Success story: 4-month waiting list with Google Business Profile

All marketers love to brag about big numbers.

However, today’s success story focuses on a very small niche market in a small geographic location.

This is where playing your cards right with local SEO can make a big difference.

This is what we have achieved for our client iSocialWeb:

(GSC > Performance>Search Results>Total impressions) – Period 19 July 2021 to 18 July 2022

And the fact is that, before ending all the arrangements of the website, we managed to close for this particular business a 6-month order book and a long waiting list.

Such was the success that it was necessary to leave the campaign on stand-by as they could not cope with the amount of orders received.

This is what they achieved by working with us:

1. ∆ 372 % of organic impressions in this period from 8,310 appearances in Google searches to 30,900 impressions.
2. ∆ 219% total clicks from Google from 276 views to 605
3. 14.3 points improvement in average rank for the domain from 54th to 39th position.
4. ∆ 65% more brand searches
5. ∆ 299% appearances in new queries (458 new searches, 89 of them on the first page and 40 of them in the top 3).

As we have said, these are not “big numbers”, but for sure they made a difference allowing us to build up a full order book until the end of 2022 for this solar installation company.

A very competitive niche and one that could only operate in a small geographical area of 30 km radius.

Starting point: Neither recognition nor brand recognition for the project

Let us give you a brief description of the situation we found before Marta, Arnau and Jorge took over the project.

The truth is that in October 2021 the client’s website was stagnant and its visibility was practically low in the SERPs as we can see in the following image:

(GSC > Rendimiento) – Periodo del 30 de Abril de 2021 a 31 de Octubre de 2021

This was not dramatic given the size of the project.

But it meant almost starting from scratch.

On top of this, there was the added difficulty of several weaknesses:

1. A brand with hardly any value or recognition in the market.
2. Lack of Google My Business listings for the company’s locations.
3. A blog with no work or focus on informative keywords of interest that could drive transactional traffic as well as traffic to the competition.
4. And of course, the nature of the business model: what we call a “buy and go” without repeat purchase. That is to say: a person who requests an installation, once it is completed, does not need to consult the site or additional services on the web again.

Nevertheless, we set to work trying to make the most of the strengths of the project:

1. High profit margin per product sold..
2. Competitive price of equipment and installations.
3. Expanding market with orders booming (renewable energies).

And the opportunity to focus on local SEO from the outset, knowing that the customer’s margin for each installation service was high, that their offer was superior to the competition in price and performance given that they had a small but very professional team.

The Challenge: Ranking profitable local business keywords within a 30 km radius

The big problem we faced was how to gain visibility for a project with highly competitive keywords in a tough niche market with a low search volume, as you can see in this screenshot:

(Ahrefs > Explorador de palabras clave> términos que concuerdan>KD) – Palabras de interés pero con KD elevado

We decided early on to rule out the juicier transactional keywords.

But, thanks to this, we had free hands to start deploying our “total SEO tactics” where we knew we would meet the least resistance: Google’s local pack.

So we decided to partially abandon the blue links at first to focus on improving and creating new local service pages on the website and boosting them with GMB listings.

For this purpose, we selected the towns in the client’s service area, where these Google results will be identified.

This way we avoid stagnating for months and bleeding along the way.

At the same time we meet the client’s objectives of closing a significant number of new orders.

The issue: Is it possible to increase transactions and revenues in such a small project?

By betting on such a small part of the market in the medium term, we ran the risk of stagnating without significant results.

Thus, the team was also keen to pave the way for the future and diversify the risks of the whole project on that side.

So, although it was decided to give priority to the entire local SEO framework, we did not forget other aspects such as:

Work on informational content with the potential to activate the SEO Funnel with the blog.
Implement and improve structured data on the website
Improve domain authority through quality media links
Consider launching a cost calculator tool on the website
Pay attention to EAT to enhance branding

All of this covered our backs but also boosted the strategy from the start.

And it allowed us to tackle the Local Pack at the same time as the blue links, doubling the volume of results in the SERPs where they would appear.

The truth is that the fourth of these 5 points was not necessary.

The launch of the calculator, undoubtedly one of the star points, would have to wait given the need to interrupt the project due to excessive orders.

Let’s see how the core of iSocialweb dealt with all this:

The iSocialweb Plan: Branding, local search oriented landings and generating visibility through GMB profiles.

In order to achieve the client’s main goals and the results we have shown you, the iSocialweb team led by Jorge defined a SEO strategy in 5 steps:

Step 1: Create new GMB-optimised profiles (now Google Business Profile)
Step 2: Link GMB tabs to a sales-optimized location page
Step 3: Work on the informational content of the blog
Step 4: Implement structured data
Step 5: Link building to create brand entity and improve authority

Step 1 and 2 were implemented in parallel, although the web pages were not published until the GMB profiles were approved and optimized for linking.

At the same time, the writing of informational content for the blog was carried out, while the implementation of structured data and link building were left to the end.

Let us now look at each point in more detail:

Step 1: Creation of 14 new optimized Google my business listings

The main objective of this action was to address local intent searches regardless of their volume in order to appear in the SERPs in at least two results: one for the local pack and one for the blue links.

