Construction Company Grows Online Authority With 400% More Backlinks

Before we can devise a winning strategy, we need to conduct an audit of a client’s website to find out its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for growth.

First, we studied their monthly web traffic. Even though there had been some historic growth, the company’s number of visitors each month never surpassed 250. Along the same period, its number of ranking keywords hovered around 100.

Earning backlinks is an effective and powerful way to boost a website’s traffic. A backlink is when an external website links to your website, which is typically done through content like blogs. The construction company had an average of 20 backlinks at any given time.

Domain authority is also important when it comes to backlinks and that’s why we offer a free tool to check DA.

Finally, we determined that the value of its current traffic was a few hundred dollars each month. The client didn’t have pay-per-click or PPC ads, but if they did that’s how much it would cost to pay for the same amount of traffic.

Our next step in the process is to search for “easy win” keywords. These are keywords ranking in positions No. 4-30 that we can easily add to a client’s website to gain immediate results.

These keywords are typically low to medium difficulty and have a lower cost-per-click or CPC value. They won’t require as much of an effort as those ranking in positions No. 1-3.

We found 150+ “easy win” keywords. Not only do these keywords give us topic ideas for new blogs, but they can be added throughout web pages to boost rankings.

There is a lot that can be learned from studying the competition. After identifying the “easy win” keywords, we also search for unique keywords that our competitors are ranking for. These are keywords we can add to our SEO strategy to stay competitive.

Thirty-seven domains are in direct competition with the construction company. Some of these domains are more similar to the client than others. Many of their services overlap, yet we understand that every business is different.

With one competitor, for example, we found 445 keywords that our client wasn’t ranking for. Our team could comb through this list looking for relevant keywords that would help our SEO strategy.

Once we’ve completed an audit of the client’s site and a competitive gap analysis, we’re ready to design and implement an individualized SEO strategy. We enrolled the client in HOTH X so they had access to our full suite of products and a dedicated campaign manager to lead them through the process.

The first step was building up content on the website. Content is imperative to attracting new online visitors. They also help with developing a company’s authority in that field.

Our team researched trending topics and effective keywords for the client. We also managed internal and external links, and we ensured all content had a compelling call to action. HOTH Blogger and HOTH Link Outreach are two of our top SEO services used under the HOTH X umbrella.

Through our link-building service, HOTH Link Outreach, we reached out to existing blogs in the client’s niche. These backlinks improve a client’s domain authority and signal to Google that the website is a valuable resource. Part of the link-building strategy was also to ensure a diversity of backlink sources and anchor texts.

This client also specifically requested that we optimize their local SEO to rank on Google My Business and appear in the top map pack positions. Google My Business is a great way for local businesses to appear in searches. They enter business data, verify hours of operation, respond to local reviews, and add media.

Take a look at this sample map pack below:

Local ranking is determined by Google according to how well the business matches the search, distance from the user, and local prominence. Learn more about local SEO in this blog we wrote last year!

Overall, this client took advantage of several HOTH products to boost their SEO. Rather than paying for each product separately, they had access to use whatever they needed by enrolling in our fully managed SEO service. Now let’s take a look at whether our strategy worked.

After a few months with this new strategy, we were excited to report results to the client. Their traffic started to spike in the middle of 2020.

The client went from less than 250 monthly visitors to a record 1,500 this summer. One of the ways we achieved this was by ranking for more keywords across blogs and web copy. They also started ranking prominently in the Google map pack.

As you can see below, the client only ranked for approximately 330 keywords in the beginning. We increased their organic keywords to 750, which also included a significant increase in keywords at positions No. 4-10.

Link building was a large part of the SEO strategy as well. The construction company averaged around 20 backlinks when they first started working with us. Our new guest posts and link outreach resulted in the client maintaining close to 100 backlinks. That’s a 400% increase in backlinks!

And one of the most exciting results was a sharp increase in their traffic value. In the beginning, their traffic was valued at a few hundred dollars per month and today it’s worth $2,553.