Five North Wales fisheries, each with a website holding the business back. Rather than send an email describing what could be improved, I audited all five and built a six-page concept for each one, using their own photographs, facts and prices. This case study covers what the audits found and why building first changes the conversation.
At a glance
| Type | Cold approach, audit and concept build |
| Businesses | Five fisheries across Flintshire, Anglesey, Gwynedd and Denbighshire |
| Built | Five six-page concept sites, one per fishery |
| Date | August 2026 |
| Status | Concepts built, approaches made |
Why build before asking
A cold email describing what’s wrong with someone’s website is easy to ignore and mildly insulting. A link to a version of their own site, using their own photographs and their own prices, is a different thing entirely.
It also forces honesty on my side. You can’t write a vague improvement list if you’ve had to build the thing. Every claim in the approach is something visible on a page they can click.
What the audits found
One fishery had lost its domain, and it was serving gambling content. Their old address was running a bookmaker affiliate site. The business is still trading, still listed everywhere, and their own Facebook page still points customers at that address. Every visitor following that link lands on gambling content.
That one isn’t an SEO finding, it’s something the owner needs to know today. Given the kind of gambling site involved specifically targets people who have self-excluded, it’s worse than an ordinary expired domain. They may not know it’s happened.
One site carried seventeen pages holding 970 words between them, an average of 57 words a page. Fifteen of those pages were a gallery split one photograph at a time, each with about twenty words. The homepage still carried a Coronavirus notice announcing reopening to anglers from Monday 6 July, which dates it to 2020. Six years of that being the first thing a visitor reads.
The photography is genuinely good, which makes it more of a shame. There are proper landscape shots of the lake buried in there.
One site had no meta descriptions at all. Ten pages, not one with a description, so Google writes its own snippet for every result. 1,497 words across the whole site and 28 images with no alt text. They do sell permits online, which puts them ahead of most, and the proposition is strong: eighty acres of wild, unstocked brown trout water with sea trout running in. The site doesn’t say any of that with any confidence.
One site was still on http. No certificate, so browsers flag it as not secure before anyone reads a word. Six pages of static files, 49 images with no alt text. The setting is extraordinary, two lakes at eight hundred feet above an estuary, and the site does nothing with it.
The strongest of the five still had a clear gap. Thirty pages and 11,560 words, a real WordPress build covering fishing, a cafe, camping, pods and a cottage. But 128 images carry no alt text, which on an image-led site is a lot of lost context. That one is an improvement conversation rather than a rescue.
What was built
Five six-page concepts: home, the water, prices, gallery, visit and contact. Each uses that fishery’s own photographs, its own facts and its own prices where they’re published, with a palette picked to suit the setting.
Six pages is deliberate. It’s enough to show the structure and the tone, and small enough to build for five businesses without the exercise becoming a project in itself.
What I learned
The most valuable finding on the whole exercise had nothing to do with rankings. A lost domain now pointing at gambling content is an urgent problem for a business, and no keyword research would have surfaced it. Looking at what’s actually live, rather than at a crawl summary, is what found it.
The second learning is about the format of an approach. Building the thing first is more work than writing an email, and it changes what you’re asking for. You’re not asking someone to accept a criticism, you’re asking them to look at something.
Limitations
These are unsolicited concepts. None of the businesses commissioned them, and the figures are from a point-in-time review in August 2026, so some will have changed. A six-page concept shows direction rather than being a finished site. None of the five has become a client so far.
Services used
Web development, SEO and technical SEO checks. For a new site built to the same standards from scratch, see the River Bend case study, and the local businesses and communities page covers the sector.
FAQ
What happens if a business loses its domain?
Anyone can register it, and expired domains with existing links are actively bought. In one case here the address now serves gambling content while the business still points customers at it from social media. Renewal reminders going to an old email address is the usual cause.
Does a small local business really need meta descriptions?
They help, because without one Google writes its own snippet from the page, which often reads badly for a short page. On a ten-page site that’s an hour of work for a better result listing on every search, which is a reasonable return.
Why does alt text matter on a fishery site?
Because the pictures carry the proposition. On an image-led site with 128 images and no alt text, search engines and screen readers get almost nothing from the most persuasive part of the page. It’s also the cheapest fix on most audits.
Is being on http a real problem?
Yes. Browsers flag the site as not secure before a visitor reads a word, which costs trust immediately on a page asking for a booking. Certificates are free and the fix is usually straightforward, so it’s a poor reason to lose enquiries.
Want to see what your site could look like?
Get in touch and I’ll tell you honestly what I’d change first.