Case Study — Local SEO & Directory Build

How we built Cumbria's most complete trade directory

472 pages. 35 towns. 12 trades. 2,300+ warm leads at launch. A fully automated local lead generation engine — designed, built and deployed by Cascade Digital.

472
Pages built
35
Cumbrian towns
12
Trade categories
2,300+
Business prospects at launch
Cumbrian Trade Directory website on desktop monitor and mobile — built by Cascade Digital
The Strategy

A directory built to dominate local search

The Cumbrian Trade Directory isn't "just a website". It's a systematically engineered local lead generation website — a single asset designed to own local search across an entire county and turn that visibility into named, contactable business prospects.

The core idea behind any successful local business directory website is simple but ruthless: every page targets one specific local search, and every listing on that page is a real, named prospect. Get the architecture right and you build authority town by town, trade by trade — without ever competing for the crowded national keywords everyone else is fighting over.

The insight that shaped the whole build: a search like "plumber in Kirkby Lonsdale" has around 30 searches a month and almost zero competition. On its own that's tiny. But there are hundreds of those searches across Cumbria — one for every trade in every town. So we built 420 money pages targeting exactly these queries, each one a clean shot at a search no one else was bothering to win.

The Build

472 pages, one coherent system

Directory website design only works at scale if the structure is disciplined. Every page sits in a deliberate hierarchy that passes authority down to the pages that generate leads.

Homepage
County-wide authority hub
Trade Hubs × 12
Plumbers, electricians, roofers, joiners, builders & more
Town Hubs × 35
Every major Cumbrian town & SW Scotland border town
Money Pages × 420
[Trade] in [Town] — one page per local search
PhaseTownsPages
Phase 18 Tier 1 towns96 pages
Phase 29 Tier 2 towns108 pages
Phase 311 Tier 3 towns132 pages
Phase 47 SW Scotland towns84 pages
Money pages35 towns × 12 trades420 pages
Cumbrian Trade Directory — plumbers in Carlisle page with Carlisle aerial view
SEO Strategy

Winning searches no one else is targeting

This is what a proper local SEO website build looks like under the bonnet — repeatable structure, unique content and internal linking engineered to rank, applied across all 472 pages.

🏷️Unique titles & meta on every page

No two pages share a title tag or meta description. Each is written around its exact [trade] in [town] search query.

🧩JSON-LD LocalBusiness schema everywhere

Every listing carries structured data, so Google and AI Overviews can read the business, trade and location instantly.

✏️420 unique intro paragraphs

Zero duplicate copy. Every money page has its own hand-structured introduction — the difference between ranking and getting filtered out.

🔗Systematic internal linking

Every money page links up to its trade hub and town hub, and across to 3 nearby towns — spreading authority through the whole directory.

How do you build a directory website that ranks on Google?

You build it as a hierarchy, not a heap of pages. Start with a homepage that establishes county-wide authority, branch into trade and town hubs, then sit hundreds of tightly-focused money pages underneath — each one targeting a single low-competition local search. Give every page a unique title, a unique intro and JSON-LD LocalBusiness schema, then link them together so authority flows down to the pages that generate leads and across to neighbouring towns. That combination — disciplined architecture, genuinely unique content and engineered internal linking — is how to build a directory website that ranks for hundreds of searches at once instead of fighting for one crowded keyword. It's the same approach we bring to every web design in Carlisle project, scaled up to an entire county.

Under the Hood

The tech stack

A lean, modern stack chosen for speed, scale and automation — every piece earning its place.

Frontend
Next.jsStatic export for fast, crawlable pages
Database
SupabaseListing workflow: scraped → claimed → verified → premium
Data
Google Places APIReal business data across every town
CRM & Outreach
GoHighLevel412 contacts, automated 3-email sequence
AI Tooling
Claude (Anthropic)Content structuring at scale
Hosting
Namecheap cPanel (UK)Fast UK hosting, full control
The Engine

From Google ranking to sales call — automatically

The directory doesn't just rank. It feeds a pipeline. Here's how a single Google search becomes a warm business conversation without any manual prospecting.

1

Pages rank for local trade searches

A tradesperson's customers — and the tradesperson themselves — find the directory ranking for "[trade] in [town]" across Cumbria.

2

The tradesperson finds their own listing

They see themselves listed on a page already ranking on Google — and want to claim, verify or upgrade it.

3

GoHighLevel outreach fires automatically

A 3-email sequence reaches the contact, built and triggered through our business automation setup.

4

A warm lead enters the pipeline

The prospect is already aware, already interested and already on a page that's working for them — the easiest kind of lead to convert.

5

Web design & digital marketing pitch

From there it's a natural conversation about a proper website, local SEO and ongoing marketing — services they now have a reason to buy.

The Result

What we delivered

A complete, live, revenue-ready trade directory website — and the automation pipeline behind it.

472 SEO-optimised pages, live and indexed
JSON-LD LocalBusiness schema across every listing
Automated GoHighLevel outreach sequence
Live business data via the Google Places API
Supabase listing workflow (scraped → premium)
2,300+ named business prospects captured
Phase 4 SW Scotland expansion ready to roll
One coherent, scalable system — built to grow
"At launch we had 2,300+ named business prospects with phone numbers and trade categories — all captured automatically before a single sales call was made."
— Peter, Founder, Cascade Digital
How We Built It

Services used on this project

The Cumbrian Trade Directory pulled together three of our core services into one engineered system.

💻

Web Design

Custom build from scratch — 472 pages, one coherent system. The kind of bespoke web design a template could never produce.

Explore our web design →
🔍

SEO Services

Every page structured to rank for local trade searches across Cumbria. Engineered, repeatable SEO services applied at scale.

View our SEO services →
⚙️

Business Automation

GoHighLevel outreach, Supabase workflow and a Google Places API data pipeline — joined-up business automation doing the heavy lifting.

See business automation →

Want a website that works as hard as this?

Whether you need a local directory, a trade services site, or a full digital marketing system — Cascade Digital builds websites that rank and generate real leads. Based in Carlisle, working across Cumbria and the UK.