AK Cabinet Craft
An honest case: in a year we took the site to the top of Google (37 → 8) and grew impressions 42 times - then the client shut the project down and the growth went to zero
SEO worked: average position from 37 to 8, search impressions up 42 times, organic climbing. But the client closed the project at its peak, and the channel we had built went unused. We show it as it is: SEO growth on its own does not save a business that does not follow through.
- Industry
- Manufacturing · custom cabinetry
- Location
- United States · Chicago
- Profile
- Custom furniture maker: kitchens, closets, vanities
- Timeline
- June 2025 - May 2026 (12 months)
Challenge
A new website for a custom cabinetry maker in Chicago: almost no visibility in search, traffic coming from the brand query only. Demand for custom kitchens and cabinetry is there, but aggregators and competitors on aged domains take it. The job was to build an organic channel for measurement requests from scratch.
Strategy
Full-cycle SEO: technical foundation, a keyword map for commercial and local demand in Chicago, content matched to intent, and local SEO. The goal was to rank for custom cabinets and cabinet makers near me and remove the dependence on paid clicks.
What we did, by channel
- Technical audit and optimization: speed, indexing, clean structure
- Keyword map: commercial and local near me clusters
- Schema.org and landing page content for services and intent
- Link building and local SEO: Google Business Profile, Google Maps, Chicago geo queries
Why: A new domain in a competitive niche needs both a technical foundation and an exact match between query and landing page. Local SEO takes the hot cabinet makers near me demand.
A closer look
Project numbers
The metrics are real; some are under NDA and shown in a call.
Why this is a failure
The decisions we rejected and the risks we planned for in advance.
- The growth was real and it was ours: over 12 months the position went from 37 to 8, impressions grew 42 times, and organic started bringing traffic for measurement requests
- But the client shut the project down at its peak - they stopped running that line of business; traffic collapsed in May not because of SEO, but because there was nowhere left to send it
- The lesson for us and for the client: SEO builds the channel, the business makes the money. If there is nobody to handle the leads and nobody to sell, even the top of Google does not turn into revenue
Takeaway
Technically the case is a success: we took a young site to the top of Google in Chicago within a year. As a business result it is a failure: the client shut the project down and the channel we built never produced revenue. We show it honestly - we choose clients who follow through, not only clients who launch.
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