Home / Our work / Harold Park Repairs
case study · car mechanic · annandale
Three decades of customers.
Now page one for his suburb.
Harold Park Repairs has been Annandale's independent mechanic for three decades, with a 4.7 rating from 111 Google reviews to show for it. Its website was six pages of WordPress, with uploads going back to 2014, running a version of PHP that stopped getting security updates in 2018, on the same server as the workshop's email. We built the replacement as the pitch, moved the website without moving the mail, kept every old link alive, and five weeks after launch the workshop sits on page one for "mechanic annandale".
the brief
A workshop everyone trusts,
on a server nobody should.
The workshop had the hard part done. Three decades in Annandale, a team with over 35 years of combined experience, 101 five-star reviews. What it had online was a six-page WordPress site.
Six pages for a workshop that does everything
Home, logbook servicing, pink slips, repairs, about and contact. That was the whole site. Brakes, air conditioning, diagnostics, hybrids and the rest of the jobs the workshop does had no page of their own, so a search for one of them had nothing of his to land on.
Software that stopped getting security fixes in 2018
The site ran on PHP 5.6, end of life since December 2018, on a LiteSpeed host with uploads dating back to 2014. Leaving that server was a security job, not a redesign.
His email lived on the same box as the website
The MX record pointed at the web server. Move the site carelessly and every message to the workshop stops arriving. That one fact set the order of everything else we did.
what we did
Built as the pitch,
then rewritten in his voice.
- Built the pitch as a live site, not a slide deck.
Before Gunna had agreed to anything he could open a working ten-page version of his new site. Every claim on it came from the workshop's own site, its flyer, its Google listing or a public register, and a claims file recorded where each one came from. He said go ahead three days later.
- Gave every job the workshop does a page of its own.
Nineteen pages, fourteen of them services: logbook servicing, pink slips, brakes, wheel alignment, auto electrical, transmission and clutch, engine and cooling, exhaust and diesel, air conditioning, tyres and batteries, diagnostics, hybrid and electric, pre-purchase inspections and fleet servicing. Each one is written at 700 to 830 words, with what to tell the workshop when you ring.
- Rewrote every page in the workshop's own voice.
Twenty pages were rewritten in plain first person, with contractions, the morning the site went live. The copy reads like a mechanic talking across the counter, not like a template.
- Moved the website and left the mail exactly where it was.
The mail record was pinned to the old server first. Only then did the two web records move, so mail to the workshop kept going to the same place it always had.
- Kept every old link alive, including the ones the old site never listed.
All six old URLs redirect to their new pages. After launch, Search Console showed Google still holding an author archive and RSS feeds that the old sitemap had never mentioned. They redirect too, so old links point somewhere real.
- Put the workshop's own photos on it, and no prices we could not source.
Sixteen photographs supplied by the workshop, number plates blurred. The only prices on the site are the state-capped pink-slip fees and the service price the workshop gave us. Reviews are quoted word for word from Google, with no star markup we would have to defend.
- Gave him a booking form and his own measurement.
Bookings go straight to the workshop's inbox, with every lead saved on disk as well. Google Analytics and Search Console are set up for hpr.com.au, so every number below comes from his own accounts.
the result
Page one for his trade
and his suburb, in five weeks.
Read from his own Google Search Console and Google Analytics on 19 October 2026. Search figures cover launch day, 10 September, to 15 October, the 36 days of data that exist. These are small-business numbers from a suburb workshop, read from his own accounts rather than estimated.
- 2.0average position, "mechanic annandale"page one, 61 times shown, 17 Sep to 15 Oct
- #1for "harold park repairs"15 of the 46 clicks from search came from people looking for him by name
- 4,165times shown in Google36 days from launch, off a domain that held six pages
- 27 to 14average position, launch week to the week of 9 to 15 Octoberthe first week was mostly Google still showing the old URLs, which redirect
- Pages Google can index619
- Service pages314
- PHP version5.6, unsupported since 2018None: static pages
- Old links keptn/aAll of them, 301
- Workshop emailOn the web serverLeft where it was
the proof
What Annandale types,
and where he lands.
Google Search Console, 17 September to 15 October 2026. Impressions are the number of times his site appeared for the search; position is the average place it appeared in.
- harold park repairs721.0
- mechanic annandale612.0
- camperdown mechanic345.1
- annandale mechanic315.2
- car service annandale295.5
why it works
Change the website.
Leave everything else alone.
A business with three decades of reputation does not need a new identity, it needs its existing one made legible. So the migration was built around what could break: the mail stayed on its server, every old URL got a destination, the photographs are the workshop's, the copy sounds like the workshop, and the only prices on the site are ones it can stand behind at the counter. Get that right and a one-location workshop lands on page one for its own suburb.
- Rebuild
- Hosting migration
- 301 map
- Schema
- Local search
- Lead capture
- Measurement