Where the traffic came from, what it did, and where the leads came in. Built for Shawn at Plains Equipment Rentals.
A quick walkthrough of what moved in May and what we're building next, before you dig into the numbers below.
Recorded by NewFrame Digital for Shawn at Plains Equipment Rentals.
The four numbers that matter most this month. Quote requests are the clearest signal of demand from the site.
The mobile click-to-text button is new and already firing. Video plays come from the equipment walkaround clips. On-site searches show people are actively hunting for specific machines once they land.
439 sessions and 284 engaged visits, a 65% engagement rate, the strongest channel this month. Most of those clicks went to the cost guide and the Komatsu spec pages, and the new Kubota R640 vs Bobcat L85 blog already ranks at position 6.5.
Perplexity sent 9 sessions and ChatGPT sent 3, the first month either has shown up. The volume is small, but it tells us the comparison and spec content is getting picked up when people ask AI which loader to rent.
Everything we delivered against the plan this month, so the numbers further down have context. Each line below is a piece of work that ran or went live in May.
Our standing 15 to 30 minute check-ins to review pacing, leads, and priorities for the month ahead.
Ongoing website edits plus the Google Business Profile, which drove 553 profile views and 62 website clicks this month (full breakdown below).
This report: search, ads, leads, email, and the Google Business Profile pulled together in one place.
The wheel loader cost guide and the equipment rental FAQ, both written under Shawn's name, with early numbers below.
Four search campaigns managed, CA$3,063 spent, returning 21 tracked conversions, with the full detail in the Google Ads section.
Two social promotions pointing at the new content, plus the monthly Plains newsletter to the list.
| Page | Published | Early impressions | Early clicks | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost to rent a wheel loader /cost-to-rent-a-wheel-loader/ |
May 26 | 10 | 0 | Ranking pos 1 for "how much to rent a front end loader" |
| Equipment rental FAQ /equipment-rental-faq/ |
May 14 | Indexed | 1 | Top clicked link in the May newsletter |
Both pages are days to weeks old, so the search numbers are early by design. The wheel loader guide reinforces the cost content Google already cites, and the FAQ doubles as the lead link in the newsletter.
Organic and paid search drive the engaged visits and every quote request; the direct bucket is large but mostly bot volume landing on the home page, which is why so few of those visits engage.
All 11 quote requests this month came through search: 8 from Google Ads (paid) and 3 from organic. That lines up with the engagement chart, where paid and organic search are the two channels that keep people on the site.
What people searched, which pages earned the clicks, and where the next gains are.
| Page | Clicks | Impr. | CTR | Avg Pos |
|---|
| Query | Clicks | Impr. | CTR | Avg Pos |
|---|
Two sources here: the first three come from Ahrefs (an SEO tool, read as estimates), and Avg Position comes from Google Search Console (measured directly by Google). Each card is labelled with where its number comes from.
Ahrefs estimates keyword counts, traffic, and link strength from a model, so the numbers shift month to month and often read well off what we measure directly in Google Search Console. We use them to see which way things are trending, not as precise totals. Where we have measured data, like clicks and positions from Search Console, that is the number to trust.
The 83 comes almost entirely from 211 links Ahrefs reads as broken. They all point to the Cloudflare address that hides the email in the site footer from spam bots. Those links work fine for real visitors; only the crawler cannot follow them. There is nothing to fix here, and it does not affect how the site ranks.
Plains is already listed with strong industry bodies, including the American Rental Association, the Alberta Roadbuilders and Heavy Construction Association, the Alberta Construction Association, and Dun & Bradstreet. Those memberships, plus supplier and manufacturer pages, are good places to be listed for both credibility and links back to the site. If it is useful, we can pull together a short list of directories and partners to claim over time. It is a slow, optional gain rather than a monthly priority.
CA$3,063 spent in May across four search campaigns, returning 21 primary conversions at $146 each. The brand campaign is the most efficient of the four.
| Campaign | Impr. | Clicks | CTR | Impr. Share | Cost | Conv. | Cost/Conv | Status |
|---|
Impression share is the slice of available searches the ad showed for. Wheel Loaders is already at 92%, so it captures nearly every wheel loader search there is; the category simply has little volume. Skid Steers at 16% has plenty of room to grow with more budget.
| Campaign | Phone calls | Form fills | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skid Steers | 7 | 1 | 8 |
| Excavators | 3 | 2 | 5 |
| Wheel Loaders | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Brand | 3 | 3 | 6 |
Phone calls tracked via WhatConverts (includes call-extension clicks and direct calls). The equipment campaigns lean heavily on phone leads, which is typical for contractors pricing a job.
