932 blog pages (18% of the estate) drive 92% of all BOs; 2,900 pages (55%) generated zero contacts while attracting 76K sessions. The top 20 pages alone account for 15% of all blog contacts, and BO concentration is intensifying as the long tail continues to lose ground.

Near Me converts at 10%, Hiring Guides at 6.42%, Cost Guides at 1.09%; Cost Guides carry the most total BO volume (12,781 contacts, 54% of blog total) but are the most exposed to AI Overview displacement (8,194 AIO keywords).

The homepage is the largest single-page conversion failure: -11,374 unique contacts (-55%), accounting for 30% of the sitewide decline, with conversion rates collapsing across every key event type despite holding traffic relatively well.

The contact channel mix is shifting decisively toward RAQs (only -8.61%, growing on /search/ and /trades/) while calls (-39%) and messages (-52%) are in steep decline. Per-session conversion held flat, confirming the decline is traffic-driven, not a conversion rate problem.

New BO pathway emerging: /post-a-job surged +415% in job posting completions and interactive cost calculators are outperforming static guides (+635% for rebuild-cost-calculator), signaling a format and funnel shift that should inform future content investment.

Near Me queries are the most BO-efficient: top pages convert at 15-19% CR — electrical-installation-condition-report (19.2%), man-and-van (19.2%), tado-installers (18.6%), central-heating-engineer (18.4%), boiler-servicing (16.8%). These are homeowners ready to hire.

Hiring Guides are the second most efficient at 6.42% CR, with find-good-tradesperson delivering 208 contacts at 10.28% CR. Cost Guides carry the most total BO volume (12,781 contacts, 54% of blog total) despite lower rates; cost calculators are outperforming static guides (+635%).

Checkatrade dominates Share of Voice on Trade Professional (91.8%), Cost/Pricing (87.5%), and Near Me (85.2%) keywords, but is notably weaker on Home Improvement (57.7%) and How-To/Advice (50.0%), where MyBuilder and MyJobQuote have carved out strong positions.

22,697 keywords (11.9M search volume) sit outside the top 10, with the highest-volume gaps in home improvement and material queries like electric shower (23K), turf (20K), patio (12K), loft conversion (11K), and garden fencing (7.4K), where competitors outrank Checkatrade by 30-70+ positions.

Across 75K (out of 125K total) current ranking keywords, a conservative model (25% of keywords improve ~3 positions, with 40% CTR discount on AI Overview queries) projects ~23,000 incremental BOs. The majority (~14,000) come from Near Me keywords at 10% contact rate where small position gains produce outsized BO output.

Months 0-3 (~3,500-4,600 BOs): Title tag fixes on /trades/, pruning 2,900 zero-contact pages with 301 redirects, and quick position gains on Near Me keywords already in positions 2-5. Locksmith near me alone at pos 4 with 36K volume is worth ~828 BOs if moved to pos 1.

Months 3-6 (~9,300-11,600 BOs): Content refresh on the 833 Keep & Optimize pages (407 Cost Guides, 265 Near Me), Hiring Guide ranking recovery, and authority consolidation from the prune maturing.

Months 6-12 (~7,000-9,300 BOs): Competitive keyword gains against MyBuilder and MyJobQuote, breaking page 2 keywords into the top 10, and cost calculator format rollout.

12-month projected total: ~20,000-25,000 incremental BOs, with gains compounding as each position improvement generates recurring monthly BOs. Continued AI Overview expansion on Cost Guide keywords is the primary downside risk.

Note: This model used 75K of 125K keywords Checkatrade ranks for — prioritizing higher-value and better-ranked keywords. The overall opportunity is even larger if the remaining 50K keywords were included.

5,226 blog URLs but only 932 generate contacts; unique landing pages grew +27% while traffic fell, spreading authority thinner across more pages.

2,900 zero-contact blog pages are actively indexed, consuming crawl budget and weakening domain-level authority signals for the commercial pages that actually produce BOs.

106 hub pages exist in the estate, with 101 marked for pruning, indicating the hub/spoke content architecture is not functioning as intended. 5 were marked for consolidation and none were deemed worth keeping as-is.

Blog bounce rates surging from ~7% to ~35% suggest users are not being effectively guided from informational content to transactional /Search/ and /trades/ pages.

/trades/ is the strongest template: sessions +31%, bounce rate improved -6pp, key events surged. However, unique contacts still fell -17% despite traffic growth — indicating a conversion path issue.

/Search/ holds up moderately (-17% sessions) with RAQs growing +29%; calls and messages declining suggests those contact channels are poorly surfaced on the template.

The blog cost guide template is failing: bounce rates jumped from ~7% to ~35%. Interactive calculator pages dramatically outperform static guides, signaling a format mismatch with evolving search intent.

The Near Me template converts extremely well (10% CR) but 356 of 979 pages are too thin to sustain rankings. The Hiring Guide template has 6.42% CR potential but traffic collapsed -74%.

Homepage: bounce rate up 14.45pp, unique contacts down -55%. The template is not converting arriving traffic, with key events dropping -48%.

