WorkCase study / Gas, heating and plumbing

Gasmaster.

A Gas Safe registered heating firm in Stoke-on-Trent had a WordPress site that looked fine from the homepage and was broken underneath. We repaired it, moved it to faster hosting, filled it with real proof, then rebuilt all 273 pages in a design that puts the phone number, the fixed £90 service price and the Gas Safe number on the first screen.

Client
Gasmaster Plumbing & Heating
Sector
Gas, heating and plumbing
Services
Technical SEO, repair, hosting move, redesign, content
Timeline
July to September 2026
Area
Staffordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire
The new Gasmaster homepage: headline, the £90 annual boiler service card, call and booking buttons
273pagesrebuilt in the new design, from 56 town pages to every blog postWhole site
779linksbroken internal links repaired, two in the header of every pageFull crawl
82%less HTML per page on average, 382 KB down to 67 KB83 matched pages
136reviewsreal Google reviews at 4.9, now shown across the siteGoogle Business Profile

01 / Where it started

A local firm, damage nobody could see.

Gasmaster has fixed boilers around Stoke-on-Trent since 2005, across dozens of towns in three counties. Most customers find it on Google when something has stopped working, so the site has one job: make calling the obvious next step.

  • 779 broken internal links. 471 pointed at a contact page that did not exist.
  • 92 of 145 redirects went to “page not found”. The SEO plugin thought the server handled them; the server rules were missing.
  • 548 dead “#” links across 29 boiler installation town pages, eleven of them real service buttons never connected.
  • 248 KB of inline CSS in every page, the page builder’s whole stylesheet shipped inside each page.
  • Blank and unstyled pages, including the booking page, whose finished form had never been placed on it.

Search Console showed the cost: 154,016 impressions in three months but only 210 clicks, and 77% of page impressions at position 30 or lower.

02 / The old site, up close

What visitors were actually seeing.

Captured on 27 July 2026 from an exact copy of the live site, before any changes.

Before
Blank testimonials page on the old site
BeforeA live Testimonials page with nothing on it.
Before
Old reviews page showing 5.0 with no reviews
BeforeA 5.0 score and “Reviews coming soon”, with no reviews behind it.
Before
Password-protected draft page left public
BeforeA password-protected draft, published and reachable.
Before
Off-brand emergency call-out page
BeforeA call-out page that matched nothing else on the site.

03 / How it ran

Fix what Google crawls, then design.

Before each change every page was screenshotted at three widths and compared afterwards, so nothing broke unnoticed.

27 Jul
01

Copy and baseline

A private staging copy, and screenshots of every page at three widths.

1 Aug
02

Links repaired

All 779 broken internal links fixed.

13 Aug
03

Real proof

The client’s own job photos placed and real Google reviews added.

24 Aug
04

New server

Moved to our hosting with a full-page cache. Every old address checked.

25 Sep
05

Content

Local guides published, taking the blog from 60 posts to 177.

28 Sep
06

New design live

All 273 pages rebuilt. No URL changed and nothing was lost.

04 / What we built

One decision: call now.

Someone with no hot water wants three answers fast: can you come, what will it cost, and can I trust you. Every page now answers all three before the visitor scrolls.

  • Prices on the page. Three fixed service tiers (£90, £124.99 and £225), each listing what is checked.
  • Real reviews. Placeholder testimonials replaced by 136 real Google reviews at 4.9, in markup Google can read.
  • Coverage you can check. An area map with a postcode checker, linking to 56 town pages with their own local copy.
  • Built for a phone. A fixed Call, WhatsApp and Callback bar on every page, “open now” status and free video quotes.
Take one / Repair

Fix the plumbing first

Links, redirects and blank pages repaired on staging, page by page.

Take two / Proof

Real photos, real reviews

51 of the client’s own job photos and 136 Google reviews.

Take three / Rebuild

273 pages, one design

Fast pre-built pages, existing copy carried over.

05 / Before and after

Same pages, new site.

Before: 27 July 2026. After: the live site on 29 September 2026.

Before
Old Gasmaster homepage first screen
BeforeHomepage. Blue hero, no price, no reviews near the top.
After
New Gasmaster homepage first screen
AfterThe problem, the fixed price and the phone number lead.
Before
Full length of the original Gasmaster homepage
BeforeThe full old homepage. Scroll inside the frame.
After
Full length of the new Gasmaster homepage
AfterThe full new homepage. Scroll inside the frame.
Before
Old boiler service page
BeforeBoiler service, old.
After
New boiler service page with the £90 price on the first screen
AfterThe £90 price, reviews and Gas Safe number on the first screen.
Before
Old Crewe town page
BeforeA town page, old.
After
New Crewe town page
AfterOne of 56 town pages, each with its own local copy.

On a phone

Before
Old homepage on a phone
BeforeOld, first screen.
After
New homepage on a phone
AfterNew, first screen.

New sections

New page
Fixed price section with three boiler service tiers
NewThree fixed service prices, most popular highlighted.
New page
Areas covered map with postcode checker
NewArea map and postcode checker.

06 / Measured

Lighter pages, a healthy site.

Page HTML before (27 July) and after (29 September), and a full crawl of the site.

Page HTML

Before / After
PageBeforeAfterChange
Home380 KB121 KB-68%
Boiler installation369 KB72 KB-81%
Boiler repair368 KB66 KB-82%
Contact370 KB47 KB-87%
Heaviest page (Crewe)653 KB63 KB-90%
Average, 83 pages382 KB67 KB-82%

Before and after

Site crawl

Average page HTML (KB)

Old site
0
New site
0

Links in the header

Old site
0
New site
0

Blog posts

Old site
0
New site
0

Search results are still to come. The new design went live on 28 September 2026, so ranking changes take a few months to show. We will report against the baseline above: 154,016 impressions and 210 clicks over the three months before the work.

07 / Under the hood

Hardening and housekeeping.

  • Enquiries arrive. A mail fault bouncing about half the Gmail copies of form enquiries was found and fixed.
  • Login attacks stopped. A bot route to the login page closed after 15,700 attempts from 296 addresses in one month.
  • Legal pages done. Privacy, cookie and terms pages added; Analytics now waits for consent.
  • Business details in one place. Name, address, Gas Safe number and hours from one source, in the format Google reads.
  • 167 of 167 old addresses still answering after the move.
Site health, full crawl
CheckBeforeAfter
Broken internal links7790
Redirects returning 40492 of 1450
Dead “#” links5480
Blank or unstyled pages80
Internal links sitewide21,06012,394
WordPressStatic page buildFull-page cacheHosting migration301 redirectsLocalBusiness schemaReview markupCookie consentEmail deliverabilitySecurity hardening

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