Sean Hudgeon Wardle runs Grassland Landscape and Lawncare in Long Beach, and we built his first website in 2012. Most case studies cover a few months. This one covers 14 years, a year with no site at all, and the first day of a new launch.
One thing up front. Sean is my friend. We met at the University of Akron and both ended up in Southern California. So read this knowing that. I have tried to show you the proof, and to say so where there isn't any.
- 2012 is when we built his first website
- 84 domains still link to the site after about a year offline
- 134 pages built for the new launch, 93 of them in the sitemap
- 0 results to report so far, because this launch is on day one
The First Site
We built the first version in 2012, when Sean was getting Grassland going. It went great. It gave a new landscaper a real place on the internet, with a phone number, a list of services and his work.
I can't show you that 2012 version. We looked in the public web archive, and no copy from that year turned up. So you only have my word for that part. Everything after it has a date and a link.
What the Public Record Shows
The Wayback Machine saved this home page in 17 different months between 2015 and 2024. WHOIS shows when the domain was registered. Here is the record, with a link for each line you can check.
| When | What Happened | Proof |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | We build Grassland's first website. | Our word. The archive has no copy. |
| May 2015 | The longbeachlandscaping.net domain is registered. Before that, the name held a stranger's list of local landscapers. | WHOIS, March 2012 capture |
| August 2015 | The site runs on the domain with a phone number that spells 551 TURF. | August 2015 capture |
| October 2016 | The footer reads Powered By Clickflame. The page says Long Beach landscaping since 2012. | October 2016 capture |
| January 2023 | Same site, same footer, still up. | January 2023 capture |
| March 2024 | The last working copy in the archive. It is a different build, and our footer is gone. | March 2024 capture |
| The Past Year | No website for about a year. | Our word |
| November 4, 2026 | Sean points the domain at us. The new site goes live that night. | The live site |
What the Old Site Got Right
By 2017 the site had the plain things a local service business needs. The name of the town was in the page title. The phone number sat at the top. Each service was spelled out. And there was a line people remembered. "We are not just landscapers. We are dream builders."
It also had job posts. One covers 1,510 square feet of artificial turf, right here in Long Beach, with the lawn shown before the work began. I wrote that post in 2016. That is the kind of page no big lead site can copy, because they weren't there.
Why We Say It Went Great
You should ask what that means. We do not have traffic or call reports from those years, so I won't give you numbers I can't prove. Here is what we do have.
The first thing is the work. Sean sent us his job photos for this rebuild, and they run from at least 2018 to 2023. Sod, pavers, flagstone patios, river rock beds and full pool yards. A business that stops getting calls does not build a stack of photos like that.
The second thing is what his customers wrote. This one is from 2023, word for word, as it appears on his site.
Sean created a wonderful patio space for my little yard. He had to dig, level and design the space for correct drainage.
The third thing is the links. Other sites linked to this one over the years, and they are still there.
A Year Offline
Then the site went away. For about a year, a person who looked up Grassland had no website to land on.
Here is the part worth knowing. On launch day, DataForSEO still counted 84 domains and 241 backlinks pointing at longbeachlandscaping.net. A site can go dark and its links stay put. That doesn't mean those links are all good, or that Google will treat them the way it once did. It does mean Sean wasn't starting from nothing. He still had the name, the domain, and years of history behind them.
Day One
We rebuilt it on November 4, 2026, and it went live the same night. Sean changed his nameservers at 7:05pm, and the site was up by about 7:40pm.
We could have put his name on a template. We built around the one thing a landscaper knows that a template doesn't. Every yard depends on the block it's on.
- 86 neighborhood pages that use USDA soil data for that part of Long Beach
- 19 service pages, from mowing and irrigation to artificial turf and pavers
- 10 city pages for the towns around Long Beach
- 6 guides on local topics like parkway rules, watering rules and the lawn to garden rebate
- Sean's own job photos and customer reviews, quoted word for word
Two old things came along. The 2016 turf post still lives at its old address, so a link to it still works. The dream builders line is still on the site too, because it still fits.
We also held some pages back. All 134 pages are built, but only 93 are in the sitemap on day one. That includes 48 of the 86 neighborhood pages. The others stay up for people and step back from Google for now. A new launch should lead with its best pages, then grow.
What We Don't Know Yet
We don't know how this launch will do. There are no rankings, traffic or calls to report, because the site has been live for less than a day. Anyone who hands you results on launch day is selling you something.
We will come back and add the real numbers here as they come in, good or bad.
What This Means for Your Business
You don't need 14 years to use this. Three lessons carry over to any local business.
- Keep your domain paid up, even in a slow year. It is what your old links point to.
- Save your job photos and dates. They became the best proof Sean had, years later.
- Write about real jobs in your real town. Sean's 2016 turf post is still up in 2026, at the same address.
See how we build websites for service businesses, or read about local search in Long Beach and beyond. You can see the finished work at longbeachlandscaping.net.
