Home / Case Studies / Tweed Coast Tree Surgeons
Tweed Coast Tree Surgeons
Casey Grimes · Arborist · Tweed Heads, NSW
Casey had the skills and the reputation but no infrastructure. No website, no Google presence, no quoting system. Good operator, invisible shopfront. This is what happened when we changed that.
- 4.9★ · 43+ reviews
- Earned by the work. Now visible where buyers actually look.
- $20M PL · AQF 3 · NSW Gov reg
- The credentials that separate him from a bloke with a chainsaw and a ute.
- Zero → #1 on Google Maps
- No paid ads. No tricks. Go and look.
Where it started
March 2024. No infrastructure.
Casey Grimes could climb anything, handle the jobs other crews walked away from, and leave the site swept spotless. His customers loved him — they just couldn’t find him. No business name. No website. No Google listing. No reviews, because there was no profile to leave them on.
The gap wasn’t skill. It was infrastructure. The same gap most good tradies have.
We started with the name.
The name
The business name is the strategy.
We didn’t call it “Grimes Arboriculture” or “CG Tree Services.” We called it Tweed Coast Tree Surgeons.
Three words. Each one doing a job.
Tweed Coast — geographic anchor. When someone searches “tree removal Tweed Heads” or “arborist Tweed Coast,” the business name matches the search. That’s not an accident. It’s the first piece of visibility infrastructure: your name is your keyword.
Tree Surgeons — not “tree loppers.” The word surgeon sets a standard. Casey’s customers already use it in their reviews: “Big shout out to Casey and his team of surgeons.” It stuck because it was already true.
Casey registered Tweed Coast Tree Surgeons Pty Ltd on 14 March 2024. ABN 22 675 810 885. That was the starting line.
What we built
Six things. That’s it.
Not a marketing programme. Not a rebrand. Not a social media strategy. Six things, built properly, then left to compound.
- 1
The name
Search-aligned. “Tweed Coast Tree Surgeons” — the business name is the keyword. Not “Grimes Arboriculture.” His customers already called them “surgeons” in their reviews. It stuck because it was already true.
- 2
Domain and workspace
Professional email. Not a Gmail with “tree” in it.
- 3
A website
Built for local SEO. Reviews front and centre. Licence and $20M public liability visible. Real job descriptions with real suburbs. Written quote process explained before anyone picks up the phone.
- 4
Google Business Profile
Fully completed. Correct categories, correct service areas, correct attributes. Not the half-finished placeholder most tradies leave up.
- 5
Directory listings
Syndicated across 48 business directories with consistent name, address and phone. At audit, zero of 48 had an exact match. Now they do.
- 6
Asking for reviews
Casey finishing a job, the customer saying “that was great,” and Casey saying “would you mind leaving a review?” The simplest piece. The most important one.
Everything else we designed — the team manifesto, the checklists, the signature offers, the growth plan — was parked. Deliberately. You don’t dump a plan on an operator and hope they execute it. You build one layer, confirm it’s stable, then design the next.
Layer 1 took six months to build. It’s been compounding for eighteen months since.
The timeline
What happened, in order.
- Month 0 March 2024
Registration. ABN, company, name. Casey has the skills and the reputation but no online presence. Zero reviews, zero visibility, zero infrastructure.
- Month 1–6 Layer 1 built
Search-aligned name, domain, website, Google Business Profile, directory listings across 48 directories, and Casey asking for reviews after good jobs. Six things. Done properly.
- Month 6–12 Compounding
Enquiries start coming through Google, not just word of mouth. Casey buys a truck. Jobs get bigger.
- Month 12–18 Asset progression
Reviews accumulate. The GBP listing climbs. Casey buys a chipper — throughput doubles. Crew capacity increases. A loader follows, on finance.
- Month 22 #1 on Google Maps
First place for core arborist terms in the Tweed region. 43 reviews at 4.9 stars. Zero paid ads. Three overseas holidays since starting. The truck still doesn’t have a wrap on it.
What’s next
The next layer.
Once Layer 1 was compounding, we started Layer 2: the things that turn a strong local tradie into a business that’s genuinely hard to compete with.
A new website — built, not yet live. The original WordPress site did its job. The replacement is a purpose-built site: 6 service pages, 20 suburb pages, a learning centre with in-depth guides, an interactive cost estimator, a council approval self-assessment tool, and structured answers to over 50 common questions. You can see the build at tcts.sellmyservice.com.au — it’s waiting on real photography from Casey and a sit-down to review before we switch it to the live domain.
Video scripts — written in Casey’s voice. We pulled language from his Google reviews and wrote a full video production pack: trust-stack videos, phone scripts, quote follow-up sequences. Some are filmed. Not all. This is a rhythm, not a blitz.
An imagery pipeline. 19 purpose-built image slots — hero backgrounds, before-and-after pairs from real jobs, project gallery cards, service cards — all published and ready. They hold the visual standard until real photography replaces them.
The honest bit
What we haven’t done yet.
We set out to measure the River Pools benchmark — Marcus Sheridan’s 30% → 79% close rate from They Ask, You Answer. That’s still the aim.
But Casey’s a one-crew arborist on the Tweed Coast, not a fibreglass pool company in Virginia. The shape of the improvement is different. More of the right enquiries. Fewer tyre-kickers. Less time explaining what should already be on the page. The close rate is moving — we don’t have a clean number to publish yet.
When we do, it’ll go here. Not before.
The new site isn’t live. The videos aren’t all filmed. These are real gaps, and they’re being worked on. Casey is an important part of this journey — the founding client, not a case study to be wrapped up and filed away. We’ll update this page as things move.
Why this matters
The founding client.
Casey was the first operator to go through this process. Everything we built — the naming methodology, the site framework, the imagery pipeline, the video production system, the visibility instruments — was tested on his business first.
He’s not a testimonial. He’s a proving ground. The system either works for a real arborist in a real market with real competition, or it doesn’t.
This case study exists to show the receipts. Real numbers, real timeline, real gaps. If it worked, you’ll see it. If it didn’t, you’ll see that too.
Want to see where your business sits?
The free Visibility Check shows you in about a minute. Same five measures, your trade.
Or search “tree removal Tweed Heads” and see who comes up first.