Turning a Melbourne CNC manufacturer's website into its number one lead channel
Southside Engineering needed a digital presence that matched the precision of their work, not just a new website. We redesigned and rebuilt it from the ground up, with SEO built into the foundation. Within 30 days inbound leads increased 45 times, organic traffic grew 172%, and the site went from a cost centre to the workshop's best source of new business.
Overview
In their words
I reached out to Pinecone Agency late last year to discuss building a new website for my company, Southside Engineering. From the very start, they knew their stuff and were professional and easy to work with. They captured our brand perfectly and made a website that not only looks great but we're now getting more visits and leads through it! I highly recommend them.
The challenge
Southside Engineering has built a strong reputation in Melbourne's CNC machining industry, but their website was not pulling its weight. It was outdated, ranked poorly in search, and generated almost no inbound leads. It did not communicate the precision or capability behind the workshop's work. Referral work kept the floor busy, but the digital presence lagged well behind the quality of the engineering.
The gaps were critical: slow performance on mobile, no technical content for engineering buyers, and no SEO foundation to build on. Prospects searching for CNC services found competitors instead. Southside needed a website that would attract clients through search, communicate their capabilities clearly, and convert visitors into enquiries.
Our approach
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Strategy
We audited how Melbourne's engineering and manufacturing firms positioned themselves online, then built the strategy on three pillars.
- Showcase technical capability through detailed service pages
- Build trust through professional visual design
- Lay an SEO foundation that compounds in value over time
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Design
Industrial and modern, but clear enough for the non-technical procurement managers who often make the call.
- A design system of clean typography and high-contrast imagery
- Mobile-first — buyers browse suppliers on their phones between meetings
- Every page built around three journeys: explore capability, request a quote, build trust
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Development
Built in Webflow with a CMS the team can update without a developer.
- Semantic HTML and a proper heading hierarchy throughout
- Structured-data markup across the local business and its services
- A clean URL architecture designed for long-term search growth
Technical deep-dive
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Webflow CMS architecture
Every service gets its own structured page — genuinely useful content, never placeholder.
- Covers capabilities, materials, tolerances and applications
- The team updates content with no developer required
- Scales as new services and locations are added
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SEO architecture
A foundation built for compounding, long-term search growth.
- Schema markup for the local business and its services
- XML sitemap, canonical URLs and optimised meta descriptions on every page
- Internal linking that guides procurement managers toward conversion
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Performance optimisation
Lighthouse scores were the benchmark throughout the build.
- Images converted to WebP with responsive sizing
- CSS and JavaScript minimised, font loading de-blocked
- Fast on any connection — critical where industrial connectivity is unreliable
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Local SEO & ongoing growth
Ongoing monthly SEO, each month compounding on the last.
- Content optimisation and new service landing pages
- Google Business Profile management
- Local citation building across industry directories, with performance reporting
Results and impact
The numbers tell the story. A strategically built website plus ongoing SEO transformed Southside's digital presence from a cost centre into a lead-generation engine.
- 45×
Website-sourced leads
- From near-zero inbound enquiries
- A full pipeline within 30 days
- +171.94%
Organic Traffic
- Nearly 3× more potential customers
- Arriving through organic search
- +209.98%
Total Sessions
- More than double the visitors
- Both new and returning interest
- +184.43%
Organic Users
- Nearly triple the users
- All from unpaid search
- +122.22%
Engaged Sessions
- Visitors staying longer
- Engaging more with service content
- +61.03%
Engagement Rate
- More visitors taking meaningful action
- Higher-quality on-site engagement
- +61.16%
New Users
- More first-time visitors
- New prospects entering the pipeline
Within the first month, website-sourced leads increased 45 times. A 172% jump in organic traffic means procurement managers actively searching for CNC services now find Southside. The 210% session growth shows the site attracts both new and returning visitors, and the 122% rise in engaged sessions confirms that people are exploring capabilities and converting rather than bouncing.
Key takeaway
A website is not just a digital brochure — it's a 24/7 sales team. For manufacturing businesses that run on referrals, the shift to organic digital lead generation can be transformative. A 45x increase in qualified leads represents a fundamental change in how a business wins customers.
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