About Ashcombe Estate Agents
Ashcombe Estate Agents is an independent family-owned sales and lettings agency in Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset. They cover the town and the surrounding villages, from Worle and Kewstoke through to Uphill and Bleadon. Weston is a competitive area, with a small number of long-established agencies holding most of the local search visibility.
The Challenges
No Analytics or Measurement
We inherited an existing site with no Search Console or Analytics property attached. This meant there was no historic performance data, no visibility into what the site ranked for and no way of telling what was working. The site was struggling to rank organically for anything other than their brand name, with most of the target terms sitting on page two.
Lack of Topical Authority
The website was lacking any topical or off-site authority which was causing the poor rankings. There was no local depth, no area specific content and nothing that would answer the questions people ask before they choose and agent. Their competitors had established blogs, in depth sellers guides and mortgage calculators, which was a clear gap between them and their subsequent rankings.
Google Ads Reliance
As a result of the rankings, Ashcombe were relying on Google ads to generate every enquiry, so the moment the budget stopped the pipeline stopped with it. It is the position a lot of independent agencies find themselves in and it gets more expensive every year. Their main aim was to boost organic rankings and reduce reliance on Google ads.
Every agency in Weston was fighting over the same handful of transactional terms. Nobody was answering the questions people ask before they pick an agent. That is where the area guides came in. They now bring in more than a quarter of everything the site earns in search, and the Weston guide gets seen more than the homepage.
The Strategy
Set up measurement first
We created and verified the Search Console property so there was a baseline to work from. Without it there is no way to prove anything and no way to know which decisions to make next.
Competitor and keyword gap analysis
We mapped what the established Weston agencies ranked for and where the gaps were. A clear pattern emerged, the local agencies were competing hard on transactional terms but has left area research terms almost untouched.
Built seven area guides
We built an areas guide for every area Ashcombe serves across Weston. The guides included Weston-super-Mare, Worle, Kewstoke, Uphill, Bleadon and Milton, plus a hub page tying them together. Each page was an in-depth guide for the area, covering what it is like to live there, schools, transport, housing stock and local character. They answer the questions someone asks months before they instruct an agent, which is exactly the kind of content AI search engines pull from. The aim was to produce content to send strong signals to Google that Ashcombe is an estate agent in Weston-super-Mare. The guides were also designed to increase organic traffic and increase citations in AI chats, which in turn increased the sites performance as a whole.
Targeted review strategy
The majority of businesses focus entirely on Google reviews to build their reputation, which is undeniably an important element of reputation building, However, most AI agents pull data from user generated content sites including reddit. We analysed the top sites AI agents use before making a recommendation and provided that data to Ashcombe. We advised them to ask for reviews across those platforms to increase their chances of being recommended. Now, AI agents regularly recommend Ashcombe in the top three picks.
Citations and directory listings
Consistent name, address and phone details across local and industry directories, alongside blogger outreach for links.
The Results
Search visibility up 348%
Monthly impressions grew from 17,471 in the first three months to 78,294 in the most recent three, comparing like for like.
Average position improved from 15.9 to 9.9
Page two to page one, measured across the full keyword.
Over 10,000 appearances in Google's AI answers
Ashcombe pages are now being pulled into AI Overviews and AI Mode as a source, which is where a growing share of local research now happens.
The Weston-super-Mare area guide is the most-viewed page on the site
55,303 impressions at an average position of 5.65, ahead of the homepage.
Seven pages, 27% of total visibility
The area guides account for more than a quarter of all impressions the site earns, at an average position of 6.05.
Clicks are up 54% over the same comparison
The dependency on paid search has started to break. Ashcombe now has an organic asset that keeps returning traffic without a daily budget behind it.
