From a Toronto boutique to Canada's dress rental search results.
The Fitzroy had the inventory and the following. Search was flat and slipping. Twenty-two months later the site holds more than 900 top-three rankings across Canada, and the pop-up cities are ranking before the pop-ups open.
Ahrefs figures are third-party estimates. The same model is applied to every site, so the direction and the relative gap are what matter. Client-side numbers come from The Fitzroy's own Google accounts.
A loved brand with a search presence that was shrinking.
The Fitzroy Rentals is a Toronto designer dress rental boutique on Shopify with a loyal local following and a growing pop-up calendar in Ottawa, Calgary and Victoria. Demand for formal wear rental was rising. The website was not rising with it.
Organic clicks and impressions slid through late 2024 and bottomed out in November. The collection pages carried the brand well and the search intent poorly, the pop-up cities had no pages to land on, and a slow, structurally messy mobile experience was holding every ranking back.
The opportunity was obvious. The brand had product and customer love. It needed the technical and strategic foundation to reach people searching for a dress to rent, and the far larger group shopping for formal wear who did not yet know renting was an option.
What was in the way
- Collection pages built for browsing, not for the searches people actually run
- No pages for the cities the pop-ups visit
- Slow, structurally messy templates on mobile
- Wedding-guest demand split across pages that competed with each other
- A Google Business Profile that was not being worked as a channel
What we cleaned up before we built anything.
Adding pages to a weak foundation wastes months. The first pass was structure, speed and tracking, so every later gain could be measured and kept.
Site structure and speed
Structural issues resolved, templates lightened, mobile-first layout across every collection.
One intent per page
The wedding-guest collection became the pillar, with seasonal and wedding-type sub-collections linked beneath it instead of competing with it.
Tracking that means something
Search Console, GA4 and Shopify sessions tied together, so a ranking gain can be followed through to an order.
Copy standards
Canadian spelling, clean brand-first H1s and one voice across every page, post and product.
Pages for every city, season and occasion people search for.
City collection pages for every pop-up market
Ottawa, Calgary, Victoria and more, published ahead of each event so the page is indexed before the doors open. Ottawa reached #1 for its core rental terms after the March pop-up.
A wedding-guest pillar with seasonal and wedding-type sub-collections
Winter, Summer, Fall, Destination, Casual and Micro Wedding, each linking back up to the pillar so the whole cluster ranks together.
Occasion collections rebuilt around the search
Black tie, garden party, ball gown and evening collections rewritten for what people type. Now #1 for black tie dresses, garden party dress and wedding guest outfit.
Google Business Profile as a live channel
New-arrival posts on a fixed rotation, a fully built profile, and reviews answered.
Schema and internal linking that scale
Every new city, season or occasion slots into the same structure without a rebuild.
Three profile updates a week, every week.
Google Business Profile posts go out Monday, Wednesday and Friday on a fixed rotation. Collection copy and city pages are produced ahead of each season and each pop-up, not during them.
Scheduled is not delivered. Every page is submitted to Google the day it goes live and checked at its public URL the day after.
Top-three rankings, from 524 to 951.
Ahrefs counts the keywords a site holds in positions one to three. The Fitzroy started the engagement at 524 and now holds 951, with a peak of 1,176 in June 2026 during wedding season. The searches below are the ones that book fittings.
| Position | Search | Searches / mo |
|---|---|---|
| #2 | dress rental toronto | 1,700 |
| #1 | dress rental | 450 |
| #1 | black tie dresses | 1,700 |
| #5 | wedding guest dress | 11,000 |
| #3 | wedding guest dresses toronto | 500 |
| #2 | ball gown | 1,400 |
| #2 | evening dresses canada | 700 |
| #3 | wedding dress rental | 700 |
| #1 | garden party dress | 500 |
| #1 | wedding guest outfit | 500 |
Ahrefs organic keywords, Canada, September 10, 2026. Positions are Ahrefs' last check, not a live result, and shift daily.
Before and after, from The Fitzroy's own accounts.
Snapshots taken from Google Business Profile and Search Console during the engagement, as published on the original case study in 2025. Dates and comparison periods are the ones Google shows.
12,676 profile views, down 14.9% on the prior period. Roughly half from Google Search on mobile, a quarter from Maps.
20,711 profile views, up 32.7% against June 2024. The Maps share grew with it.
1.49K clicks, up 27%. 8.78K impressions, up 33%. Average position 1.8 on the homepage.
154 clicks, up 35%, on a single rental query. 442 impressions, up 39%, holding position 2.1.
Every pop-up gets the Ottawa playbook.
The Calgary pop-up at Hotel Le Germain is next: a dedicated collection page published ahead of the event, local press outreach, and Business Profile posts timed to the dates. City collections keep expanding as the pop-up calendar does, and the wedding-guest cluster is refreshed every season so it keeps its ground.
If the ambition is serious, let's talk.
We review every inquiry personally and take on a handful of new engagements a year, for established businesses that are ready to invest in growth.
From $2,500/month · Established businesses · Month to month