CASE STUDY
Challenges
Finding a transparent, results-based local SEO partner
JUNK Relief’s rankings in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) were in steady decline, and Joe Weidman, owner of JUNK Relief, needed help to reverse the slide.
“Our rankings were still good, but they weren’t where we wanted them to be—and they were getting worse,” says Joe.
Joe knew he would need to engage an outside vendor for help, but he was hesitant. He had worked with many vendors over the years—and some had even moved things in a positive direction
But inevitably, whenever Joe put marketing in the hands of the “experts,” he was left in the dark about what they were doing and ultimately underwhelmed by the results.
“My philosophy is to find the right people and let them do what they’re supposed to do,” says Joe. “But this approach never really panned out because the results just weren’t there.”
Further, Joe wanted to avoid the problem of non-responsiveness he’d encountered with some of these vendors.
“I’d talk to one person, they’d refer me to someone else, and I’d have to wait a day for them to call me back,” says Joe. “They were slow to answer questions and slow to make fixes.”
When Alex Bunte joined JUNK Relief as Digital Marketing Strategist, he identified local SEO as the biggest lever they could pull to improve the company’s SERP rankings.
So Joe and Alex started looking for a local SEO partner—one that would keep JUNK Relief apprised of what they were doing and impress with their results.
“We didn’t necessarily want to be hands-on, but we did want to be in the loop,” says Joe. “We wanted to know what we were getting for our money.”
Joe and Alex realized they’d need an experienced partner that would go beyond a predetermined, cookie-cutter approach. JUNK Relief is an established company with history, so its local SEO partner would need to deploy strategies specifically designed for JUNK Relief’s specific needs and challenges.
“Our situation was more complex than many,” says Joe, “And we wanted to prioritize areas that would give us more bang for our buck.”
Joe and Alex also wanted to stay clear of short-term, black hat strategies that could backfire.
“In SEO, some people ‘black hat’ their way into ranking and gaining a huge following,” says Alex. “It lasts for six weeks and then Google de-ranks you. We wanted a sustainable, long-term approach.”
“My philosophy is to find the right people and let them do what they’re supposed to do. But this approach never really panned out because the results just weren’t there.”
Solution
RicketyRoo’s local SEO three-month roadmap model
During their search, Joe and Alex met with Blake Denman, President and Founder of RicketyRoo
Blake took the time to understand JUNK Relief’s goals and challenges and came back with a detailed proposal. Joe and Alex hired RicketyRoo shortly thereafter.
Diagnosing and resolving underlying problems
Blake and his team immediately dove into JUNK Relief’s accounts. Within a couple of months, they identified some underlying problems that partly explained JUNK Relief’s falling Google rankings
They discovered that a domain migration completed by a previous vendor wasn’t done properly as well as some spammy links they found through a toxic link audit.
Once RicketyRoo resolved these issues, JUNK Relief almost immediately experienced significant lifts in its Google rankings.
Customized approach for best results and ROI
RicketyRoo continued on to provide Joe and Alex with the customized approach that they needed to improve JUNK Relief’s rankings long term. Rather than just checking off boxes, Blake and his team started by assessing the situation and making specific recommendations.
“Blake was really good about laying out our options and indicating which ones would give us the greatest ROI,” says Alex. “He helped us get the biggest results for our investment, which was really valuable.”
Transparency and responsiveness
With RicketyRoo, Joe and Alex always feel well informed about their SEO.
“We’re always in tune with what’s going on,” says Alex. “We have regular meetings with RicketyRoo, and they always send us reminders. They proactively get in touch with us instead of us having to track them down.”
Joe agrees:
“They preemptively tell us what we need to know before we even know we want to know it.”
To Joe’s relief, RicketyRoo also provides the level of responsiveness that was missing from some vendors in the past. He doesn’t get bounced from department to department to get his questions answered.
Alex’s experience with RicketyRoo backs this up:
“I can get answers anytime I have questions, often within the hour – which is extremely important when you’re doing something technical that could blow up the whole website.”
Focus on long-term success
Joe and Alex are also confident that the SEO strategies RicketyRoo is taking aren’t going to backfire or disappear after a few weeks. They know that Blake and his team are focused on achieving long-term success for their clients.
“RicketyRoo is looking for results but not just for six weeks,” says Alex. “They’re looking ahead six months, six years and longer. That’s where their methodology and technical knowhow really makes a difference.”
“RicketyRoo is looking for results but not just for six weeks. They’re looking ahead six months, six years and longer. That’s where their methodology and technical know how really makes a difference.”
Results
150% growth in revenue YOY
Thanks in part to the local SEO expertise provided by RicketyRoo, JUNK Relief is achieving 150% growth in revenue annually. This is a significant jump from prior levels of revenue growth, which tended to level out around five to 10%.
JUNK Relief is also seeing a 100% increase in traffic thanks to improvements in organic search results.
Bookings have also doubled from last year when compared month over month.
In fact, March 2021 was the best month ever for JUNK Relief.
“RicketyRoo has been a huge return on investment, way more than we ever anticipated,” says Joe. “It’s wonderful to not even think about our SEO because we have the true experts.”
Given these positive results, Joe doesn’t hesitate to recommend RicketyRoo to others.
“It’s great to have a trusted local SEO partner that solves problems even before you know about them,” says Joe.
“It’s great to have a trusted local SEO partner that solves problems even before you know about them,” says Joe.