Overview
I’ve been working with Jason at Ear View for getting close to a year at the time of writing this.
Over that time, month-on-month SEO growth has snowballed into solid visibility in search engines for a wide range of local and conversion-relevant keywords, which in turn have driven hundreds of customers to the business. Not bad for a company that launched from scratch at the end of 2021!
It’s been amazing to demonstrate to the client (as well as reminding myself) how far a small local-focused SEO budget can go when you allocate time and priorities efficiently.
Whilst such a budget would certainly be a challenge for a larger business with a huge website, I believe many digital professionals/agencies over-quote for smaller or local-focused businesses. I understand this can be in part due to cost ratios for marketing businesses with larger overheads to cover, I think some of it also comes down to the fear of failure/knowledge using limited resources.
Next time someone tells you all SEO budgets need a four figure monthly budget minimum to succeed, send them to this case study! 😉
The Client
Jason Curtis is a professional (and award winning) Audiologist who specializes in ear wax removal using microsuction, local to Suffolk.
In September 2020 the UK government announced ear wax removal was no longer a core service that GPs were required to provide free of charge outside of specific referral cases. This led Jason to go solo, offering affordable ear wax removal in various towns across the county as an external contractor on behalf of other local health services/businesses.
His company, Ear View Ltd, launched in November 2021.
The Challenge
When Jason came to me in April 2022, he faced a number of challenges hampering SEO efforts…
- He had hired an agency to service SEO via a cold email lead which utilised dated and/or ineffective tactics. The work up to that point appeared to lack strategy, efficiency, reasoning or a wider understanding of the site’s web presence contextually.
- The website had a skeleton of pages that explained what the business did in general, but lacked focused targeting through content and user intent/needs.
- Local targeting was lacking in best practice – Ear View services multiple areas in the Suffolk county but only the business operating HQ had been set up via Google Business Partners. Bing Places setup had also been an oversight.
- Tracking was set up at a very basic level, but there were no events or goals in place to assess how much value existing traffic was bringing to Ear view’s bottom line.
- Although Jason had been forward-thinking and knew he needed SEO investment, his budget reflected that of a modest-sized new company which presented a potential challenge.
Because of this, Jason’s return of investment from SEO to date was practically non-existent. He came to yours truly in the hope someone with more knowledge of the local area could turn things around.
The Strategy
Using half a day of allocated time per month on SEO and 1-2 hours for an external content writer’s budget, we gradually rolled out changes based on the estimated positive impact actions could have on search traffic.
As we did not have the budget to go in deep with keyword research at the start of the campaign, we approached each cluster of keywords monthly at a top level to gather data insights.
Step one was to undo much of the low quality work the previous agency had executed – removal or merging of irrelevant and poorly targeted pages, many of which set off low quality alarm bells.
Step two was to ensure all locations Ear View operated on were listed on both Google Business Partners and Bing Places For Business, to ensure search engines knew Jason operated from physical bricks-and-mortar locations.
Step three was to launch local-optimised service pages on the site.
Step four we also ensured the homepage had top level targeted intent, as well as two service pages explaining the ear wax removal procedure and the fact home visitation appointments are available.
Alongside these tasks we also set up tracking to offer better clarity on data (particularly conversions), improved calls to action around the website and improved technical standards mainly via redirects/internal linking.
Since these initial steps we have also continued to improve the website’s SEO efforts by launching blog posts that target longtail/query-based search terms and rolling out schema markup.
The Results
Comparing YoY data from 2023-to-date with the same period in 2022, Ear View’s SEO strategy has resulted in…
- A 225% increase in organic traffic to the Ear View website.
- Monthly unbranded impressions in Google Search Console going from around the 300 mark to over 68,000.
- Monthly unbranded clicks in GSC going from 1 to just short of 400.
Since working together Ear View has had 2,800+ organic visits directly land on the location pages we launched mid-2022, and now gets 100+ monthly potential leads via SEO.
What the Client Says…
“Dan has done an incredible job since I have started working with him. He spent time explaining in detail all of the key areas that needed focus and attention. He has been honest and transparent throughout and is clearly very passionate about his work and helping his clients. The improvements that have been made to drive traffic to the website and, ultimately, lead to new patients for our business has been great and I am excited to continue to build on things further and develop further strategies in the future!”
Jason Curtis, Director & Practitioner @ Ear View
Want to find out how I can help YOU drive more leads on a tight budget too? Get in touch!
Clients he has worked on include everything from international websites with millions of visitors per day to local websites targeting customers on their own doorstep.
Outside of work his interests include supporting ITFC, veganism, making electronic Game Boy music, gardening and hanging out with his 3 cats.
His life long ambition is still to grow up to be a Ghostbuster.
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