If you own a home -- or ever plan to -- you probably know how important curb appeal is. After all, just about everyone wants a lush lawn, healthy trees, and an attractive backyard. And in order to obtain those features, Americans are willing to spend quite a bit. Statistics show that the U.S. landscaping services industry generated $99 billion in 2019, with the area of landscape maintenance showing substantial revenue growth since 2017.
With so much opportunity, it’s no wonder that many companies that offer landscaping products and services (which can include anything from lawn care and tree pruning to gardening equipment, outdoor sheds and kitchens, and commercial landscaping materials) are now looking to grow their businesses with digital marketing.
Not every landscaping, gardening, or outdoor-adjacent business is able to devote a large sum to their digital marketing needs. It’s also not always easy to help these business owners understand why they need SEO in the first place. But in today’s search engine optimization case study, we’ll reveal how we’ve helped a range of businesses operating in this sector. With this knowledge in mind, you can feel confident in the knowledge that our partnership can allow both your clients and your own business to thrive.
Client Background
In this SEO case study, we’ll be discussing a few different end clients from the landscaping sector. Our main subject is a tree service company based in Virginia. The company mainly offers tree stump removal and grinding services, as well as tree pruning and shaping.
This campaign, which started back at the end of December 2019, was the reseller’s first with us. The reseller has an extensive knowledge of web development and a thorough understanding of what it means to be an active participant in the success of their campaigns. The reseller’s main goal for this client was to improve their keyword rankings for the individual services they offer.
Our Approach
This reseller opted for our SEO Basic News plan combined with our Local Listings deliverable. Included in many of our plans is the onsite report -- a detailed website audit that plays an important role in subsequent keyword rankings. Our analysis of the client’s website allowed us to determine how to optimize existing content (including metadata) and how to clean up certain issues within the backend of the website (including site errors, duplicate content, loading speed, and more). Having this information from the start of the campaign is an essential first step, allowing our analysts to remove barriers to SEO success right away.
After running and implementing the onsite report, it’s time to focus on the recurring deliverables. Given the client’s goals for this campaign, our team decided that mapping keywords to the client’s services pages and focusing more on local SEO would be an optimal strategy. As part of this SEO plan, the client would receive two onsite blog posts, two offsite articles, and one offsite featured news story each month. These deliverables work together to keep website content fresh, improve the client’s backlink profile, and ensure that search engines can understand the website’s intent and value.
The Results
Although this campaign is quite new, its results show a lot of promise. We’ve seen major growth with both organic traffic and keyword movement thus far. From January 2020 to March 2020, organic visits to the client’s site have increased from 1,394 to a projected 2,461. Keep in mind that landscaping businesses tend to be seasonal in nature, which means that the client’s site traffic was already in a good place around the first of the year.
Even more impressive is the keyword movement for this campaign. Although the client was already ranking well on a handful of keywords we selected to target, they’re now in position one for three of those keywords. In total, four of their keywords now appear on page one of SERPs.
Currently, the client’s website has a domain rating of 32 and has 786 backlinks. While there are only 127 referring domains, that number will continue to increase as the campaign goes on (thanks to our two types off offsite deliverables that include client links).
Our team feels that while there’s certainly a lot more room for growth and other keywords to target, the deliverables within this plan are all working together as intended. In addition, the reseller’s commitment to our ongoing partnership and their own involvement in the process has paid off. Although we include content posting as part of our plans, many resellers opt out of this service and choose to approve and post the content themselves. In this case, the reseller posts the content we create and understands the importance of open communication and a consistent posting schedule. This has been to the benefit of the client, to the reseller’s business, and to our own operations.
Helping Other Clients in the Landscape Sector
This tree service client is not the only one we’ve helped in the arena of outdoor services and products. Here, we’ll take just a glimpse at a few of our other clients in this industry and how we’ve achieved desirable results for their SEO campaigns.
Plano, TX Landscaping Service
As you can see from the charts above, it’s rare for web traffic to have only an upward trajectory. This is particularly true with more seasonal businesses, like landscaping and gardening companies. However, the keyword movement we see here is extremely encouraging. The client was ranked in position one on the keyword “Plano landscaping” and their website appeared on page one of SERPs for two other keywords. Notably, one of these keywords was missing in its entirety prior to the start of the campaign.
Dallas-Fort Worth Landscapers
Again, there’s some organic traffic fluctuation here -- particularly during the colder months. But this landscaping company and nursery (which has shifted its SEO focus to outdoor living spaces) has shown impressive improvement on its keyword rankings during the last year.
Tampa Landscaping Materials Supplier
This Florida-based landscaping materials supplier started off with a fair amount of traffic, but our efforts resulted in that traffic more than doubling over a little more than a year. Given its location, this business doesn’t see as much of a seasonal drop -- which allows us to keep building on their strategy year-round. One notable achievement is the fact that there were six keywords in their list that had been missing at the start of the campaign. Now, the client is in position one for two of those keywords and appears on page one of SERPs for eight of their target keywords.
While landscaping and outdoor-adjacent businesses come with certain challenges, our experience tells us that focusing on local SEO can make a big difference. Of course, we wouldn’t necessarily recommend the same type of SEO plan for each of these businesses outlined above. The service plan you choose will largely depend on the client’s goals and budget, along with other factors.
We hope that this SEO case study has answered some questions, increased your confidence level, and helped you to feel comfortable taking the next step in choosing a digital marketing partner. To learn more about our processes and how we can start growing together, please contact our team today.
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