01
Client and project overview
A 14-truck heating and cooling company serving Fresno and Clovis. Good reviews, a decent website and a Google Business Profile set up years ago.
The first page for their money searches belonged to national directories and two bigger competitors. Every call those directories sent cost them a fee.
- Sector
- Home services (HVAC)
- Market
- Fresno & Clovis, CA
- Duration
- 5 months
- Services
- Local link building, local digital PR
- Plan
- Starter
- Pages targeted
- 3 service pages + Google Business Profile
At a glance
02
The challenge
Local rankings come from relevance, distance and prominence. They couldn’t change the first two. Prominence, how much the local web talks about you, was where they were losing.
- Positions 14–22 for “emergency AC repair Fresno” and similar searches.
- Outside the map pack for 9 of 10 tracked terms.
- 23 referring domains, none of them from local sites.
- Name, address and phone listed three different ways across the web.
Starting point
- Domain Rating
- 12
- Referring domains
- 23
- Map pack (top 3) terms
- 1 of 10
- Calls from search / month
- 62
- Organic clicks / month
- 640
03
Objectives, and how they turned out
| Objective | Target | Result | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Get into the map pack | Top 3 for 5 of 10 terms | 7 of 10 | Met |
| Rank the emergency pages | Page one for emergency terms | Positions 2–6 | Met |
| More calls from search | +50% in 5 months | +164% | Met |
| Build local trust signals | 5 local placements | 9 local and trade placements | Met |
04
Strategy and approach
Win the local web first, then add just enough trade authority.
Fix the basics first
Name, address and phone made consistent across 34 listings before any links went live.
Local before big
Links from Fresno news, business and community sites tell Google this company belongs in local results.
A little trade relevance
A few placements on home-services publications for topical authority on the service pages.
05
Work performed
Month 1
Local audit
- Citation cleanup across 34 listings
- Map pack analysis of the top three competitors
- 26 local and trade sites found, 17 passed vetting
Months 2–3
Local placements
- 2 local news features from a heat-wave safety story
- 3 guest posts on home-services publications
- 2 Fresno business and community links
Months 4–5
Strengthen
- 2 niche edits on ranking home-improvement articles
- Service-page and internal-link updates with their team
06
Link-building activity
9
placements
26
sites reviewed
9
rejected at vetting
9 / 9 links
indexed
Placements by type
9 total
- Local news features2
- Home-services guest posts3
- Local business & community2
- Niche edits2
Authority of the sites
Ahrefs Domain Rating
Anchor text mix
Links only, mentions excluded
- Branded45%
- Service + location22%
- Naked URL22%
- Generic11%
Placements
| Site | DR | Type | Points to | Indexed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| fresno•••news.com | 58 | Local feature | /emergency-ac-repair | 5 days |
| home•••digest.com | 64 | Guest post | /ac-repair | 8 days |
| hvac•••insider.com | 49 | Niche edit | /furnace-repair | 4 days |
| valley•••business.com | 41 | Business profile | Homepage | 11 days |
| clovis•••community.org | 33 | Community link | Homepage | 14 days |
Domains are masked on the public version. Clients see every URL in their report.
Sites we turned down (9 of 26). Three examples:
Published anything for $50 and had almost no local readers.
80% of its traffic came from outside the US. None of it was local.
200 near-identical city pages built to sell listings.
07
Results and supporting data
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Map pack (top 3) terms | 1 of 10 | 7 of 10 | +6 |
| Calls from search / month | 62 | 164 | +164% |
| Organic clicks / month | 640 | 1,480 | +131% |
| Domain Rating | 12 | 31 | +19 |
| Referring domains | 23 | 41 | +78% |
Terms in the map pack (of 10)
Monthly
Ranking keywords by position
Tracked set
- Top 3
- Positions 4–10
- Positions 11–20
Target keywords
| Keyword | Monthly searches | Before | After | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| emergency ac repair fresno | 390 | #17 | #2 | 15 |
| ac repair fresno | 880 | #14 | #3 | 11 |
| furnace repair fresno | 320 | #22 | #5 | 17 |
| hvac company clovis | 170 | #19 | #1 | 18 |
| heating and air fresno | 260 | #12 | #4 | 8 |
08
Key outcomes and takeaways
+164%
calls from search
7 of 10
money terms in the map pack
Month 3
when it paid for itself
What we learned
- 01Local beats bigA DR 33 community site did more for map rankings than a big national blog would have.
- 02Fix listings before linksConsistent name, address and phone made every later link count for more.
- 03A seasonal story travelsThe heat-wave safety piece was picked up by two more local outlets without any extra pitching.
“We used to pay a directory for every lead. Now people find us first.”
What’s next: Next: the same playbook for the Clovis and Madera service areas, plus a winter furnace-safety story.