Content and Local SEO
for the Win
The Challenge
Every client, no matter how large or small, deserves the best return for their search marketing efforts. The relationship between Apogee Results and The Bug Master is an example of how conscientious and creative application of best practices in local SEO, data, and content writing can positively impact a client’s bottom line without spending big marketing dollars.
The Objective
Objective: #1: Increase Organic Search Traffic by at least 20% year over year in the first year of the engagement.
Objective #2: Increase revenue from Organic sources by at least 20% within 6 months (and ongoing). This is to be achieved by increased form fills and phone calls.
Small Budget – Big Impact
Target Audience
The target audience for The Bug Master is all homeowners and renters in the Austin Metro area who experience pest and insect problems. Additionally, service areas in Temple and Waco were also a priority. Pet owners are a sub-audience among these groups that particularly use pest services.
Strategy
Our strategy for The Bug Master was two-fold:
1: Clean up citations and produce enhanced schema local markup to gain more exposure from Google Maps and the local 3-pack for Austin, Temple, and Waco.
2: Create new, SEO optimized content pieces related to bug and pest infestations that would be valuable to consumers and help answer common questions about different types of pests and infestations in Central Texas. This new content would establish The Bug Master as the go-to resource for the Austin area when it comes to bugs and other pests.
%
Increase in Organic Search Traffic
%
Increase in Form Fills
%
Increase in Phone Calls
Implementation
Technical Remediation Included:
- Updated Robots.TXT
- Updated Sitemap
Local SEO Practices Included:
- Citation cleanup and new citation building
- Creation of local pages for each service area, content created using query analysis
- Creation of local schema markup for each local page
Content Creation
Through deep query analysis, intent analysis, and competitive analysis, we determined the right topics to write about that would gain traffic for The Bug Master’s website. We also took the further step to publish pest topics according to seasonal peaks in search volume for each particular user query.
The Creative
Creativity comes in the application of the research to match data to human behavior. While there is high search volume for general terms like “termites,” national companies like Orkin have such a high domain authority that they will outrank a local service provider nearly every time. Also, the more general terms tend to include people looking for information and not necessarily services. Creating content for the longer regional phrase enabled the team to filter The Bug Master’s potential search traffic by a higher intent to hire services in their area and rank with authority for queries that are much more specific to Central Texas.
Over the course of a year working with The Bug Master, we produced over 50 content pieces for the website high local or regional intent and timed with the highest peaks in queries for particular pests.
The Results Were Amazing
Despite starting with a low floor of traffic and a limited marketing budget, the team was able to achieve significant increases of qualified traffic, driven by blending query data and creating useful content. This local focused strategy had a huge positive effect on the bottom line for this client.
Results
Objective 1: Increase Organic Search Traffic by at least 20% year over year in the first year of the engagement.
We found significant success in driving traffic for The Bug Master, with significant gains over time:
By December, we saw an increase of 33.21% in year over year sessions. From this point forward, our gains became increasingly dramatic. Here is the growth in sessions over the last 3 months (June is just through the 26th)
● April: 66.16% increase
● May: 74.18% increase
● June (through the 26th): 98.10% increase
Digging deeper, we can see that individual pieces created by Apogee contributed significantly to this, with the 4th and 5th top organic landing pages pieces we created:
Overall, 5 of the top twenty organic landing pages were built by Apogee.
Objective 2: Increase revenue from Organic sources by at least 20% within 6 months (and ongoing)
● Revenue from organic sources increased by over 22% year over year in December of 2018 according to the client
● Revenue from organic sources has nearly doubled this spring according to the client
● Form Fills increased 80.31% year over year from October 2018 through June 2019 (goal was not created until October 2017):
● Phone Calls increased 19.81% year over year October 2018 through June 26th 2019 (goal was not created until October 2017)
The Results Got Even Better
UPDATED Results through October of 2019:
All results above convinced the US Search awards to grant us the Best Local SEO Campaign for 2018/2019. In the 4 months since the creation of this case study which won the award, we have seen even more dramatic increases in traffic and goals.
Here is a look at June 2018 through October 2019:
Despite the fact that the growth seen in early 2019 was significant, the growth from July through October was such a huge improvement, it makes earlier gains look like almost nothing.
Here we see the actual difference in acquisition growth numbers between these two periods:
June 2018 – June 2019
July 2019 – October 2019
Why did this happen? Multiple pieces built by Apogee Results gained featured snipits and showed huge ammounts of growth.
The two pieces highlighted above really took off:
Overall, 12 of the top 20 landing pages were pieces built by Apogee Results at this time, and these pieces accounted for over 87% of the traffic during this time.
Through this work and significant increase in traffic, Bugmaster gained more customers through phone calls and form fills (Goal completions include both conversions):
Overall, during the period from October 2018 (when YoY data for Goals begins) and June of 2019, goal completions increased 45.28% YoY.
In the four months since these incredible results, goal completions increased 78.48% YoY.
“I enjoy working with Apogee – because they are good people. But in addition to that, they continue to generate quality traffic that converts! Apogee brings a deep understanding of their craft that’s actionable; and ultimately, it adds real business value. It certainly makes my job a lot easier. Our traffic is up, and not just up, I mean UP. The content they produce, coupled with the deep SEO knowledge/experience, is relevant and adds real value to our visitors – which, in turn, creates more customers. That’s what it’s all about. I couldn’t be happier; I highly recommend Apogee Results. “
Want Award-Winning Results for Your Local Business?
Fill out the form below to request a complementary evaluation of your digital marketing today.
Request Your Evaluation
Related Case Studies
