SEO program
From page two to #1 in four provinces.
Essex Lease Financial · Calgary & Edmonton, AB
Essex Lease has financed Canadian businesses since 1986, and its search presence did not reflect that. The site sat at an average Google position of 24 — deep on page two, where commercial intent goes to die. Six months later it ranks first in four provinces for the searches equipment buyers actually make.
SEO
Local SEO
AI visibility
Equipment finance
The engagement
- ClientEssex Lease Financial Corp, Calgary & Edmonton AB
- IndustryEquipment financing & leasing
- What we didSEO strategy · Content · Local SEO · AI-search visibility
- EngagementSix-month SEO program · 2026
The challenge
Essex Lease Financial Corporation serves owner-operators and entrepreneur-led businesses in heavy industries — construction, transportation, oil and gas, agriculture, forestry, mining. These are clients whose wealth is tied up in equipment and whose credit profiles do not fit the big banks’ boxes.
Offline that reputation was strong. Online it was invisible: an average Google position of 24, deep on pages two and three, while the most valuable equipment financing queries in their home markets belonged to competitors. And in the AI tools where a growing share of financing research now starts, Essex had effectively no presence at all.
What we did
- A restructured keyword strategy. Service and content pages re-mapped so each one targets the searches equipment buyers actually make, instead of competing against each other for the same ones.
- Technical SEO and content work, continuously. On-page, structural and content optimisation across the whole six months rather than an audit delivered once and left to age.
- Both offices made findable. Calgary and Edmonton given their own local and map presence, because equipment finance is still a business people want to think of as nearby.
- AI search treated as a channel. How Essex appears across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews, tracked and worked on alongside the rankings rather than after them.
The result
+269%
Google search impressions, to 1.46 million — with organic clicks up 40%
24 → 9
Average Google position, and 27 keywords into the top three
2×
Conversions more than doubled
Rankings and impressions: Google Search Console · Engagement and conversions: GA4 · The six-month program against the six months before it
- #1 in Alberta — the home market
- #1 in Saskatchewan
- #1 in Manitoba
- #1 in Ontario
- #1 Canada-wide for “heavy equipment leasing companies”
The provincial positions cover both “equipment financing” and “heavy equipment financing” in each of the four provinces — the terms a buyer types when they have already decided to finance something and are choosing who with.
Organic also became the best-quality channel on the site rather than simply the biggest: a 67% engagement rate against a 41% site average, six-minute average sessions, and nearly half of all pageviews coming from just over a third of sessions. That is the profile of someone researching a purchase, not someone who landed and left.
AI search opened up in the same six months. Essex went from no citations on ChatGPT to being cited in 16.7% of relevant answers, earned its first placements in Google’s AI Overviews, and recorded its first measurable referral traffic from AI assistants — visibility in the place a growing share of financing research now begins.
Is this your situation?
A business whose reputation is a long way ahead of its search presence is exactly the situation this work is built for.