searching for an OT more than 2,500 times a month.
From 52 appearances a month to 2,518.
April to August. That’s not a ranking nudge — it’s the difference between a website that confirms a business exists and one that puts it in front of thousands of people who are actively looking for what it does.
THE SHAPE OF IT
Every single month, up
Monthly impressions in Google Search. May is where it turns — the month the site enhancement work went live alongside the Google Business Profile. Nothing about this curve is a spike or a fluke; it climbs every month and keeps climbing.
THE BEST PART
Page one for the phrase everyone wants
In allied health there’s usually one search term that matters more than all the others combined. In Newcastle, it’s “occupational therapy Newcastle” — typed by someone who has decided they need an OT and is choosing one right now.
Established practices spend years trying to hold that first page. A practice that didn’t exist in January is on it before spring.
Alongside it: “OT near me”, “occupational therapy Port Stephens”, “paediatric OT Lake Macquarie” — the local, ready-to-book searches that turn into phone calls.
Average search position
461 impressions across the period. Page one of Google for the highest-intent phrase in the market, seven months after launch.
TWO CHANNELS, ONE SYSTEM
The Business Profile pulls its weight
A website and a Google Business Profile aren’t two separate jobs — they feed each other. Built together and kept current, the profile becomes a second front door.
The profile adds roughly a third again on top of what search alone delivers. And a small but real number of visits now arrive through AI assistants like ChatGPT — a channel most established practices still get nothing from.
WORTH UNDERSTANDING
Why the click rate went down as things got better
Early on, the site only appeared when someone typed Maddy’s business name — so nearly everyone who saw it clicked, and the click-through rate looked spectacular. It has fallen steadily since, and that is exactly what success looks like here. The site now appears thousands of times a month to people who’ve never heard of her. A smaller slice of a far bigger audience is a much larger number of real people. Percentages make lovely screenshots; clicks pay the bills.
A CLOSER LOOK
Inside the site
SERVICES USED
What this involved
A note on this site. Maddy can edit her own website — that’s rather the point. Some copy, imagery and layout may have changed since I finished the work. What’s described here is what I built and why.
Starting a business with nothing online yet?
That’s the best possible time to get it right, before there’s anything to undo. Tell me what you’re opening and I’ll tell you what it needs — the free audit works just as well on an idea as on a website.