A Case Study in SEO Marketing Results
Putting a Local Home Inspector on the Map
Part I – Our Results After 3-Months of SEO Service
A lot of SEO companies tend to be secretive about their results. Personally, I want to share our success whenever I possibly can. So, I was thrilled when Jim agreed to allow us to brag on our work a bit.
We’ve been working to rank A B Home Inspection in Google for the past three months. Our goal was to get him ranked for keywords like Birmingham Home Inspectors. I knew that would be a challenge early on, so I focused on long-tail keywords.
Finding the right SEO strategy
It might take us three more months to hit the top of Google for competitive terms like “home inspection birmingham al”. After all, we need to build up authority by earning backlinks, and that takes time. So, we sat down and discussed strategy. In this case, we’re not really targeting the homebuyer so much as the Real Estate agent. That’s how this process works after all. 9 times out of 10, buyers just go with whoever the agent or lender recommends for a home inspection. Since we’re dealing with a demographic that knows what they are looking for, we choose to rank for niche keywords that an agent might search for. Another thing to remember is that those Real Estate agents stay on the move! Younger agents are probably moving to voice search, which lends its self to longer phrases than typing or tapping. So, this is what we decided to rank on in the first few months:
When I looked into these phrases, SEMrush didn’t have any data on average monthly searches. It’s not surprising since the volume is probably less than 20 searches a month right now. Over time though, I expect these to pay dividends as people use voice more and more to search on their phones and devices. So, how did we do? Out-flipping-standing! Take a look:
Two keywords in the top-3, 10 in the top-10, and a 8.86% visibility jump in just a couple of weeks
Technical SEO
We achieved these early results through technical SEO. If there’s one thing I learned in the Military, it’s attention to detail. If you do all the on-page work like you’re supposed to, it sets a foundation for success. We get meticulous and detail-oriented when we do technical SEO. No opportunity gets ignored. That’s why we’re able to rank for keywords before we even send the first backlink to a site most of the time. Here’s a ranking chart that lists the top keywords:
Back to the Drawing Board!
While I was thrilled to get these results early on, you’ll notice that we lost rank for two of the most important keywords. It’s not really unexpected, but we need to add more content related to those phrases. In the second month, we focused on finishing up the technical SEO, and began submitting the site to various online directories for some easy-to-reach backlinks. Here’s the next report I ran:
Five New Keywords in the Top-3, Visibility up to 13.77%
On-Page SEO Work Done!
Well, mostly. The client was having trouble finding the hosting information, so we were unable to upload the XML sitemap to the site. Beyond that, we were done with everything on-page and beginning to build backlinks to the site. I met with the client to learn more about his business. Based on that meeting we added some content for 4 point home inspections and a few other keywords. Here’s where that got us:
I sorted the chart above based on rank increase so I could show you the new keywords. Below you’ll find the most recent results sorted by rank. I added previous rankings to the table and went back 90 days to give you a snapshot of the overall progress so far:
So, what’s next for A B Home Inspections?
Citation Building for Local SEO
This week we loaded the XML sitemap to the page. I saw a decent bump in rank based on some content work added last weekend that was finally indexed. But the next big leg-up for this site should index in the first week of March. We just finished up adding or correcting the business listing on 100 local citation sites. This is one of the ways to get your business on the map! Once these changes index, I will be back for part II of this SEO case study. I expect the citations to finally rank us for the higher-competition keywords. What do you think? Are we doing a good job ranking AB Home for local search? Let me know in the comments.
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