Fifty Five Years of Work, Finally Visible and #1 on AI Search

Client
IPCQ
Industry
Construction
Author
Lachlan Nye
IPCQ Visit website

A 55 Year Industrial Coatings Leader Rebuilt for Search, Scale and AI Discovery

Overview

IPCQ has been protecting Australia’s most critical infrastructure since 1971. Transmission towers, fuel terminals, stadiums, theme parks, bridges, lighthouses and tank farms. They work with Chevron, Viva Energy, Downer, UGL, Village Roadshow, Brisbane Airport and Stadiums Queensland out of a head office at Eagle Farm and a dedicated blast and paint yard at Pinkenba.

Fifty five years of work behind them. A website that showed almost none of it.

The Challenge

Large enterprise businesses like IPCQ carry deep technical capability and very little internal marketing infrastructure. Their previous website had been built by a staff member who had since left the business, leaving the team with backend access they could not confidently use and a site that had quietly fallen behind the company.

The commercial problems were clear:

  • The magnitude of the business was invisible. IPCQ deliver 16 specialist service lines across heavy industry. Anyone finding them for the first time had no way to understand the scale, the accreditations or the calibre of the client list.
  • The site was not properly indexed by Google. A formatting issue baked into the original build was blocking crawlers from reading the site correctly. Google Search Console had never been set up, so there was no visibility, no submitted sitemap and no diagnostics.
  • Service and project content had nowhere to live. Decades of project work across power, oil and gas, marine, stadiums and mining existed in SharePoint folders instead of on the website.
  • Recruitment was suffering. IPCQ win projects and immediately need skilled people. A site that did not communicate the work made hiring harder in an industry with a small talent pool.
  • No AI search presence at all. Buyers in this sector now open with problem based questions in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. IPCQ were returning zero share of those answers.

The brief was direct. Show the real size of the business, get found, and make the whole thing something the internal team can actually run.

The Strategy

We moved the engagement away from paid ads and put the budget into owned assets that compound. In a specialised industry with low search volume and very high job value, paid media burns cash on the wrong clicks. Authority wins the tender.

Three decisions shaped the build:

  1. Structure the site around how buyers and crawlers both read.
    Every service became its own indexable page with its own intent, its own language and its own internal links. Sixteen service pages, a project library, careers and resources. Clear hierarchy, clean URLs, fast load, full technical foundation. Google and AI crawlers get frictionless access to everything IPCQ does in a single pass.
  2. Target long tail and specific search intent.
    Nobody ranks for “lighthouse”. People search “lighthouse coating removal” and “transmission tower painting and refurbishment”. We built the SEO architecture around the terms with genuine commercial intent across transmission towers, tank and bund linings, fuel and diesel tank coatings, stadium maintenance, bridge painting, mining and public infrastructure.
  3. Write for AI search from day one.
    People now start further up the funnel. “Who do I speak to about corrosion on a stadium roof in Brisbane.” Our AI search optimisation approach structures content so language models can extract, attribute and recommend IPCQ as the answer. This was built into the copy at launch instead of retrofitted later.

What Salt Built

  • Custom figma designed and custom wordpress developed the entire website. No template. The build reflects the scale, the safety culture and the technical seriousness of the business, including custom coded animation for the IPCQ core values.
  • Built 16 dedicated service pages with original copywriting across every discipline, from abrasive blasting and surface preparation through to passive fire protection and hazardous coating management.
  • Created a project library so IPCQ can publish work like The Gabba refurbishment, the Viva Energy Pinkenba tank farm and Village Roadshow theme parks as ongoing proof.
  • Fixed the indexing failure carried over from the previous build and set up Google Search Console, sitemap submission and full crawl diagnostics.
  • Engineered the site for machine readability. Semantic structure, schema, internal linking and clean crawl paths so both search engines and AI crawlers can index the full service and project set quickly.
  • Built a careers and team presence to support recruitment and give the business a public face in a tight labour market.
  • Surfaced the social proof. Client testimonials from Chevron, Viva Energy, Village Roadshow, A&I Coatings and Dulux now sit on the site, alongside annual capability metrics.
  • Handed back a simple backend so the IPCQ team can add projects and update content without technical support.

The Result

Six weeks after launch:

  • Ranked number one in their industry in AI search. From zero AI visibility before launch to leading recommendation share across the prompts buyers actually use.
  • Search visibility roughly doubled across target terms.
  • Properly indexed for the first time, with the full service and project set now readable by Google.
  • A site that finally matches the business. Fifty five years of infrastructure work, presented at the scale it deserves.

The speed of the AI result comes down to the build. When the structure is right and the crawlers get clean access to everything, the ranking follows quickly.

IPCQ are now moving into the next phase with videography, photography and brand design

Frequently asked questions about Salt's marketing services

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What does Salt Agency actually do?

Salt is a performance and creative marketing agency in Brisbane. Salt builds the strategy, produces the creative, runs the media and reports on what it earned. One team owns the concept and the result.

What marketing services does Salt offer?

Websites, SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, organic social, photography and video, branding and design, and fractional CMO. CRM setup, tracking and landing pages are delivered inside wider engagements.

What size businesses does Salt work with?

Established businesses, typically mid-market to enterprise, with a committed marketing budget and a growth target attached. Salt keeps a short client list so every engagement gets senior attention.

Am I locked into a long contract?

Retainers run month to month. Website builds are project based with a fixed scope and a fixed price.

Who will I be working with day to day?

One account manager as the single point of contact, with the specialists delivering the work reachable directly. Decisions are made in hours.

How much does marketing with Salt cost?

Retainers start at $2,480+GST per month and website builds range heavily. Final investment depends on scope, channels and pace. Every proposal carries a fixed price with deliverables itemised.

Is Salt a performance agency or a creative agency?

Both, and the two are inseparable at Salt. Creative that cannot be measured and media with nothing worth running are equally ineffective. The same team owns both.

Does Salt only work with Brisbane businesses?

Salt is based in Albion, Brisbane, and works with clients across Australia. Discovery and strategy run in person for Brisbane clients and remotely elsewhere.

How long until I see results?

Paid search and paid social typically produce measurable results inside the first month. SEO compounds over six to twelve months. Every engagement reports on the first Tuesday of the month.

What happens after the first call?

Salt audits the accounts, website and competitors before a proposal is written. The findings are handed over either way. A proposal follows with fixed pricing and scope itemised.

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