Technical SEO
Consolidating a sprawling location-page structure for Everything IT
A managed IT services provider was competing with itself. Three near-identical URLs targeted the same cities, none of them ranked, and the copy was the same page with the city name swapped. We cut the location pages to the four regions that actually matter and put the rest on 301s.
- Client
- Everything IT — managed IT services, Dublin
- Work
- Technical SEO, information architecture, content
- Measured
- 1–27 July 2026 vs 1–27 August 2026
- Source
- Google Search Console
Everything IT
01 — The problem
Location pages that had accumulated rather than been planned
The site had accumulated location pages the way most sites accumulate them: gradually, by different people, with no plan. Multiple URLs targeted the same city — `/cork/`, `/it-support-cork/` and `/it-support-cork-2/` all existed simultaneously. The copy across them was close to identical with the city name swapped, which is the doorway pattern Google filters rather than rewards.
The pages competed with each other for the same searches, and none of them won.
02 — What we did
Four pages, each written for the region it serves
The fix was not more pages. It was fewer, better ones — and a clear decision about which regions Everything IT genuinely has something specific to say about.
- Cut the location pages down to four. Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford — the four regions where Everything IT genuinely has something specific to offer. Everything else was retired and redirected rather than left to dilute the site.
- Wrote each of the four differently. Not a template with the city swapped. Cork City and County Cork, Galway and the West, Limerick and the Mid-West, Waterford and the South-East each serve a different mix of local businesses, so each page targets the services that actually match its area.
- Resolved the duplicate URLs. One canonical page per location, with 301s from the retired variants so the accumulated equity moved rather than evaporated.
- Rebuilt internal linking between the location pages and the location directory, so the four surviving pages inherited the internal authority the retired ones had been splitting.
03 — The result
Clicks up 32%, impressions up 18%, measured four weeks either side
Across the four surviving pages, comparing the month before the work with the month after:
| Page | Clicks | Impressions | Average position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cork | 4 → 7 | 1,159 → 876 | 45.7 → 34.4 |
| Waterford | 3 → 3 | 1,207 → 698 | 51.6 → 36.2 |
| Limerick | 7 → 9 | 928 → 2,101 | 17.5 → 27.8 |
| Galway | 5 → 6 | 899 → 1,271 | 43.5 → 40.4 |
| Combined | 19 → 25 | 4,193 → 4,946 | — |
Clicks to the four pages
19
+32% increase
1–27 July 2026 vs 1–27 August 2026
Impressions, four pages
4,193
+18% increase
4,193 → 4,946
Limerick impressions
928
+126% increase
928 → 2,101, the largest single gain
Limerick average position
17.5
27.8 decrease, unfavourable
Worse — see below. More searches won, at lower positions.
04 — The wider view
The whole-property Search Console picture
The table above isolates the four location pages changed in this project. The screenshot below is a second, broader view: the client's entire Google Search Console property for the latest three months against the same period last year, as viewed on 9 September 2026.
Because the whole-property view includes more than these four pages, it should not be read as though every gain came from the location-page consolidation.
05 — What did not go to plan
Two things, stated plainly
A case study that reports only the good half is an advertisement.
Limerick's average position got worse — 17.5 to 27.8 — while its impressions more than doubled. Those two facts are related. The page went from surfacing for a narrow set of searches to surfacing for a much wider set, and the newly-added ones sit lower down. An average dragged down by winning more ground is not the same as a decline, but it looks identical on a dashboard, and any agency reporting on this account should be able to tell you which one you are looking at.
Cork and Waterford both lost impressions even as their positions improved sharply. During a consolidation the retired URLs keep appearing in search results for a while, then stop; the totals dip before they recover. We expected this and said so in advance, which is the only reason it was not alarming when it happened.
Across the whole domain, including every retired URL bleeding its old traffic through a redirect, the same month looked flat. Judged only on the four pages that were actually the subject of the work, it did not. Both numbers are true, and an agency that shows you only the flattering one is choosing which truth to hand you.
06 — Still in progress
Not everything here has a result yet
An AI chat assistant for the site has been built and is running on a staging environment for the client to evaluate before any decision about putting it in front of real visitors.
It is mentioned here because it is part of the engagement, not because there is a result to report yet. There is not.
Technologies used
- WordPress
- Google Search Console
- 301 redirects
- Schema.org
- Internal linking
Want results you can check?
Tell us what you are trying to fix and we will tell you honestly whether we can measure it.