Case Study: Boosting Search Traffic by 80% for a Local Construction Company

The Biggest Challenges We Had to Overcome

The website had several technical SEO issues that were hindering its performance. These included:

Broken service pages that were returning a “HTTP 200 OK” status, but were rendering incorrectly and displaying blank pages.
Mixed content issues where HTTPS protocol URLs were also loading unsecured HTTP resources, breaking SSL which is a ranking factor.
Pages that were under-optimized with a lack of keyword density and thin content.
Missed out on several important keywords that they could have been ranking for.

THE SOLUTION

Create A Plan Of Attack

Our strategy was straightforward. We first conducted an SEO audit to identify all the problems. Then, we focused on fixing the technical issues and optimizing the content.

Steps of Attack:

Step #1 – Fixed Broken Service Pages

We discovered that several service pages were returning a “200” HTTP status code, but were loading as blank “broken” pages. We removed these pages from the index by adding a “noindex, nofollow” meta robots tag in the HTML code of each page. We also added a custom 404 page to guide users to other relevant pages.

Step #2 – Fixed Mixed Content Issues

The site was running on HTTPS, but there were mixed content warnings where they were loading HTTP elements. We updated the URLs of the unsecured resources so that they now load over a secure HTTPS connection.

Step #3 – Optimised Existing Content

We noticed that many of the site’s core landing pages weren’t as well optimized as they should be for the keywords they were targeting. We improved the existing content by optimizing the core landing pages for further keywords and addressing the thin content issues by analyzing the user intent of each page.

Step #4 – Target New Keywords With New Content

We used a content gap analysis tool to identify keywords that competitors were ranking for, but our client wasn’t. We then created new content targeting these keywords, which allowed us to target new, long-tail commercially focused keywords.

Step #5 – Implemented Local SEO Strategies

Recognizing the importance of local search for a construction company, we implemented local SEO strategies to increase the visibility of our client in local search results. This included optimizing the company's Google My Business listing, ensuring the company's name, address, and phone number (NAP) were consistent across all online platforms, and encouraging customers to leave reviews.

Step #6 – Improved Site Speed and Mobile Optimization

Site speed is a crucial factor in SEO, and mobile optimization is more important than ever with the majority of searches now conducted on mobile devices. We found that the client's website was slow to load and not fully optimized for mobile viewing. We worked on improving the site speed by optimizing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript, and implementing lazy loading.

Conversions increased

In 2 months

The Results Are In: Search Traffic Growth of Leads, Clicks, and Impressions

After implementing these fixes, the site’s organic search traffic grew by impressions, clicks, and leads:

The number of clicks increased by 110% Per Month
The number of impressions increased from 4,000 to 10,214 Per Month

In addition, the client is now ranking for 2,500 keywords in the top 10 positions compared to 900 keywords at the start of the campaign. This represents an increase of 177%.