Local SEO Case Study
A full-funnel local SEO strategy that turned zero map-pack presence into 3,400+ booked calls per year.
Client overview
A family-owned plumbing business serving the greater Denver metro area — with the skills to compete, but none of the online visibility to show for it.
The challenge
Peak Plumbing had the crews, the reviews, and the referrals — but when a Denver homeowner searched "plumber near me," Peak was nowhere to be found.
Primary pain point
Competitors with weaker service records and fewer actual reviews outranked Peak across every high-intent keyword. New customer acquisition relied almost entirely on word-of-mouth, capping growth.
Citation chaos
The business name, address, and phone number appeared in 14 different variations across directories — a signal Google interprets as untrustworthiness. The GBP listing hadn't been touched since 2019.
No content strategy
The website had a single, thin homepage and a contact form. There were no service pages, no neighborhood landing pages, and no structured data. Google had no local relevance signals to act on.
The strategy
Rather than chasing rankings with quick fixes, we built a compounding local authority engine across the three areas that matter most to Google's local algorithm.
01
Fully rebuilt the Google Business Profile — categories, service menus, photos, and Q&A — while correcting NAP data across 60+ directories.
02
Built 24 optimized service + neighborhood pages targeting "plumber [neighborhood]" and "emergency plumber [zip]" queries throughout the metro.
03
Implemented a post-job review request workflow via SMS and email, tracking every review and responding within 24 hours — to signals and sentiment alike.
Execution
Results
Every metric moved — not all at once, but steadily, month over month, as Google's trust in Peak's local authority grew.
↑ from 3.6 ★ · +187 reviews
GBP rating and volume that now visibly outclass every competitor in the map pack.
↑ 317% monthly visitors
Organic search visitors per month — up from a starting point of 320.
↑ 214% monthly calls
Inbound calls tracked via call-rail attribution — nearly all from organic search and GBP.
Keyword ranking progress — before vs. after
We used to get maybe two or three calls a week from people who found us online. Now my phone doesn't stop. I had to hire two more technicians just to keep up with the demand — and that's a good problem to have.
— Marcus Thielen, Owner, Peak Plumbing Co.
Key takeaways
Inconsistent NAP data actively suppressed Peak's local pack eligibility. Fixing it before doing anything else unlocked the baseline trust Google needed to surface the listing.
Targeting "plumber Aurora" and "plumber Lakewood" as distinct pages — each with unique content and local schema — consistently outperformed the generic city-wide approach competitors used.
The SMS-based review workflow ran every week for 12 months. Recency of reviews matters as much as volume — a steady drip beat a one-time push.
Weekly posts, answered Q&As, and photo uploads kept the listing active. Google treats an engaged GBP as a quality signal — and the data bore that out in map pack appearances.