Total Asbestos Removal Brisbane — Deep SEO Audit

Site: total-asbestos.com.au  |  Date: 29 July 2026
Prepared by: WebGator
Sources: Screaming Frog (856-URL crawl), Google Search Console, GA4, Ahrefs, Local Falcon, WordPress, server (FTP) inspection

Summary — why things have dropped off

The site grew strongly through 2025 on the back of a large blog build-out, peaked around September 2025, and has since lost roughly two-thirds of its organic visibility. Four distinct drivers, in order of impact:

1. The long-tail blog visibility collapsed (Oct 2025 → now). Keywords ranking in positions 11+ fell from ~1,470 to just 9. Blog/informational pages lost 60–100% of their impressions year-on-year. This is the classic footprint of Google’s recent quality updates devaluing mass-produced informational content on local service sites — the pages are still indexed and technically fine, they’ve simply been demoted.
2. A toxic link flood began around May 2026. Referring domains tripled in 90 days (183 → 556). The new links come from a spam network of .shop domains with keyword-stuffed anchors advertising an SEO service, targeting both total-asbestos.com.au and totalasbestosremovalbrisbane.com.au (which redirects into the main site, so all spam equity flows in). This coincides exactly with the sharpest traffic drop (May–Jul 2026). These links need to be disavowed, and it should be established who ordered them.
3. Local map-pack dominance eroded. Comparing identical Local Falcon scans (9×9 grid, 20 km radius, keyword “asbestos removal brisbane”): Oct 2023 average rank position 1.6 with 100% Share of Local Voice, vs Jul 2026 average rank 6.0 with 42%. Still the strongest business in the market, but competitors (Asbestos Watch, Asbestos Clear) now win the northern/north-eastern suburbs.
4. Analytics has been dead since ~March 2025. The site still runs the retired Universal Analytics tag plus a Tag Manager container that sends nothing to the GA4 property — GA4 has recorded zero sessions for ~16 months, so nobody could see the decline happening or measure enquiries.

The good news: the site’s technical health is genuinely solid (zero broken pages, clean structure), the brand still leads the local market with a 4.8★/101-review profile, and every one of these problems is fixable.

Timeline of the decline

Key ranking losses (year-on-year, May–Jul 2025 vs 2026)

Findings by source

Ahrefs

• Estimated organic traffic: peak Sep 2025 ~897/mo → Jul 2026 ~312/mo (−65%).
• Top-3 keyword count actually rose (29 → 62) but everything beyond page 1 evaporated (1,471 → 9) — the blog is now invisible in search.
• Referring domains 183 → 556 in three months, almost entirely a DR-0 .shop spam network with machine-generated anchor text.

Google Search Console

• Current 28 days: 287 clicks, 33,063 impressions, CTR 0.87%, average position 30.8.
• Sitemaps healthy and being fetched; no indexing errors; property access intact.

Google Analytics 4

• Zero data recorded since ~Feb/Mar 2025 (last good months: Jan 2025 = 675 organic sessions, Feb 2025 = 539).
• Cause: the site still carries the retired Universal Analytics tag and a Tag Manager container that doesn’t feed the GA4 property. Enquiry/conversion tracking is effectively off.

Local Falcon (map pack)

• Oct 2023: average rank 1.60, Share of Local Voice 100%, found in 81/81 grid points.
• Jul 2026: average rank 6.03, Share of Local Voice 41.98%, found in 76/81.
• Strong across south/west Brisbane; losing the 3-pack in the north and northeast to Asbestos Watch and Asbestos Clear.
• Google Business Profile: 4.8★, 101 reviews — a major trust advantage worth building on.

Screaming Frog technical crawl (856 URLs, 205 pages)

• Excellent core health: no broken pages (0 × 404/500), no duplicate titles/descriptions/H1s, clean site structure, correct canonicals.
• Secondary fixes: 343 images over 100 KB (page speed), 33 images missing size attributes, security response headers missing site-wide, 13 page titles over-length, untidy heading hierarchy on many pages.

WordPress & server

• Rank Math site audit score 83/100; backups (UpdraftPlus) and firewall (Wordfence) active.
• Three redirect plugins active at once — should be consolidated to one.
• 54 posts / 22 pages missing focus keywords (consistent with bulk-published content).
• Security items requiring immediate attention: a downloadable code archive (.git.zip) in the public web root, directory listing enabled on upload folders, and stray backup/log files in the web root.

Recommended action plan

Immediate (this week)

1. Disavow the spam link network and establish who ordered links pointing at totalasbestosremovalbrisbane.com.au.
2. Fix analytics: remove the dead tracking code, install the correct GA4 tag, and set up call/form conversion tracking.
3. Remove the exposed code archive from the web root, disable directory listing, clean up stray files.

Short term (30 days)

4. Triage the blog: prune or consolidate the ~167 posts; remove off-brand health/legal content; keep and improve genuinely useful local content.
5. Rebuild local relevance in north Brisbane: suburb/service pages, citations, Google Business Profile posts — coordinated with whoever currently manages the profile.
6. Keep review velocity up — the 4.8★/101 profile is the strongest asset in the market.

Medium term (90 days)

7. Recover head-term positions with refreshed service pages and a small number of quality local links.
8. Image optimisation, security headers, and title clean-up from the crawl list.
9. Re-scan the map pack monthly with identical settings to track recovery.