Technical issues are split into two categories: those limiting BOs now and those that pose future risk if left unresolved.

Immediate: Prune 2,900 zero-contact URLs via 301 redirects; zero BO risk, consolidates link equity, reduces estate from 5,226 to ~2,326 active pages.

Protect: 99 Keep As-Is pages generate 31% of all contacts. Monitoring, CTA quality, and ranking defense on this cohort is the top priority.

Recover: 833 Keep & Optimize pages (61% of contacts) need content refresh and ranking recovery; 407 Cost Guides are the largest opportunity set.

Transform: Convert high-value static cost guides to interactive calculator format (proven by rebuild-cost-calculator +635%); investigate Hiring Guide -83% collapse as a separate workstream.

Stop: Cease investment in How-To and Ideas content (sub-0.4% CR, 70%+ YoY declines). Apply seasonal caution to outdoor/garden categories before pruning.

Concentrate the estate: Pruning 2,900 and consolidating 1,394 pages focuses authority on 932 URLs with proven commercial relevance.

Leverage proprietary data: /trades/ profiles carry reviews, credentials, and availability that no competitor or AI can replicate. Expanding structured markup strengthens E-E-A-T signals.

Build interactive assets: Cost calculators provide personalized value AI Overviews cannot summarize. This positions Checkatrade as a utility, not just an information source.

Consolidate link equity: Redirecting pruned content transfers 9,281+ referring domains toward commercially productive URLs.

For AI search: Near Me intent (207 AIO keywords vs. 8,194 for Cost Guides) is inherently resilient. Authority efforts should prioritize owning "vetted tradesperson near me" as a category.

Current AI traffic performance (last 30 days): 5,389 AI visitors with average duration of 4:06 on site. These visitors generated 122 RAQ conversions (+2.26%), 195 call conversions, and 425 search submissions. However, AI traffic converts 0.35% below average — suggesting AI landing pages could be optimized further.

From an Ahrefs perspective (March 2026), 12,917 keywords across the blog estate have AI Overview exposure. This is overwhelmingly concentrated in Cost Guides (8,194 AIO keywords), followed by Expert Advice (2,329) and How-To (1,065).

The most commercially important pages carry the deepest exposure: new-boiler-cost (216 AIO keywords), double-glazing-cost (116), carpet-fitting-cost (111), new-windows-cost (100).

Near Me (207 AIO keywords) and Hiring Guides (21) have minimal exposure, meaning Checkatrade is either protected from AI displacement on these queries or absent from AI results where it should appear.

AI Overviews on cost queries don't remove booking intent — a homeowner who sees a price range in an AI answer still needs a vetted tradesperson. The contact rate on Cost Guide pages hasn't collapsed (still 1.09%); the traffic has.

The strongest existing pathway runs: Cost Guide landing → /Search/ page → /trades/ profile → RAQ. The quote-request mechanism is the most resilient contact channel, growing +29% on /search/ and +28% on /trades/.

The response is not to retreat from AI-visible content but to ensure pages convert harder once a user lands: stronger BO CTAs, tighter internal links to search/trades pages, and interactive calculators that deliver value an AI answer cannot replicate.

Sessions overstate the problem: Traffic fell -29% to -35%, but key events only declined -6.56% and unique contacts per 1,000 sessions held flat (+0.95%).

Per-session metrics tell the truer story: Key events per session +32%, RAQs per 1,000 sessions +40%. These should replace raw session counts as leading indicators.

BO-first measurement by content type provides actionable benchmarks: Near Me 10% CR, Hiring Guides 6.42%, Cost Guides 1.09%, Expert Advice 0.69%, How-To 0.35%, Ideas 0.07%.

Track AI Overview keyword exposure over time as a risk indicator. Reconcile the GA4 vs. Kinesis discrepancy (growing from 0.79% to 6.92% gap) before trusting any metric.

Most exposed: Cost Guides with 8,194 AIO keywords across 1,009 pages — while also generating 54% of all blog contacts (12,781 BOs). The 47% session decline and bounce rate surge are consistent with AI cannibalization already occurring.

Most resilient: Near Me pages (207 AIO keywords, 10% CR), /trades/ profiles (proprietary data, +31% sessions), /Search/ location pages (RAQs +29%), and interactive calculators (growing against the trend).

Hiring Guides are ambiguous: only 21 AIO keywords but -83% contact collapse suggests AI may be absorbing hiring queries through mechanisms not captured in the Ahrefs snapshot.

65.5% of Keep & Optimize pages (the 833 URLs driving 61% of contacts) have AI Overview exposure, making this the tier where AI risk and BO opportunity overlap most.

Prune the estate: Managing 5,226 blog URLs is expensive. Reducing to ~932 active pages means every optimization cycle covers fewer pages with higher per-page BO return.

Reallocate by contact rate: Near Me pages return ~10× the BO value per session vs. Cost Guides and ~143× vs. Ideas.

Stop producing non-converting content: How-To and Ideas generated no meaningful commercial return. Ceasing production frees budget.

Transform at the template level: Converting cost guides from static articles to interactive calculators is a one-time structural investment that lifts the entire category.