Getting a Benfleet mortgage broker found on Google

Groundwork at launch

Technical SEO started before the new site went live. Search Console was already tracking the old site in January, so there's a clean before and after. The new site launched with a page for each of AB's 16 services, and every enquiry form records where the person came from, so a lead from Google shows up as one. Since launch, Maximillian has looked after the technical side while the site grows.

A page for every town

AB covers south Essex, and people look for a broker by town. Lloyd wrote a page for each of 18 places, from Southend and Basildon to Canvey Island and Tilbury, and Stonebridge checked every one before it went live. Each page answers ten questions people ask about living and buying there, from council tax and schools to how lenders treat the local homes. All 18 showed up in Google in October. That month AB appeared 6,349 times in searches naming one of those places or Essex, against four times in May.

Guides for the questions buyers ask

The articles and guides reach people further back, while they're still working out what they need. There are 16 articles and four longer guides so far, on getting a mortgage when you're self-employed, remortgaging, equity release and buying through a trust. In October they were shown 4,741 times in Google and brought in 22 clicks. The self-employed guide alone was shown more than 3,000 times.

Showing up in AI answers

People now ask ChatGPT, Copilot and Google's AI answers for a broker, and the answers name the sites they draw on. For AB it's early. Ahrefs has found the site cited in AI answers three times so far, all by Microsoft Copilot, and analytics show no visits from AI tools yet. Short, direct answers, like the ten local questions on each town page, are the kind of thing these tools quote, so the groundwork is there.

Where it stands

September and October were AB's best months since tracking began, with 107 clicks from Google each, seven times May's 15. October was also the first month where searches that don't name AB brought in more clicks than searches that do: 34 against 20. Google showed 65 AB pages in October, against two in May, and most of October's extra impressions came from the town pages, guides and articles.

The figures below come from Google Search Console, all countries, from 21 January to 31 October 2026. Search Console hides some searches for privacy, so figures for searches that do or don't name AB count only the searches it shows. The AI figures come from Ahrefs.