How we climbed from #10 to #1 for a highly competitive pest control keyword

How We Did It?

Background

If you fail, try again, and again. That is the morale of this story. We made updates, waited 3-4 months, made more updates. Refocussed the strategy, then after 1.5 years and we claimed #1 spot for the client.

Challenge

The client was hovering around position #8-10 for so long. Couldn’t break into the top 5.

What we noticed was a lot of outdated tactics.

“Model what is working… Re-engineer who is doing well” – the strategy of mimicking what you think the top performing websites are doing good and applying it to your site. Often, this strategy works. Other times, it doesn’t.

It didn’t work for us.

We scratched the old tactics and went creative instead, asking some hard questions.. “What is really going to make the difference, no more tricks”

And the results speak for themselves

The results

Key Actions Taken

Multiple Reiterations

As I said, this one took 2 years. Sounds crazy, but its not like we were working on it every day. Changes were made every 3/4 months when we didn’t see any movement in SERPs. Patience is a virtue, and good things come to those who keep on, reiterating!!

Focussing on Conversions

If we are making all these changes, why would we not make changes to also help the conversion rate. After all, that’s what the client really care about – get leads!

Coming at it from a conversion-focussed lens really is a great exercise that can open your eyes. Questions to consider. What really matters to the customer? What are their fears. And the result – I really think this contributing the to success of the page as well. Google knows when people are converting, so why would then not continue to show up up top when the Engagement rates are high and we are solving the searchers query?

Actions

1. Landing page iterations – 4 big changes made in 3-4 month increments, when we saw no movement.
   1. total restructuring. moving section up and down.
   2. Adding in way more locally relevant content
2. 4 supporting blogs to the location page. “Pests in ” and blogs common FAQs.
   1. Intentional interlinking using the main anchor back to the location page
3. Google Business Posts with links to the Service page from these posts. 5/6 posts over 6 months.
4. Local content on page. Talked about the neighbourhoods that we service.
   1. Local images too. An image of the City in the Hero image. (we love this one, and not enough companies do it)
5. Location based service pages – these were all updated as well with an obvious anchor back the main Location page
6. Reviews- we actually grabbed some reviews from the GBP that were from the local area.
7. Page Title refreshes – tried multiple iterations on the page title. This can for sure impact CTR, and what we know about CTR is that it is a ranking factor.
   1. Improving your Meta Page Titles is a great way to boost your SEO (as long as your page isn’t crap and the users bounce anyway)
8. Fixed up schema with service schema markup
9. Add a Map Embed of the city up top pf page. We tested it in different places, near the bottom vs closer to the top. And we settled on the top being a better placement.
10. Added FAQs to the page and moved it up top.
11. Staff Bios – added in info for the technicians who service the area. (I think this was a really nice idea, and probably helped conversions too)
12. Added in a Local Resources section to the page
13. Link from your homepage – already in place
14. Link from other city pages – already in place
15. Local projects – didn’t try, but is what would be next.