Today, I will share how I helped a local tree management service business based in Los Angeles, California to grow and gain more than 120% new local traffic in just 12 months. The local SEO case study reveals an effective strategy to:
- Increase lead conversion by more than 12.7%
- 1150+ natural keyword indexing in 12 months
- 98% growth in leads and visitors
- CTR improved 1.4%
I will be describing my whole journey including, local keyword ranking, appearing in local listings, GMB optimization, link building, and content mapping. The journey is a complete local SEO guide to follow for sellers.
About SEOSkit
SEOSkit is a thriving SEO marketing company. We have assisted over 100 business owners, including Colgate, Adobe, Huawei, and Made-in-China, with marketing strategies, services, and consulting. Our business objective is to achieve the highest ROI for my clients from different marketing channels with updated techniques and strategies.
Case Overview
As said earlier, the project was to help the business owner gain authentic traffic through local SEO strategies. By the time we got the project in hand, the brand was almost established, yet was far behind from the top competitors like California Tree Services and Arborwell.
According to the Terner Center, homeownership in California was around 43% in 2021.
Thus, homeowners who seek to redecorate their land with tree management services are very specific. That’s why gaining ranks in city-specific searches was very hard for newcomers.
About the Client’s Website
When we started working on the website, it was more than 3 years old. It was a custom-built site in WordPress. But this wasn’t an issue as I saw some top names also used WordPress to make their platforms.
Although the site was very specific, the client didn’t have the time or labor to manage the site and clients properly. Service pages seemed okay. But the other content pages had some technical issues with a lack of info depth.
Also, we figured that local keyword research was missing when the existing content planning was made.
Short Brief on Expectations & Demands
Like every other local business, the owner’s demands were straightforward:
- Generate more local leads through Increased visibility
- Dominate the local market by appearing on the first pages of local SERPs
- Rank on Google Maps and attract local customers
- Establishing a sound Google My Business profile (currently known as Google Business Profile)
- Generate organic sales
Our Primary Analysis
Before making a roadmap, my team always performs a basic SEO site audit including competitor analysis to fix our deliverables. It mainly helps to figure out the possible SEO flaws in the website.
In this case, I found these issues that need our attention.
- Zero optimization in GMB profile
- No response to customer queries and reviews
- Lack of SEO-friendly articles
- Improper media (especially image)
- Multiple technical issues like missing meta, alt text, poor content structure, etc.
- The client was probably unaware of social media marketing, local citation, and listing
Key Challenges
The primary audit helped us a lot. I discovered that we had to do something more than just hitting local SEO ranking factors. Technical SEO, content mapping, high-quality link building, etc. were also needed to rank this business on localized searches.
- Optimizing Google Business Profile (but we didn’t get access to it, we needed to guide the owner to optimize his profile)
- Fixing several technical issues to increase technical SEO score
- Create a content strategy for the targeted location
- Retouching the UI/UX
- Link building with authority sites and forums
- Providing a sound social media marketing strategy
Challenges Outside SEO
Apart from those challenges, the biggest problem was our client was very busy with his work. The company was short of employees. So, he had to handle most of the work.
Besides, the client had a bare minimum of SEO knowledge. So, it was tough for us to convince him of any actions or deliverables. We had to describe our work in the simplest way possible to clear the communication gap.
Our Precise Strategy to Boost Local SEO
After noting down all the deliverables and objectives of this project, we made a precise roadmap with true local SEO rank factors. I divided this project into 7 parts.
Competitor Research
As the niche was pretty compact and competitive, we had to go through our competitors first.
Competitor research helped us know:
- Which type of content we should focus on,
- Which sites are eligible for backlinks,
- Where to list the website,
- Primary local keyword research,
- and Service benefits we should focus on in landing pages
Optimizing GMB Profile & Website NAP
As said before, the client didn’t give us the GMB access. So, we thought of analyzing the profile and mailing feedback to him.
I told the owner to be more active in responding to the reviews given on the profile. Even if the reviews were negative, replying to them with positive words could increase authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Also, I sent a list of local keywords (based on LA) that should be naturally used or clustered in the Business profile bio. Apart from that, we suggested changing the backdated details that existed on the profile.
Most importantly, the client was told to implement NAP (number, address, and phone number) on the profile. After he added the contact info, we went straight for the website NAP.
During that time, a part of our group also worked on schema markup. These works would help the website to gain credibility from Google to rank further.
