We’ve more than tripled traffic for this local vet business in 6 months using SEO. Here is exactly how we did it.
It isn’t as complicated as you might think. We do local SEO for businesses all the time, and prefer to keep things simple.
1. Basic Site Improvements
The site is on a hosted CMS, so we were limited by what we could do.
But site speed was slow, so we cleaned up image sizes, compression, improved lazy load, and a few other minor things.
Quick work, nothing hard, but real gains.
2. Redo Service Pages
Many of the service pages were collections of various services, all on one page.
We checked SERPs and saw that Google wanted these broken off as individual pages.
So we split them up, added content, and sent relevant internal links to them. Better site architecture along with pages that matched search intent.
3. Backlinks
We built backlinks to the home page, service pages, and a few blog posts. Most to the home page.
We focused on local business links where possible.
Not many – only a few per month.
4. New Content
We wrote several blog posts/month, deep-diving different topics that are commonly asked by their customers.
We took the list of questions, compared up against keyword data, and focused on the low-hanging fruit.
Internally linked to the proper service page(s).
5. Local Citations
After ensuring we were on the same page about NAP, we submitted to local directories and service directories.
Results were flat for the first few months.
Remember that SEO is often a long play! Short term gains can happen, but usually the big wins take time.
Look at that keyword growth!
(NOTE: this screenshot was taken BEFORE Ahrefs keyword update, just in case you’re wondering. Keywords have continued to go up since, but it’s hard to tell after the Ahrefs update.)
That’s it! Sometimes keeping things simple (especially with local businesses) is the best approach.
SEO can be complicated, but sometimes it doesn’t need to be.