This way allow us occupying more space and notoriety as you can see in this example of local pack:

(Screenshot of Google results for Bars in New York)

Given that the client’s products could only be transported up to a limited distance of 30 km, we identified all the locations where searches for services related to the company were displayed in the Google Local pack so that we could start requesting and creating Google My Business listings.

In total we were talking about 14 potential locations, which meant creating as many listings.

To do this, keyword research was carried out to develop the contents of the landing pages for the selected towns and cities, and the Google My Business listings were generated, to which we then applied a strategy of citations and links explained in step 5.

Thus, it was possible to compete with two organic results instead of one.

But let’s see below how we achieved this:

Step 2: Linking GMB tokens to a sales-optimized location page

In order to increase the client’s presence in the organic results for local keywords, it was necessary to prioritize 4 points:

Create unique local landings for each town
Optimize titles and meta descriptions for local services and products.
Implement a CTA’s in the mobile version (whatsapp button)
and link the cards to the location pages or local landings on the website.

The landings or rather the local pages must meet the local search intent of the users.

But… What does this mean?

The best thing to do is to look at an example:

Ejemplo de Location Page de Cuideo para Barcelona

In this case, the location page is optimized for ranking using a local long tail of the service + location keyword type: “Care for the elderly in Barcelona”.

*Note: if you have several towns, we recommend writing customized texts for the different location pages in order to avoid having similar or duplicate content.

At this point it is important that the “local pages” comply with the local search intention for the town they are created for, as we can see in the example of the image above.

Where the locality (Barcelona) is mentioned several times reinforcing the local search intent.

And it links to a specific area on Google maps:

Example of Google Maps linked to Cuideo’s Location Page for Barcelona

The result is as shown below. A double ranking for the first page:

This means doubling our presence in the SERPs and increasing the volume of clicks for the same search.

Step 3: Working on informational content of the blog to improve transactionality

In this sense, the iSocialweb team (specifically Marta) carried out keyword research aimed at feeding the blog with articles that could help the project to attract potential customers from terms with so much less competition and which are much easier to rank on the first page.

The main objective in this sense was to identify user queries close to the purchase decision phase.

In other words, within the “sales funnel”, we focused on identifying BOFU type informational keywords.

To do this, Marta carried out a triple task:

Conventional keyword research targeting informational terms
Content gap analysis of direct competitors to find out what which terms had transactional value for the project
Search queries extraction by user using the internal search engine of the website

This analysis was completed with a selection of relevant terms from Google suggest and Google trends.

This way, it was possible to present a keyword opportunity report to the property along with a content strategy that was quick, targeted and business oriented.

One of the risks for any project at this point is to allocate too many resources to the production and publication of content pieces that in the end only bring web traffic but few conversions.

Precisely what we wanted to avoid.

So we managed to align objectives and apply simple CTA’s in the new web content to increase the transactional nature of the site.

Step 4: Implementing structured data

Once the content part of the blog was all set, our efforts focused on the correct implementation of structured data markup for each section and type of page on the website.

This was done by simply adding the schema markup to each of the pages according to their content.

To do this, we used the famous Rank Math plugin, which made it much easier for us to mark up local data in the client’s WordPress.

In addition, we implemented the video and image object markup, the service markup for the services and facilities pages and of course the local data markup for each location page.

Step 5: Link Building to improve brand equity and enhance authority

Finally, once all the technical SEO and content issues have been resolved, we start link building efforts with the aim of matching the authority of competitors adding external links and “citations”.

Always focused on improving the reputation of the brand, as well as the authority of the service pages.

In this case, we first analyze the type of links of the competition to replicate those links of value.

Secondly, we focused on improving the authority of the website by capturing links from blogs and media specialized in the industry, which could provide web traffic referring to our brand.

As for the anchors, we worked on the brand and some services with exact phrases, taking great care with citations and entities related to the project.

In this way, we ensured that we sent strong signals to Google that our client’s website was worth being positioned.

In conclusion: exceeding expectations

The combined result of all these optimisations could not have been better for the client’s project:

(GSC > Performance) – Period from 30 April 2021 to 31 October 2021

The image above shows the considerable increase in impressions that resulted in a flow of calls and requests for quotes that led the company to close an order book for the next 4 months and establish a waiting list for new customers.

As we said, the volume of data is not spectacular but for a small business, the important thing is the impact of the marketing investment on the bottom line.

That’s why if you are in a market niche with local search intent and need a boost, we recommend you contact us. We are sure to find a valid SEO strategy to help you rank in the SERPs.

Alvaro Peña de Luna

Head SEO y coCEO en iSocialWeb | + posts

Co-CEO and Head of SEO at iSocialWeb, an agency specializing in SEO, SEM and CRO that manages more than +350M organic visits per year and with a 100% decentralized infrastructure.

In addition to the company Virality Media, a company with its own projects with more than 150 million active monthly visits spread across different sectors and industries.

Systems Engineer by training and SEO by vocation. Tireless learner, fan of AI and dreamer of prompts.

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