Anthony Mason UpholsteryOut of a bad agency deal and into a site he owns

Tony has run his upholstery business for 40 years on craft and word of mouth. Before coming to me, he'd paid another web design agency thousands and been left with a website that didn't properly work.

Every few weeks there was another call asking for more money: a push on SEO, another add-on, none of which ever delivered anything.

First, getting him out cleanly. That meant untangling his domain from the old setup and moving everything onto hosting he controls, so he's never stuck again.

Then a full website covering everything the business does: sofas, armchairs, dining chairs, antique restoration and bespoke pieces, plus a page for finished furniture Tony has for sale.

His Google Business Profile was set up from scratch with the right categories and his real service area, from Bedfordshire into Milton Keynes, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. The description leads with what makes the business trustworthy: decades of hands-on craft, and every job handled by Tony himself.

Once the site was his, I went back through it for Google. Every service sat on one page as a list, and the areas page was a list of towns. Some pages had no main heading at all. Someone searching for dining chair reupholstery, or an upholsterer in Luton, had no page of Tony's to land on.

• A page for each service, covering what the work involves, choosing fabric, collection and delivery, and the questions people ask before they ring.
• A page for each main town he collects from, written for that town. The Milton Keynes page talks about the mid-century and G Plan pieces people there bring him.
• Proper titles and descriptions on every page, written around what people actually search for.
• Business details marked up for Google on every page, including that he's been trading since 1984, with FAQs on 11 pages and breadcrumbs throughout.
• A sitemap listing all 20 pages and fast, simple hosting, so Google can find and index the whole site.

Tony now owns his website and domain outright, with no agency calling for more money. The rebuilt site has 20 pages where the old one had seven, and every service and main town has a page Google can show.

I'm tracking which services and towns people find him through in Google Search Console, and I'll add the numbers here as they come in.