By the numbers:
- 2x organic keywords
- 10x monthly traffic
- 400% rankings improvement
Digital marketing is a massive industry that can be highly competitive to rank for in organic search. Specialist companies that focus on specific industries or services have a narrower target market, but they’re still competing for the same keywords as bigger companies and general digital marketing resources. Optimization can get a little tricky, which is why didn’t put all of our eggs in the keyword basket.
Our client, who runs a Digital Marketing Solutions for HVAC, Plumbing and Electrical Contractors, only wanted to rank in search results that were relevant to their target audience—electrical, HVAC, and plumbing.
Here’s how we helped them go from positions 40-50 to the first and second pages of search results in a highly competitive industry.
The Strategy
We leveraged our ABC Plus service, which helps websites grow online authority through strategic backlinking. This high-touch service hand-selects relevant websites in the client’s niche, analyzes and selects anchor text, and determines link velocity so we can achieve the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time. Clients gain hands-free peace of mind by using our proven system of building quality links, with no outreach or content creation required on their part.
Our team focused on the home page and service pages, both of which will help search engines gain context about the client. It was important to use a mix of exact match, partial match, and generic phrases to ensure a natural link profile. Ongoing anchor text analysis helped us avoid over-optimizing each page for specific keywords so we could keep moving forward.
The Results
Having used ABC Plus for 12 months, our client has doubled the number of organic keywords their site shows up for in rankings. This number is growing every month and has had a direct impact on organic traffic growth, which has increased 10x in the last year.
Prior to ABC Plus, our client received about 100 visits per month. Now with more links sending referral traffic and more keywords to help rankings, our client is earning 1,000 visits per month, giving them 10 times the potential leads.
In terms of positioning in the search results, ranking on the fourth or fifth page of results (positions 40-50 or so) or not ranking was the norm. With a growth in domain authority, keywords, and traffic—all of which are quality signals to search algorithms—the client is now on the first and second pages for their target keywords, including a Top 3 position for 27 terms.
Last Word
Ranking in highly competitive and massive industries like digital marketing is challenging enough. Narrowing the focus to very specific types of customers (in this case, tradesmen) adds an extra layer of complexity. This is why it’s essential to go beyond keywords and focus on the bigger off-page SEO picture: growing authority via links, keyword usage, and contextualization so search engines can rank accordingly.