Apart from that, we requested the client for these additional works:
- Ask for reviews from customers
- Adding FAQs to the list
Technical SEO
Previous employees working on the website development had no idea of technical SEO. So, we had to fix the technical errors to avoid penalties and rank drops.
Our experts recreated meta tags for each page. They also went through alt texts to change the irrelevant ones.
Besides, the whole website got new content structures. Services pages were recreated with a formal outlook with more focus on the benefits and prices. Whereas blog pages were given proper headings and tags.
We made sure the URLs for the pages remain short and understandable to Search Engines. Other technical works included title fixing, keyword density check on each page, etc.
Improving User Experience
Next up, we fixed the load speed for mobiles. In mobile optimization, the team worked on image resizing. Image GEO tagging was also a part of this phase.
Landing pages or service pages gained some clear visuals for sale generation.
The font size was okay on most pages of the site. Yet, some changes were made for a better experience.
We kept monitoring the visitors to see if the bounce rate had any changes. We also tracked down user behaviors for further improvement.
Creating High-Value Content
The website was full of thin and irrelevant articles. They were not categorized properly.
So, we started to remap the content strategy. First, the content team used Hotjar to get a clear website heatmap and user behaviors. Then, they collected a local SEO heatmap based on Google Maps.
Our experts did a thorough local keyword research following the materials we had. The data-driven results in the kw research helped us know which keywords to pick and compete.
In the existing articles, we fixed:
- Sentence length, paragraph length, etc.
- Headings and keyword placements
- Info gaps
In-house writers created new articles with the help of niche experts. Although our client didn’t have time for frequent meetings, we still bothered him for making experience-based articles.
Content editors highlighted key features of the company, including USPs, benefits, etc.
One thing we made sure of in this phase was accurate interlinking and CTA buttons. Internal linking with service pages or landing pages would increase the conversion rate.
Authority Link Building
The backlink job in this project was almost the same as on other occasions. Yet, here’s a short brief.
- I analyzed the competitors to know which sites are providing them with references or backlinks. Our team reached those authority sites with better pitches
- All broken and spam links were removed from the website.
- As the business required local optimization, the focus was on local citations most of the time.
- We enrolled the client’s site in Yelp, Bing Places, BBB, and other directories popular in the US.
- Optimizing local listing sites was also on our priority list.
- A unique method was link exchange offers with high-value domains.
It was understandable that quality backlinks wouldn’t be enough for quick growth. So, our shortcut was publishing links and posts on social media. A group also stayed active using the company’s official accounts in forums.
Regular Monitoring
SEO has no end. New competitors, keywords, and updates will keep coming and you have to deal with them frequently. Besides, you never know whether your plan succeeded or not unless you see the results. You might have to change your strategy in the middle of the project.
So, our team kept everything in check. Monitoring page performances, user behaviors, tracking data-driven results, etc was also part of this project.
The Result: An Outstanding Growth
After 12 months of dedicated hard work, we were able to put the website in this position:
- New Users: 18.27%
- Lead Conversion Increased: 12.7%
- Total Traffic Increased: 98%
- CTR Improved: 1.4%
- New Keywords Indexed: 1150
- Total Search Traffic: 1054
Not only that, but Performance Indicators in CallRail PP also increased thanks to proper NAP and GMP optimization. The stats are:
- Conversion Rate: 36.25%
- Completion Increased to: 72.22%
Overall, the final outcome was we were able to increase phone calls to 95.24%, and the business got 64.67% more conversion than the previous year.
I agree there are several other scopes of improvement. But depending on the niche difficulty and the size of the client’s business, this was the best outcome one could’ve pulled.
But the fun fact is the growth hasn’t stopped yet. So, our team might come up with another case study on the recent growth of this site by an existing SEO strategy.
In Short
Local optimization is a must-be-done job for local business owners no matter what they sell or where they sell. Only the result of optimization will vary depending on the strategy you take or follow.
This local SEO case study is one of the many proofs of it. In case you missed something or skipped the whole content in shortage of time, here are the key points:
- Optimizing the GMB profile with NAP, localized keywords, and updated information is the first thing to do.
- Responding to questions and reviews on the Business profile increases the authenticity
- Make sure to conduct keyword research and heatmap analysis focused on the business location. Being visible to audiences outside your zone is of no use
- Content should fulfill user intent including clear CTA parts for better credibility and conversion
- Exist on local listing sites and forums with official names or accounts
Do You Want to Scale Your Local Business?
If you also wish to gain stable sales and traffic generation, SEOSkit is always there to help you. Contact us right away to book your free consultancy.
