Grachtwerk — Houseboat maintenance & welding · Amsterdam
A houseboat welder who now owns every canal in local search
+176%organic enquiries
Read the map like the city: four canals, four distance bands from Dam square. Each boat is a keyword. Over 7 months they sailed out of the IJ, round the rings, and docked in the top-3 harbour.
- Industry
- Local Services
- Region
- Amsterdam, Europe
- Plan
- Local
- Duration
- 7 months
Boat 1 · EN · 0–2 km from the centre
“houseboat welder amsterdam”
not in top 20 at the start → not in top 20 at Start
01 · The challenge
A niche, high-value service with English-speaking expat owners searching in English while the site existed only in Dutch.
Amsterdam has roughly 2,500 houseboats, and a growing share are owned by people who moved here for work. When a steel hull needs plating before its five-yearly survey, those owners search in English — and a job averages €3,800.
Grachtwerk had the welders, the dry-dock slot and a 20-year reputation on the water. Online it spoke only Dutch, so the most valuable searches in the city went to directories and a firm 58 km away.
0
English pages
63%
of tracked demand searched in English
#24
best position for “houseboat welder amsterdam”
02 · Diagnosis — six bridges to cross
Every Amsterdam bridge has a number. We numbered what stood between Grachtwerk and English-speaking owners.
- Brug 01Content
Zero English URLs
All 14 pages were Dutch. English queries such as “houseboat welder amsterdam” were answered by directory listings and a Rotterdam competitor’s machine-translated page.
- Brug 02Technical
No hreflang, no language signal
One language, no hreflang, html lang missing. Browser auto-translate was the only English experience, and translated pages cannot rank.
- Brug 03Local
Wrong primary category
The Business Profile listed “Metal fabricator”, served no area north of the IJ and had 11 photos — none of a boat.
- Brug 04Local
Three addresses, two phone formats
Wharf, mooring and registered office appeared interchangeably across 19 citations, splitting the map-pack signal.
- Brug 05Technical
Thin markup, slow first paint
No LocalBusiness or Service schema, titles reading “Home | Grachtwerk”, and a 4.6 s mobile LCP from an uncompressed wharf photo.
- Brug 06Conversion
A Dutch-only quote form
The quote form had Dutch labels and a Dutch postcode validator: 43% of English-browser visitors left on that page.
03 · The strategy
Two languages, one address, four rings.
Built on our Local plan, with distance-banded rank tracking so progress is measured where customers actually moor.
- 1
Google Business Profile
Primary category changed to Welder with Boat repair shop and Marine surveyor as secondaries; English service list with prices from; a service area drawn ring by ring out to Zaandam; 64 geotagged photos at real moorings; weekly English posts.
- 2
Bilingual pages
A mirrored /en/ section written by a native speaker, not translated: nine service pages (hull welding, survey prep, blasting, anode replacement…) and six mooring-area pages, each with English quote forms.
- 3
Hreflang
Reciprocal nl-NL / en / x-default annotations on every pair, self-referencing canonicals, lang attributes and a language switch that keeps the visitor on the equivalent page.
- 4
Local citations
One address (the wharf), one phone format, cleaned across 46 listings — Chamber of Commerce, waterway and mooring associations, expat service directories and English-language trade listings.
04 · Through the locks, month by month
Month 1
Survey the hull
Technical and local audit, 112-keyword set split by language and distance band, bilingual URL map.
18 enquiries · 0 EN top-3
Month 2
Re-rig the profile
Business Profile rebuilt: categories, service area, English services, photos at moorings.
21 enquiries · 3 EN top-3
Month 3
Launch /en/
Fifteen English pages live with hreflang pairs, schema and an English quote form.
26 enquiries · 8 EN top-3
Month 4
One address everywhere
Citation clean-up: 46 listings aligned to the wharf address and one phone format.
31 enquiries · 15 EN top-3
Month 5
English reviews
Post-job review requests in the customer’s language; owner replies in kind.
37 enquiries · 22 EN top-3
Month 6
Buyer’s guides
“What a houseboat survey checks” and a hull-maintenance calendar, both in English.
42 enquiries · 31 EN top-3
Month 7
Into the outer rings
Internal links and area pages push visibility out to Noord, Amstelveen and Zaandam.
47 enquiries · 38 EN top-3
05 · Results after 7 months
+176% organic enquiries.
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
- English keywords in top 3
- 0 → 38
- Map-pack appearances
- +290%
- Average job value
- €3,800
brick: docked M2–M3 · green: M4–M5 · ink: M6–M7
- Hull plating & welding · 34% of jobs€5,200
- Survey preparation · 27% of jobs€2,900
- Blasting & coating · 21% of jobs€4,100
- Anodes & small repairs · 18% of jobs€1,350
- AHavenklus BVBoat repair shop · Zaandam
- BAmstel MetaalwerkMetal fabricator · Dutch only
- CBootFix RotterdamBoat repair · 58 km
Grachtwerk: not in the pack, organic result #24 for a Dutch page.
- AGrachtwerkWelder · Houseboat hull repair · Open today
- BAmstel MetaalwerkMetal fabricator · Dutch only
- CHavenklus BVBoat repair shop · Zaandam
Keyword ledger — 12 of 112 tracked
Positions measured from a grid point in each distance band. 8 English and 4 Dutch terms shown.
| Keyword | Lang | Ring | Vol./mo | Start | M7 | Moved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| houseboat welder amsterdam | EN | 0–2 km | 210 | >20 | 1 | new |
| woonboot lassen amsterdam | NL | 0–2 km | 170 | 6 | 1 | ▲ 5 |
| houseboat hull repair | EN | 0–2 km | 140 | >20 | 2 | new |
| houseboat maintenance amsterdam | EN | 2–5 km | 260 | >20 | 2 | new |
| steel hull inspection amsterdam | EN | 2–5 km | 90 | >20 | 3 | new |
| woonboot onderhoud | NL | 2–5 km | 320 | 9 | 3 | ▲ 6 |
| houseboat survey amsterdam noord | EN | 5–10 km | 70 | >20 | 3 | new |
| boat welding near me | EN | 5–10 km | 390 | >20 | 4 | new |
| scheepslasser | NL | 5–10 km | 110 | 14 | 5 | ▲ 9 |
| houseboat hull blasting | EN | 10–20 km | 50 | >20 | 4 | new |
| houseboat insurance survey | EN | 10–20 km | 80 | >20 | 6 | new |
| woonboot hellingen | NL | 10–20 km | 60 | 18 | 7 | ▲ 11 |
Get a plan like this
Bilingual pages, a Business Profile that knows its service area and rank tracking by distance — the Local plan, scoped to your city.
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