AIIMS Group SEO Case Study | Mr Splash Plumbing Sydney 2015 -2025
AIIMS Group SEO Case Study
Mr Splash Plumbing Sydney
How AIIMS Group helped Mr Splash Plumbing recover from a major SEO hack, rebuild trust with Google, restore search visibility for “Plumber Sydney”, and turn a damaged organic footprint back into a lead-generating asset.
From hacked, damaged and falling — to visible again in Sydney’s hardest plumbing SERPs.
Mr Splash Plumbing came to AIIMS Group after a severe SEO issue had damaged the website’s organic visibility. The business had previously held major search positions, including strong visibility for “Plumber Sydney”. After the hack, the site lost more than half of its organic traffic and dropped sharply for its most valuable keyword.
The job was not to “write a few blogs” or make surface-level metadata changes. This was a recovery campaign. AIIMS had to clean the technical damage, remove hacked URLs, rebuild indexation signals, restore Google trust, strengthen the site architecture, improve content quality and rebuild authority around Sydney plumbing searches.
The campaign succeeded because the strategy was disciplined: fix the foundation first, then rebuild relevance, then create a strong internal linking and content cluster system around the main commercial target — “Plumber Sydney”.
A major SEO hack had cut the legs out from under the business.
Before the campaign, Mr Splash Plumbing was a serious organic competitor. After the hack, rankings collapsed, visibility dropped and the website was no longer acting like a trusted Sydney plumbing authority.
The primary keyword “Plumber Sydney” fell from a former number one position to approximately position twenty four. In a category where one emergency plumbing job can be highly valuable, this was not just a ranking issue. It was a revenue and lead-flow issue.
What had to be fixed
- Hacked URLs had to be removed, no-indexed and cleaned from Google’s crawl path.
- Sitemaps and robots.txt needed to guide Google back to the right pages.
- Duplicate URLs and canonical issues had to be resolved.
- Page templates had to be improved for trust and conversion.
- Blog content had to support commercial pages instead of sitting disconnected.
- Google Business Profile signals had to support local pack recovery.
Clear targets. No fluff. Recover rankings, rebuild traffic and increase quality leads.
| Objective | Target | Why It Mattered |
|---|---|---|
| Recover from the SEO hack | Stabilise the site and rebuild Google trust within the first month | The site could not grow until hacked URLs, crawl issues and indexation damage were repaired. |
| Organic traffic recovery | Reach 2,200 organic traffic in 6 months | This would roughly double traffic from the damaged post-hack baseline. |
| Recover “Plumber Sydney” | Return the keyword to Page 1 within 6 months | The keyword had fallen from #1 to around #24 after the hack. |
| Increase quality leads | Grow quality leads from 100 to 130 per month within 8 months | Ranking recovery needed to translate into real commercial outcomes. |
| Budget | $5,000 AUD per month SEO budget plus management fee | Budget was split across technical SEO, on-page SEO and off-page support. |
The campaign was built around recovery, authority and conversion.
1. Recover the foundation
The first priority was cleaning the damage left by the hack. That meant removing or no-indexing compromised URLs, repairing crawl pathways, cleaning sitemaps and ensuring Google could focus on the real commercial pages.
2. Rebuild Sydney relevance
AIIMS rebuilt the page strategy around “Plumber Sydney” and supporting location/service searches across Sydney, Inner West, St George and the Eastern Suburbs.
3. Turn content into authority
Blog content was no longer treated as isolated information. It was redirected and structured into a topical support system that pushed authority back to the main Sydney plumbing page.
The clean-up had to be aggressive, careful and fast.
A hacked website can send confusing and dangerous quality signals to Google. AIIMS treated the first stage as a technical rescue job. The priority was to remove bad URLs, repair canonical direction, clean up crawl instructions and make sure the correct version of the site was being indexed.
The site was custom-built, which meant many improvements had to be made through PHP and manual development work. Unlike WordPress sites with simple plugins, this required deeper technical control and custom implementation.
Technical fixes included
- No-indexing and removing hacked URLs.
- Removing compromised pages from sitemaps and core files.
- Adding robots.txt guidance.
- Redirecting duplicate URLs.
- Canonicalising HTTP and HTTPS versions into one preferred HTTPS www version.
- Creating multiple sitemaps.
- Improving Core Web Vitals and site speed issues.
- No-indexing child sites that caused Google confusion.
- Push indexing important optimised pages.
- Completing schema audit and implementation.
AIIMS did not bloat the site. We made the content useful, local and commercially connected.
Plumbing SEO is not won by writing generic suburb pages and hoping Google works it out. The campaign focused on useful content that built trust, answered practical plumbing questions and connected back to the main commercial “Plumber Sydney” page.
