A cutter's guide to cloth that turned a back-street tailor into Scotland's bespoke authority

i.The brief

A forty-year bench, hidden behind one gallery page.

Savile Row houses and made-to-measure startups owned every informational query; Thornbury's site was a single gallery page.

People choosing a bespoke tailor research for weeks before they book: which tweed for a Highland wedding, what a 13 oz flannel feels like in August, whether a full canvas is worth it. Every one of those questions was answered by someone else. Thornbury, one of very few Edinburgh workshops still cutting by hand, appeared only when someone already knew its name.

Search: “harris tweed vs shetland tweed”

savilerow-house.exampleHarris or Shetland? A Savile Row guide to tweed
mtm-startup.exampleTweed explained: order yours online in 5 minutes
menswear-forum.exampleThread: is Shetland tweed scratchier?
Thornbury Tailoring: not in the first five pages

Before: a modelled results page for a typical cloth question.

ii.Diagnosis

The audit, taken down like a measurement sheet.

01Content

One gallery page carried the whole site. No page answered a single question a cloth buyer asks.

0 informational URLs

02Competition

Savile Row houses and made-to-measure startups held the cloth, weight and construction queries.

71% of top-3 slots

03Images

84 photographs named IMG_4417.jpg and the like, no alt text, an average of 4.8 MB each.

0 image impressions

04Authorship

No cutter biography, no bylines, no proof of the forty years at the bench behind the work.

0 Person entities

05Structured data

No LocalBusiness, Article, Product or ImageObject markup anywhere on the site.

0 schema types

06AI search

AI Overviews for cloth questions cited London houses and forums, never an Edinburgh source.

0 of 120 tracked

iii.The cloth

Four tactics, woven into one authority.

The engagement ran on our Content Engine plan (content & ai search): a publishing programme with a named expert, built so search engines and AI answers can both trust and quote it.

01 · The warp

Topic clusters

Four pillar guides (cloth, weight, construction, occasion) each woven with ten to twelve deep pages, every one linked back to the fitting booking.

4 pillar pages
42 cluster guides
Hub-and-spoke internal links

02 · The selvedge

E-E-A-T authorship

The head cutter signs every guide. A bench biography, apprenticeship history and photographed process pages prove the experience behind the advice.

Cutter author page
Person + Article schema
Process photo essays

03 · The weft

Image SEO

Every swatch and fitting photo renamed, described and compressed, with macro shots of each cloth so image search shows Thornbury for the weave itself.

612 images re-shot or renamed
Image sitemap
AVIF at 140 KB average

04 · The finish

AI Overviews

Answer-first openings, comparison tables and cited mill data so AI search engines can quote a clear, attributable sentence.

Answer blocks on 46 guides
FAQ schema
Monthly citation tracking

iv.Fittings, month by month

14 months, measured to the inch.

Month 1Audit, query map of 1,400 cloth questions, cluster plan
Month 2Cutter author page, schema, first three guides
Month 3Gallery split into 9 cloth pages; image renaming begins
Month 4Pillar: the cloth weights guide; first AI Overview citation
Month 5Macro swatch shoot; image sitemap submitted
Month 6Construction cluster: canvassing, linings, hand-stitching
Month 7Occasion cluster: weddings, Highland dress, city suits
Month 8Answer-first rewrite across all live guides
Month 9Mill partnerships: sourced data from four Borders mills
Month 10Comparison tables: tweed, flannel, worsted, linen
Month 11Fitting booking moved inline on every guide
Month 12Seasonal refresh: winter cloth bunch published
Month 13Pruned and merged 5 thin guides into stronger pages
Month 1446th guide live; 22 AI Overview citations tracked

v.The finished garment

What the bunch book adds up to.

Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.

Organic sessions per monthMonth 1 to 14

Swatch 02

In-depth cloth guides

From one gallery page to 46 signed guides in 14 months.

Swatch 03

+156%

Fitting appointments from organic

9 a month to 23 a month, booked straight from a guide.

Swatch 04

AI-overview citations

Tracked across 120 cloth and construction questions.

Swatch 05

+402%

Image search clicks

310 to 1,556 clicks a month from macro swatch shots.

The order book: positions held

Modelled Google positions before and after, with monthly search volume
Query	Before	After	Volume	AI
bespoke tailor edinburgh	14	2	880	Not tracked
harris tweed vs shetland tweed	—	1	590	Cited
what does super 120s mean	—	3	1,300	Cited
flannel suit weight guide	—	1	320	Cited
canvassed vs fused suit	48	4	1,900	Cited
wedding suit tailor scotland	31	3	720	Not tracked
made to measure tweed jacket edinburgh	22	1	260	Not tracked
how long does a bespoke suit take	—	2	1,000	Cited

— means not in the top 100. Volumes are modelled UK monthly searches.

AI Overview · “what does super 120s mean”

Super 120s describes the fineness of wool fibre, about 17.5 microns. Finer numbers drape more softly but crease and wear sooner; for a first suit, many Scottish tailors recommend 100s to 120s.

Source: Thornbury Tailoring, cloth guides

After: a modelled AI answer quoting a signed Thornbury guide.

Your own bunch book

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