New Service Area Business to

10-Mile Radius & 3.5X Calls

A Single Location Service Area Business SEO Case Study

May 21, 2023

1. SEO Client Overview and Scope

I started working with Elite Pest and Termite Control at the beginning of 2021. They came to me looking for SEO help as they were starting their business and needed to get more phone calls/leads.

The site they built was on Godaddy website builder. They did a pretty good job but you could tell it was an amateur site let alone the fact that Godaddy Website Builder is awful, very limited, and didn’t give them much room to grow. We switched them over to WordPress using a similarly designed website as their branding was very good.

A few things we noticed when looking at their site was they did not have any pages targeted toward:

  1. Specific pest that cause problems for their customers
  2. Cities they were targeting
  3. Distinguishing between residential and commercial customers

These were pages we identified on other competitor websites and were keywords we found when researching their industry. These became focal points of new pages to create in addition to redesigning the website.

Unsurprisingly, these are now the most trafficked pages on the website because of the hyper-specific nature of the content that speaks directly to

  • the pest the customer has
  • where the customer is located
  • the type of customer they are

Additionally, the client’s Google Business Profile had only been active for 8 months and was both incomplete and under-optimized. As a service-based business, most people looking for services are clicking on the map pack results to call a company for help so this was going to be a primary focus of ours as well.

2. Results

Conversion: Phone Calls, Web Forms and Google Business Profile

In early 2022, we discovered a new tool call Local Falcon that helped us get a graphical view of how the business is performing in maps by GPS location. While we don’t know where the business started at the beginning of the campaign, we helped Elite expand their maps presence up to a 10-mile radius when the average business is only visible for 1-2 miles at best! The map below is a 20-mile square.

SEO Client - Elite Pest and Termite Service area from local falcon

 

When we first started working with Elite, their GBP was only live for 8 months so we didn’t have a full year’s worth of data. Additionally, data tracking only lasts for 18 months through Google’s API so we have to manually track data after so many months.

In 2020, they generated about 12 calls per month with the highest month of being 18. We estimated 140 GBP calls for the year prior.

The total number of GBP phone calls jumped to 311 phone calls in year 1 and to 647 in year 2, a 360% increase in a 2 year period. Their highest month of calls was August of 2022, generating over 100 phone calls. Now 4 months into year 3, our graph shows a 53% gain in calls from April of 2022 to 2023.

Their Google Business Profile also generated 632 people clicking to their website in Year 1 and 1089 in Year 2, a 72% jump Year over Year (we do not know how many clicks it generated prior to us working with them).

Elite Pest Google My Business Data Tracking
Elite Pest Call Volumes 2022-2023

Website Form Submissions

After redesigning the website, we were able to begin tracking web forms submitted on the client website. In doing so, we came upon 2 issues.

1. Form Spam

The client mentioned to us they were getting fake names, phone numbers, or other messages indicating spam on their forms. While we could not determine all of the spam messages, we excluded the obvious ones which were:

  • pitching their services in the message box
  • using a spam .ru or .xyz email accounts
  • used an apparent fake/foreign phone number
  • duplicate messages

Once we were aware of the problem, we implemented a plugin that blocked spam submissions.

 

2. Plugin Conflicts with form tracking

After the form spam plugin was implemented, we didn’t realize the plugin was conflicting with another tool that was tracking form submissions. While the client received all the form submissions in their email, they were not stored on the website’s database. We submitted this information to the developers of both plugins and this was rectified but we do not have data 5-month period between January thru May 2022,

Form Submissions Results

For the 17 months between March of 2021 when the new website was launched to December of 2022, (excluding the 5-month plugin conflict), the website registered 186 legitimate lead form submissions or roughly 11 leads/month. Due to our form tracking, we were able to identify users submitted forms on 18 different pages with 74% of submissions coming from pages other than the contact us page!

NOTE: The client began running Google Ads on their own starting January 1, 2023. We did not include lead forms for 2023 their tracking was not set up to parse Google Ad form submissions compared to organic. We’ve since taken over their ads and have implemented further tracking.

Elite Pest and Termite Control - Total Lead Forms 2021 2022

3. Rank Tracking

Ahrefs Ranking Tracking as of 5-19-23:

All rank tracking is using Columbus-based GPS coordinates. Typically we use the client’s location but at the time of the campaign start, Pataskala was not an option. This has a very large effect on “near me” based keywords in particular.

When trying to rank in a major city, it’s nearly impossible to rank there without a “city” address. With a limited budget, the client decided to focus their budget on less competitive suburbs instead of the more competitive Columbus keywords. We have not been actively trying to gain rankings in Columbus for over 12 months.

 

#1 for Commercial pest control in Columbus, a 13,000 searches/month keyword, outranking national franchises like Terminx and Orkin.

seo client commercial pest control number 1 13000 volume keyword

Location-based keywords for various cities

If someone in Westerville searches “pest control” versus “pest control Westerville,” these are not the same keywords but the results may be similar.

Additionally, we only track keywords that are shown to have search volume in our tool Ahrefs while there are many other keywords the client is found for in our Google search console.

 

Westerville

Elite Pest and Termite Control - Westerville Keyword Rankings

Dublin

Elite Pest and Termite Control - Dublin Keyword Rankings

Newark

Elite Pest and Termite Control - Newark Keyword Rankings

Pickerington

Elite Pest and Termite Control - Pickerington Keyword Rankings

Reynoldsburg

Elite Pest and Termite Control - Reynoldsburg Keyword Rankings

New Albany

Elite Pest and Termite Control - New Albany Keyword Rankings

Johnstown

Elite Pest and Termite Control - Johnstown Keyword Rankings

 

 

 

5. Tasks Completed

On-page Optimization

  • Redesigned Website in WordPress
  • Built 12 pest pages and 11 location pages
  • Updated page titles for better optimization
  • Added meta titles and descriptions for optimization and conversion
  • Cleaned up and optimized the use of H-tag Headings
  • Added local business schema
  • Add minor interlinking between relevant pages

Off-page Optimization

  • Google Business Profile optimization
  • Built and Changed addresses on 100 business directories
  • Built social profiles – FB, Twitter, etc…
  • Secured a total of 57 high-quality links

6. Sample Backlink Metrics of Acquired Links

We’ve built 57 high-quality links (excluding directories/socials) for this client that averaged a 45 Domain Rating (DR) over the course of our campaign.

Here is just a sample of those with metric proof from Ahrefs:

 

Elite Pest and Termite Control - Sample Links 1

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SKIP TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. GET A FREE SEO ANALYSIS

If you would like to learn more about how we can increase your service area business’ revenue through search engine optimization, skip our standard application process and fill out this form to see how your business is performing

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