The challenge
Hedge & Stone is a premium garden design and landscaping studio with a strong aesthetic and an enviable portfolio of residential and commercial projects. The business had no shortage of quality work — but it came almost entirely through referrals and word of mouth.
When we began tracking in April 2024, the site had near-zero organic presence across 124 non-branded target keywords. There was no content strategy, no local SEO infrastructure, and no technical foundation to support ranking. In a category where high-intent buyers search for specific styles, locations, and services before ever contacting a business, that invisibility was leaving significant enquiry volume on the table.
Landscaping and garden design is also a slow-trust category. Potential clients are typically investing tens of thousands of dollars in a project, and they research carefully before reaching out. Ranking for the right terms — premium design, specific plant types, award-winning landscapers — requires genuine authority, not just keyword optimisation.
What we did
The first phase focused on fixing the technical foundation and building out a content architecture that matched how Hedge & Stone's ideal clients actually search. That meant targeting terms around premium garden design, specific landscape styles, and high-value service categories — not generic terms dominated by directories and large aggregators.
Location-based pages were developed for the key service areas, structured to capture both commercial intent searches and the more specific, style-driven queries that high-value clients tend to use. Each page was built to demonstrate genuine expertise and signal authority to Google's quality systems.
On the authority side, we pursued editorial placements in architecture, interiors, and outdoor living publications — the kinds of backlinks that reinforce Hedge & Stone's positioning as a design-led studio rather than a general landscaping contractor.
The strategy was always going to be a long build. Competing for premium design terms requires accumulated authority, not quick wins.
The results
SEO authority compounds. The Hedge & Stone data makes that visible.
For the first 18 months, growth was measured — rankings climbing steadily, traffic building slowly. Then in January 2026, the curve changed. Visibility and estimated traffic both began accelerating sharply, and by April 2026 the trajectory is still pointing steeply upward.
Of 124 tracked non-branded keywords, 83 now rank on page one — up 39 since the campaign started, an 88.6% increase. 51 terms rank in the top three, up 32 since start — a 168.4% increase. 85 keywords have moved up overall.
"We came from a referral-only business with no organic presence at all. Now high-quality enquiries come in consistently through search — and the calibre of client is exactly what we want." Director, Hedge & Stone
Monthly organic enquiries have grown 20 times over. The business that once depended entirely on referrals now has a compounding organic channel — and it's still accelerating.
