This is a real case study. The client — a plumbing company in a major US metro — asked us not to name them publicly. The numbers are real. The timeline is real. The strategy is exactly what we executed.
When they came to us: ranking page 5 for their primary keyword, 180 organic visitors per month, 12 website leads per month, spending $3,200 per month on Google Ads with poor ROAS, 23 Google reviews at 4.1 stars.
The Audit: What We Found
Our technical SEO audit identified: LCP of 8.3 seconds (critical failure); no schema markup anywhere; incomplete Google Business Profile missing service areas and emergency hours; only 4 local citations with inconsistent NAP data; no location-specific service pages; and just 12 total backlinks from low-authority directories.
Competitor analysis: the number 1 ranking competitor had 340 local citations, 112 Google reviews at 4.7 stars, and 47 backlinks from local and industry-specific sources.
Month 1: Technical Foundation
We fixed all image compression issues — LCP dropped from 8.3s to 1.9s. We implemented LocalBusiness and Service schema, fixed canonical tag errors creating duplicate content across 14 pages, and resolved 23 broken internal links. These technical SEO changes produced immediate ranking movement — secondary keywords moved from outside the top 50 to page 2 within two weeks.
Month 1-2: Google Business Profile and Citations
Our local SEO team corrected the primary GBP category, uploaded 80 professional photos over 6 weeks, added emergency service hours, seeded Q&A with 12 common customer questions, and set up a weekly GBP posts schedule. We also built 180 local citations across relevant directories with perfectly consistent NAP data.
Month 2-4: Content, Links, and Reviews
We created 8 location-specific service pages targeting distinct neighbourhoods. We ran a targeted link building campaign focused on local sources and implemented a systematic review generation process that earned 41 new Google reviews in 60 days, improving the star rating from 4.1 to 4.7.
The Results at Month 4
- Primary keyword: page 5 — page 1, position 1
- Map Pack: not appearing — position 2
- Monthly organic visitors: 180 — 1,240
- Monthly leads: 12 — 94
- Google Ads ROAS: 1.4x — 4.2x
- Cost-per-lead: $267 — $31
This result is typical of what happens when a sound local SEO strategy is executed properly. Start with a free SEO audit and see exactly what your roadmap would look like.
SEO Strategist at 3iseo. Helping businesses see beyond the algorithm since 2010.