A consultancy that had to look like a shop to rank like one
Anonymised case study: a UAE curtains and blinds consultancy put 41 of 129 tracked keywords in the top ten by adopting the page type Google rewards.
Numbers from the client's own reporting
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| tracked keywords in the top ten | 0 → 41 |
| tracked keywords in the top three | 0 → 7 |
| service pages published | 112 |
| monthly searches across the top-ten set | 28,680 |
| keywords tracked from day one, none ranking | 129 |
| Period | 7-month engagement |
Client keyword sheet; every tracked term started unranked. The head term "curtains", at 18,100 searches a month, sits at 34 and is still climbing, and "curtains dubai" at 5,400 a month sits at 20.
The situation, goals & challenges
The client sells a consultation. Someone visits, measures the window, advises on fabric and drop, and quotes for a fitted job. Nothing about that is a shopping cart.
Google disagreed. Every result on page one for "curtains dubai", "blackout curtains" and "blinds dubai" was an online shop: category pages, product grids, prices, filters. The four incumbents holding those results were ecommerce sites with domain authority between 11 and 17 and up to 1,900 backlinks each. A page describing a service had nothing in common with what the result page was rewarding, which is why all 129 tracked keywords were unranked.
SEO strategy for a consultative business in a retail result
Before writing anything, look at what is already ranking and ask what type of page it is. If every result is a product category and you are publishing a service page, no amount of content quality closes that gap.
Read the result page before the keyword
Every position one to ten on the head terms was a shop. That is Google stating the page type it will reward, and it is not negotiable by writing better prose.
Build the page type, keep the business model
Category pages, collection pages by fabric and function, product pages with specifications and images. The structure is retail; the company is still a consultancy.
Change the one element that matters
"Add to cart" becomes "Book a consultation". Everything else a shopper expects stays, so the page satisfies the query and the enquiry still arrives as a measured job.
Split the tree the way a shop would
Curtains and blinds by type, then motorised, then commercial by venue. Hotels, schools, hospitals, restaurants and retail each get their own page, because that is how the buying is actually segmented.
Publish the whole tree, not a sample
112 pages went live across the structure. A category tree with three pages in it does not read as a shop to a crawler or to a visitor.
The findings behind the numbers
A consultancy ranked for retail queries by adopting the retail page type and replacing a single button. The technique transfers to any business whose result page is dominated by a format it does not itself use: read the format, build it, and change only the conversion step.
What the engagement contained
The same seventeen-step workbook as the other accounts, with the page-type rebuild sitting inside the site-structure steps rather than being bolted on afterwards.
- Four ecommerce incumbents analysed on authority, traffic, backlinks and page speed
- 129 keywords put under rank tracking before anything changed
- 230 keyword rows grouped into clusters by fabric, function and venue
- A category tree proposed down to commercial curtains by venue type
- URLs moved off the platform default and onto the category structure
- Main menu and footer rebuilt around curtains, blinds, motorised and commercial
- 141 content items through approval, 112 published
- Twenty blog topics on the questions a fitted job raises, from soundproofing to cleaning
Numbers that speak louder than claims
All figures from the client's own Search Console, rank trackers and delivery workbooks, recorded on the dates shown.
Page-one positions for high-value queries
Keyword rankings, At the start vs Now
| Position band | At the start | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Top 3 | 0 | 7 |
| Top 10 | 0 | 41 |
| Top 20 | 0 | 50 |
| Unranked | 129 | — |
Who held the result page before we started
| Incumbent | Authority | Organic traffic | Backlinks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ecommerce incumbent 1 | 17 | 4.4K | 1.4K |
| Ecommerce incumbent 2 | 12 | 2.8K | 638 |
| Ecommerce incumbent 3 | 12 | 2.3K | 1.8K |
| Ecommerce incumbent 4 | 11 | 1.6K | 1.9K |
| The client | — | Not ranking | — |
Competitor analysis from the delivery workbook. Traffic is monthly organic sessions. None of the incumbents had exceptional authority; they simply matched the page type Google wanted.
The category tree we built
| Tier | Pages beneath it |
|---|---|
| Curtains | Custom, sheer, patterned, ready-made, installation |
| Blinds | Venetian, wooden, roman, roller, vertical |
| Motorised | Motorised curtains, motorised blinds |
| Commercial, by venue | Office, hotel, school, hospital, retail, restaurant |
What we delivered
- 41 of 129 tracked keywords into the top ten, and 7 into the top three, from none ranking at all
- The top-ten set alone covers 28,680 monthly searches
- 112 pages published across a category tree built to match the retail result page
- Enquiries still arrive as a booked consultation rather than a checkout
The verdict: strategic SEO transforms businesses
The lesson is cheap to state and hard to accept: if the result page is full of shops, publish a shop. Matching the page type Google had already chosen cost one button, and took a consultancy from nothing to 41 keywords in the top ten.
Kanwal Shahzad is a founder, strategist and AI enthusiast with 20 years of experience spanning finance, digital marketing and AI. She started her journey at EY, then spent a decade building Digidot into one of the region's pioneering AI-powered agencies. Today she leads two companies, including aisfy.ai at DIFC AI Campus — governance-first AI infrastructure designed to embed compliance, ethics and resilience at the core of business growth.
Services used: Web Development · SEO Dubai · AEO & GEO · Sector: Window furnishings · All case studies
