Giving The Locals What They Want In SEO
Educational Content and Sophisticated Local SEO Grows YoY Traffic Over 50%
Client Overview
Brooklyn SolarWorks (BSW) is a solar panel installation company, based in New York, with a dedication to making solar more effective and affordable for Brooklyn’s urban homeowners. They’re goal is to close the gap between traditional solar outfitting meant only for suburban buildings and the flat roof homes that the New York boroughs are famous for.
Services
117%
Increase in Keywords Ranking in Top 3 Positions
15%
Increase in Leads QoQ
51%
Increase in Organic Traffic YoY (Q1+Q2
“We’ve worked with numerous agencies, and I can say without hesitation that Directive has been lightyears ahead of the rest. They are extremely competent and detailed in their approach. We’ve been referring them to others whenever the opportunity has come up”
- Steve Nelson, VP of Sales & Marketing @Brooklyn SolarWorks
The Challenge
As solar energy becomes more recognized and affordable, the industry of solar installation is becoming more saturated. Even with their niche focus on the New York boroughs, Brooklyn SolarWorks wanted to make sure they were standing out from the competition.
So they turned to Directive, who was able to focus their SEO strategy towards a more customer-led mindset in order to maximize their local visibility and lead generation.
Directive wanted to not only grow organic visibility, but also maximize customer generation along with it. The client needed to establish a stronger presence and a sense of authority. Directive wanted to position BSW as an expert on the SERPs of any New York related search in order to increase their rankings and organic traffic.
The Strategy
Directive’s solution was to build out multiple customer-focused service pages. This strategy focused on creating content for the customer and Google to ensure everything built was fully optimized to rank for local search queries.
Directive also pivoted BSW’s content strategy to focus more on educational queries and content that would rank specifically for local New York searches. Finally, for content optimization, Directive implemented an aggressive local link building strategy to help improve visibility where it mattered most.
New Core Service Page Build Outs
After an initial audit of BSW’s site, it became evident that even though they had several subpages targeting different intents, many of them lacked an actual keyword focus. There was some segmentation, but it lacked strategy. Directive came in and identified new opportunities for high volume, keyword driven pages that also had a high conversion intent.
Directive built out new core service pages for “pricing,” a dedicated “New York City” local page, and – what drove the most results – a resource page for “Residential Solar” that educated visitors on solar incentives and other benefits of solar implementation.
Educational Content For “New York” Based Queries
While BSW had a solid amount of subpage and content on their site prior to partnering with Directive, it still lacked a fundamental SEO and content strategy. In order to increase rankings and take over more of the SERPs, Directive prioritized their new strategy on educational content that was longer, properly optimized, and – most importantly – published regularly.
This included topical posts that were relevant to the search intent of BSW’s general audience. Posts like “Con Ed’s Energy Price Spikes” and “How to Take Advantage Solar Incentives” helped generate the exact type of traffic BSW was looking for.
Content Optimization & Local Link Building
True success in Google’s eyes comes from giving the readers, your customers, what they want as well as properly optimizing that content so Google can help them find it easier. Knowing this, Directive made sure to implement a retroactive optimization strategy to properly prepare 100% of BSW’s keywords to rank where they wanted them to.
The Results
The majority of this new traffic was generated by Directive’s newly created educational content. Especially for local “New York” related searches, targeting the actual query behind the keyword and looking a level deeper into the intent of the search proved more than worth the effort.
In Q1 of 2022, marked by struggle across most industries, Directive grew Brooklyn SolarWorks’ Organic Traffic 37%. Following this landmark quarter was even more growth, adding another 14.1% to their YoY traffic. Knowing your customer pays off when you know how to make it trackable and actionable.
