Case study · Client site, anonymised
Local SEO for a personal-trainer course provider in Edinburgh
A new local business with no search history: website, Business Profile, UK directories and on-page fixes, then four times the impressions.
1.11K → 5.19K
Monthly impressions, 1 to 28 August vs 1 to 28 October 2026
21 → 62
Monthly clicks over the same two periods
5.0
Rating on all three Upwork contracts for this client (four reviews)
The starting point
A personal-trainer certification course in Edinburgh, launched in early 2026 on a domain registered that January. Students come from the city and the surrounding area, so the business depends on local search and the Google map.
A brand-new domain with no search history, competing with national course providers that already rank for the course name and for its own brand name.
What we did
- Set up and optimised the Google Business Profile: categories, services, photos, description, products and a run of scheduled posts.
- Set up Google Search Console with the sitemap, and Google Analytics 4 tracking.
- Submitted the business to UK directories such as Yell, Bing Places, Thomson Local, Scoot and 192.com, with the same name, address and phone number everywhere.
- Built the website from the client’s copy and layout, with every call to action pointing to the booking and sales page.
The numbers
| Period | Dates | Clicks | Impressions | Average position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Earlier month | 1 to 28 August 2026 | 21 | 1.11K | 9.4 |
| Latest month | 1 to 28 October 2026 | 62 | 5.19K | 14.2 |
Search Console data for this property starts in mid-August 2026. Source: Google Search Console, web search, read 1 November 2026.
Search Console
How to read the chart.
The chart at the top of this page is a screenshot of the Search Console Performance report, cropped so the domain does not show. Nothing else is edited.
- Blue line: clicks from Google search each day.
- Purple line: impressions, the number of times the site appeared in results.
- Average position: where the site appeared on average, across every search it showed for. Lower is better. The number can get bigger while traffic grows, because the site starts appearing for more, and harder, searches.
What the numbers do not prove
Average position got worse, from 9.4 to 14.2, because the site started appearing for many more searches: impressions grew almost fivefold. The numbers are small, as you would expect for one local course. Calls and direction requests from the Business Profile are not in Search Console, so they are not counted here.
What we would do differently
Fix the brand-name search first. Months in, searches for the business’s own name still showed national competitors above it. Checking that early, before building new pages, would have protected the enquiries that matter most.
“Muhammad did great work — reliable, responsive, and easy to work with throughout. He understood the brief quickly and delivered without me having to chase or over-explain. Communication was clear and any issues that came up were sorted fast. Highly recommend and would work with him again”
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