Trust-first page templates
AIIMS redesigned main page templates so the most important conversion and trust elements were visible above the fold. The page experience was built to help users call or submit a form quickly.
Commercial page support
Supporting pages were built around suburbs, emergency plumbing, blocked drains and pipe relining — services with clear search intent and strong commercial value.
Blog cluster repair
Plumbing advice content was redirected into a cleaner URL structure and used as a topical cluster to support the “Plumber Sydney” hub page.
The biggest shift: turning scattered content into a Sydney plumbing authority hub.
AIIMS created an internal linking structure that pointed supporting content and service pages back toward the primary “Plumber Sydney” page. This helped Google understand which page was the commercial centre of the website.
Blog URLs were redirected into a cleaner structure under the plumber Sydney pathway. From there, supporting pages passed relevance and authority back to the main commercial target.
Example structure
Old style:
/plumber-sydney/how-to-fix-a-leaking-tap/
New strategic purpose:
Use useful plumbing content to build a mini-cluster around the main Plumber Sydney page.
This is what gave Google a clearer picture: Mr Splash was not just a plumbing website. It was a Sydney plumbing authority with supporting proof across services, locations and practical advice.
Search recovery was supported by local pack optimisation.
The strategy did not rely only on website pages. AIIMS also optimised Google Business Profile signals to support visibility for “Plumber Sydney” and closely related local keywords. This became critical to the final outcome, with Mr Splash Plumbing returning to local pack visibility.
Primary location focus
Sydney remained the core commercial target because it carried the greatest ranking and lead-generation value.
Supporting regions
Inner West, St George and Eastern Suburbs were used as supporting location targets.
Emergency intent
Emergency plumbing, blocked drains and pipe relining were prioritised because they aligned with urgent customer demand.
The recovery worked. Rankings came back, keyword reach expanded and leads increased.
| Metric | Result | Commercial Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Primary keyword recovery | “Plumber Sydney” returned to Local Pack visibility | The campaign exceeded the original goal of returning to Page 1 within 6 months. |
| Total keyword reach | +1,054 keywords / +120% | The website expanded beyond one keyword and rebuilt broader category visibility. |
| Organic leads | 149 organic leads in March | The campaign beat the goal of 130 monthly quality leads. |
| Call quality signals | 22% new callers, 45% average duration increase, 25% increase in calls | Traffic was not empty traffic. It created real enquiry behaviour. |
| Conversion growth | +36% overall conversions in the last 90 days compared to previous | The SEO recovery translated into measurable lead growth. |
Most agencies would have treated this like a content problem. It was not. It was a trust problem.
Month 1: Contain the damage
AIIMS removed hacked URLs, cleaned technical signals and stopped Google from crawling the wrong assets.
Months 2–3: Rebuild the structure
The team rebuilt templates, corrected canonical signals, improved sitemap structure and created cleaner page pathways.
Months 3–5: Build authority
Content and internal linking were used to reinforce topical authority around Sydney plumbing searches.
Month 6 onwards: Convert the recovery
Rankings and traffic recovery turned into stronger calls, leads and measurable conversions.
Use the exported PDF screenshots here.
Replace the image source paths below with the actual image URLs from WordPress once you upload the screenshots from the PDF. Use screenshots from the award entry showing the pre-hack/post-hack drop, competitor analysis, action plan, technical SEO work, internal linking examples, traffic recovery and lead growth.
Related AIIMS services that supported this type of campaign.
This campaign was not one SEO tactic. It required technical SEO, content strategy, local SEO, web development, conversion thinking and search data working together.
Mr Splash Plumbing SEO case study FAQs
What was the main issue with the Mr Splash Plumbing website?
The website had suffered a major SEO hack, which damaged organic rankings, traffic and Google trust signals.
What keyword was most important?
The core recovery keyword was “Plumber Sydney”, supported by Sydney location, emergency plumbing, blocked drains and pipe relining terms.
How did AIIMS Group recover the SEO performance?
AIIMS removed hacked URLs, repaired technical SEO issues, rebuilt page templates, improved indexation, optimised Google Business Profile signals and created a stronger internal linking and content cluster structure.
Did the campaign generate more leads?
Yes. The campaign achieved 149 organic leads in March and delivered a 36% increase in overall conversions over the last 90-day comparison period.
Why is this campaign different?
It was not a normal SEO growth campaign. It was a recovery campaign in one of Australia’s most competitive local service categories, where AIIMS had to rebuild trust, rankings and lead flow after serious technical damage.
Need SEO that can recover, rebuild and compete?
AIIMS Group builds SEO campaigns with the infrastructure to handle technical recovery, content strategy, local search, web development and performance marketing together.