The Mutty Professor

A fresh new website, SEO strategy & digital product sales for a popular & growing dog training business

Mutty Screens Landscape
Paul Croft

Can we help you win more business from your website? Fill in the form below to arrange an initial chat.
If you'd prefer a callback feel free to include your best telephone number

Blue

Meet The Mutty Professor

Run by Roz Pooley, The Mutty Professor is a highly regarded dog training and behaviour consultancy based in Bristol. Specialising in ethical, science-based training methods, Roz and her team of accredited professionals— including Clinical Animal Behaviourists— help dog owners with everything from puppy training to complex behavioural challenges like aggression, anxiety, and reactivity.

Mutty Professor Media Page Mockup

The challenge

When Roz approached us, her website was no longer fit for purpose. Over the years, multiple people had worked on it, resulting in broken styling elements, performance issues, and an overall difficult-to-manage site.

At the time, The Mutty Professor was both a pet store and a dog training business, with the website functioning as a WooCommerce store. As a result, while the site ranked well for pet products, it failed to rank for dog training, puppy training and dog behaviour-related search terms.

Roz was in the process of selling the pet shop and wanted a website that:

  • Positioned her dog training business as the primary focus.
  • Ranked for relevant dog and puppy training and behaviour keywords.
  • Provided a platform for selling digital educational products.

The solution: A strategy-driven approach

Most often, a list of strategic fixes is all that’s need to turn a website into a lead-generating machine. Other times, a complete rebuild is the most sensible approach. After auditing the existing website, and taking into consideration the shift away from eCommerce, we determined that a rebuild was the best and most viable option.

Step 1: Discovery, messaging & keyword research

We began by getting to know Roz’s business inside and out, asking in-depth questions about the services and problems The Mutty Professor solves for its clients. Using our Offer Messaging Workbook, Roz provided valuable insights that would help to shape the site’s messaging.

Next, we conducted keyword and competitor research to identify high-value keywords with the right search intent. Search intent is important; if you only rank for keywords that people use when looking for helpful information, while you will get traffic, you’re unlikely to get enquiries.

This is an often overlooked element of SEO: you need to rank for terms that people use to actually seek out services. These are known as “commercial” and “transactional” keywords.

The keyword research informs the new site’s URL structure, ensuring a logical hierarchy that made it easier for users to navigate and for Google to crawl and index efficiently.

Step 2: A content-first approach

We believe that content should drive design—not the other way around. A well-structured website with strong copy will always outperform a beautiful site with weak messaging.

We wrote SEO-optimised copy for key pages, including service pages, the homepage, and the about section, ensuring:

  • Messaging resonated with Roz’s ideal clients.
  • Headings and content were optimised for relevant keywords.
  • The site’s purpose and services were communicated clearly and persuasively.

Step 3: Wireframing & user experience

Before jumping into visual design, we created wireframes—simple black-and-white layouts that defined the website’s structure, navigation, and content flow.

Mutty Professor Wireframe screenshots

Building a wireframe helps us to:

  • Ensure a smooth and logical journey for visitors – so that they can find what they are looking for easily.
  • Make adjustments before investing time in detailed design work – saving time and budget by avoiding duplication of effort.
  • Focus on usability and conversion-driven design – making it easy for visitors to get in touch.

Step 4: Design & development

With the wireframes approved, we moved on to the visual design. Using Roz’s existing logo as inspiration, we selected a cohesive colour palette with complementary shades and an accent colour to enhance the brand’s identity.

Mutty Professor Colour Pallette

We also prioritised scalability and maintainability by:

  • Building the site using a structured CSS framework, allowing for easy future adjustments (e.g., changing all buttons site-wide with a single tweak).
  • Creating custom templates for repeatable content like blog posts, team members, and services, ensuring consistency and easy updates.
  • Using WordPress, which Roz was already familiar with, for its superior SEO capabilities and user-friendly content management system.

Step 5: Integrating Kit for digital product sales

To make selling educational products easy without the hassle of managing an online store, we connected the website to Kit, a tool for email marketing and digital product sales.

Mutty Product Screen
  • No need for on-site eCommerce functionality, reducing maintenance headaches.
  • Secure, off-site payment processing with minimal risk of technical issues.
  • Instant rollbacks if plugin updates caused any disruptions, ensuring site stability and reducing reliance on technical support.

Step 6: Launch & SEO success

Before launch, we ensured all critical elements were in place:

  • SEO & Redirects: We meticulously captured important backlinks and implemented redirects to maintain domain authority and search rankings.
  • Content migration: All blog posts were seamlessly transferred and redirected to their new URLs to avoid broken links and lost traffic.

Once launched, the results were immediate and impressive:

  • Within weeks, the new website ranked on page one for all targeted keywords.
  • Many key search terms landed in positions 1 to 3 on Google.
  • Website enquiries skyrocketed from sporadic contact to up to 10 per day at peak times.

The outcome: A thriving online presence, daily enquiries & a growing business

Roz’s new website now fully aligns with her dog training business goals, attracting qualified leads and positioning The Mutty Professor as a leader in ethical dog training.

Beyond the immediate results, Roz has invested in a long-term business asset that will continue to support her growth. The website is built to scale, allowing her to expand services, add new educational products, and refine her offerings as her business evolves. 

With a solid foundation in place, she now has a platform that not only brings in steady enquiries but also gives her the flexibility to adapt to future opportunities with ease.

By prioritising a strategy-first approach, we’ve ensured that her site remains high-performing, easy to maintain, and optimised for search—helping her stay ahead in the competitive dog training industry.

Roz’s Testimonial:

“I am so busy, I can get easily overwhelmed- especially with tech related matters or having too much choice. Paul made the design process really easy, and was very patient with me. He even provided tutorial videos that helped me understand some of the things I needed to do.
I now have a website that receives many compliments from other professionals, ranks highly and pulls in a high number of inquiries week after week.As I’m too busy to upload my blogs, new media releases and products for my shop – Paul does these for me at an hourly rate which reduces my stress and makes my life so much easier!”