| Search term | Category | Conversions | Cost / Conv |
|---|---|---|---|
| plains equipment rentals | Brand | 4 | $21.69 |
| excavator rentals calgary | Excavators | 2 | $28.20 |
| plains equipment rentals corp | Brand | 1 | $31.29 |
| loader rentals | Wheel Loaders | 1 | $41.91 |
| excavator rentals edmonton | Excavators | 1 | $7.87 |
| rent excavator | Excavators | 1 | $31.16 |
| excavator rental edmonton | Excavators | 1 | $124.58 |
| bobcat rental edmonton | Skid Steers | 1 | $46.41 |
| skid steer rental calgary | Skid Steers | 1 | $89.33 |
| skid steer rental edmonton | Skid Steers | 1 | $55.66 |
| bobcat rental edmonton alberta | Skid Steers | 1 | $6.19 |
| skid steer rental near me | Skid Steers | 1 | $22.87 |
These 16 conversions tie to the exact phrases above; the rest of the 21 spread across smaller one-off searches. Two patterns stand out. Brand searches (people typing "Plains Equipment Rentals") convert cheapest, around $22 each. And almost every other converting search carries a city name, Calgary or Edmonton, so local-intent searches are where the equipment campaigns earn their leads.
22% CTR on people already searching for Plains, so these conversions come in cheap and at high intent.
The wheel loader search campaign carries the biggest budget ($65/day) but rarely hits its cap. It already shows for 92% of the wheel loader searches that exist, so there's no room left to grow in search; the demand isn't there to spend the budget, which is why cost per conversion reads high on 2 conversions. The pages and targeting are sound. Search can only reach people already typing "wheel loader rental" into Google, which is why the June plan adds Performance Max and video to create that demand.
Since search volume caps how much the wheel loader campaign can spend, we're adding a channel that creates demand instead of waiting for it. Through June we're building a Performance Max campaign tailored to wheel loaders, with YouTube and video ads using the footage Shawn supplied. Performance Max runs across YouTube, Display, Search, and Discover, so it puts wheel loaders in front of contractors before they search. The aim is to fill the top of the funnel for the flagship category and feed the search campaigns that can't spend their budget today.
How the Plains listing performed on Google Search and Maps: how many people found it, and what they did next. Compared against the same month last year.
58% of views came from Google Search on mobile and another 23% from Search on desktop. Google Maps made up the rest. People are finding Plains by searching, mostly from their phone.
Views are up about 23% on last May and website clicks are up 44%. The listing is doing more of the work of getting people from Google onto the site.
Calls and direction requests were both down year over year. With website clicks up at the same time, more of that intent is moving onto the site and into the quote form rather than a direct call or a trip to the yard.
Every inbound lead captured through the tracking sheet: phone calls (WhatConverts) and website form submissions. This is the full capture log, broader than the conversions Google Ads attributes, since it also picks up organic, social, and direct callers.
35 of 45 leads came in by phone. Contractors pricing a job call rather than fill a form, which is why WhatConverts call tracking matters as much as the form. Note: this 45 is the full capture log; Google Ads attributes a narrower set (21 primary conversions) because it only counts the calls and forms it can tie to an ad click.
| Name | Heard via | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Chris Afseth | May 5 | |
| Lindsay Wadsworth | May 6 | |
| Tyler Rockafellow | May 6 | |
| Muhamad Samir | May 6 | |
| Chris Makowsky | May 11 | |
| Harvey VandeBruinhorst | Referral | May 11 |
| Scott Quinn | May 15 | |
| Stu Carvill | May 15 | |
| Hasib Baig | May 19 | |
| Sarah Tutt | May 29 |
The monthly Plains newsletter: who it reached, how many opened, and what they clicked.
The "rental FAQ" angle worked: nearly half the list opened it, well above the rental and equipment industry average of around 25 to 30%. The subject and the practical, question-first format are doing their job.
There was one click across 58 opens. The email answers the questions inside the body, so readers may be getting what they need without clicking through. It's worth testing a sharper single call to action next month if the goal is to drive traffic to the site.
The rental FAQ blog post (plainsequipmentrentals.com/equipment-rental-faq-western-canada/) was the only link clicked this send.
Where the next gains are, based on what the May data is telling us.
"Wheel loader rental" and "loader rental" sit around position 20 on a few hundred impressions a month. As the flagship category, moving these onto page 1 would add meaningful organic volume.
Search can't spend the wheel loader budget because the volume isn't there. In June we're building a Performance Max campaign tailored to wheel loaders, with YouTube and video using Shawn's footage, to create demand instead of waiting for it.
Plains is already listed with the American Rental Association, the Alberta Roadbuilders and Heavy Construction Association, and Dun & Bradstreet. Adding a few more industry directories and supplier pages over time helps credibility and links back to the site. This is an optional, slow gain, not a monthly push.
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