We work with a lot of pest control companies here at Great Leap Studios. Some are brand new, looking to us to create their website and design their content strategy. Others are established, hoping to leverage the work that has been completed in the past to try to target new areas and keywords.
The other day, we were contacted by a newer company that provides Rocklin pest control. The company, ADAPT Pest, works not too far from us in the Greater Sacramento area. They had a one page website that was made in WIX, that was not heavily keyworded, with no backlinks other than Yelp, Nextdoor, and a few basic free directories.
We decided to do a 95% content-only plan for marketing. That means essentially no backlinks other than a few here and there that are easily accessible, no press releases, and nothing else to give it a boost. The existing links, which were few, would still be there. But the rest of it would be based solely on pest control content.
The Plan – Roseville, Rocklin, and Beyond
The plan was to target two locations – Rocklin, where they’re based, and Roseville, which is a bigger city nearby. Both are extremely competitive, because in nearby Sacramento, the big organizations have invested years into their marketing campaigns.
Competing with these business is going to be an ongoing battle. We’re not going to beat 100-employee pest control companies overnight. But one of the few advantages we have is that very, very few pest control companies ever invest must into content, or hire out to established content writers and marketers. So in a way, this becomes its own case study – how long will it take content alone to beat big businesses in a competitive area?
One Month In – Where We Are Now
Today is the one month anniversary of starting this content strategy. When we started, ADAPT Pest was nowhere closer than page 10 of Google for any key term. So far, the results are promising:
- Near the top of page 2 in Google for “Rocklin Pest Control”
- Near the top of page 4 for “Roseville Pest Control”
- Page 1 for obscure long tails, like “Get Rid of Spiders in Rocklin.”
Content is always slow. Before any call with a new customer, I always tell them they need to give it 2 to 4 months to see any results, because without backlinks, search engines need to see consistent, ongoing content in order for its algorithm to consider it a trustworthy site.
So to see it ranking on page 1 for some obscure keywords and almost on page one for Rocklin in such a short time is nothing short of fantastic. We need to get it page 1 for its main terms before June, when pest season really picks up. By already being close to page 1 for Rocklin, it should be a guarantee that we’ll be on page 1 by April/May.
Roseville, on the other hand, is a question. It’s always harder to rank well for a location outside of your home base, and to compete with these massive companies might require breaking a rule or two and uploading a press release of some kind to get some quick backlinks from reputable sites. This is a client, not an experiment, so we reserve the right to break our “content only” rule if it makes sense to help them succeed.
Nevertheless, after only one month, the results are even better than expected. Will continue to update in April, but we’re already excited to see how fast search engines seem to be accepting the content.
