Local SEO Case Study
How Local SEO Brings Business to Local Barbershop
How W3 Affinity increased rankings for a barbershop in Richmond, Virginia to #1 in a competitive market for over 500 keywords.
Local SEO Case Study
“W3 Affinity has been doing my digital marketing for over 6 years now. We’re very excited to continue growing through our recent move to Shopify. We have been growing ever since bringing W3 Affinity onboard to handle it all. We get excellent service and results year after year.”
Owner of Parkside Barber Shop, Robert J.
How We Got Started
W3 Affinity started digital marketing efforts for Parkside Barbershop in June of 2010 through a customer of Parkside Barbershop that insisted that they get online and have a website.
Parkside was a 3 chair barbershop over in the west side of Richmond, Virginia and didn’t have a website.
Their small size and lack of digital presence was something that was noted by customers and a customer of Parkside had referred W3 Affinity to do the original web design on the project.
Their Problem
After the development of the website in 2012, we noted to the client that they’d need to really get into local SEO in order to see growth in their business.
The challenge was a long list of local barbershops that were owned by younger entrepreneurs that understood that they needed to have a web presence and that Parkside was late to the scene. Along with this, W3 Affinity was constrained by a very shoestring budget to make it all happen with.
The results of a great company like Parkside Barbershop continually bringing back their customers and gaining review after review while W3 Affinity managed the Shopify Website & SEO, resulted in growth into a new storefront, 12 chairs that barbers interchange as they bust out of the seams of their new building, and additional men’s grooming services to increase the value proposition that Parkside offers the Richmond area.
“Watching the transformation of Parkside Barbershop through our collaborative digital marketing efforts is the REASON we got into Digital Marketing”
CEO of W3 Affinity, John Keller
Our Solution
We had challenges to overcome with Parkside that aren’t new to most small businesses.
- The budgets were small
- The need for this to succeed was beyond apparent
- The knowledge of SEO & Digital Marketing from the client was very limited
We overcame these challenges with the strategy below to bring Parkside Barbershop results that can be directly linked to the growth of their business over the years we’ve been working together.
First was Web Development
We built out a website using Shopify that would allow Parkside Barbershop to display their quality of service, products, and salon through vivid imagery & content.
We made sure to incorporate the team of barbers as they grew and emphasis on a singular CTA of getting an appointment booked online.
Our mobile responsive website allowed users on phones to quickly book appointments through the website which made Parkside’s customers very happy as they were constantly on the go.
On-Site Optimization as a Foundation
On-site SEO is the foundational work that we do for any client and Parkside is no different. We took the time to optimize images, code, content, usability, and security.
Schema Markup was a major player in ranking locally, we made sure that the location data matched up and marked it up using JSON & Google Tag Manager to increase the visibility in Google Maps.
We quickly saw the result from this work but it wasn’t enough to get the job done, we had to move off-site to really start gaining visibility in a competitive market like Barbers.
Off-Site Optimization as the Closer
With all of the on-site work done and being managed month over month, year over year, we took to off-site as a way to close the gap between our rankings and the competitors.
Through partnerships, tools, and old-fashioned elbow grease, we were able to achieve great results based on the below tactics:
- Local Directory Link Building
- We matched up all of the location data to what we had used for Schema Markup on the website for local directories like the Chamber website, news entities, and aggregate websites like Yelp, Foursquare, and Yellow Pages.
- We used MOZ Local to manage and report on the success of the local campaign
- Press, Press, and more Press
- Parkside was a game changer of a barbershop. We used the press to gain links, authority, and notoriety.
- Google My Business
- Properly configured, optimized, and managed, this is the center of all our efforts.
The combination of these efforts resulted in what can only be said as “The best case scenario” for Parkside Barbershop.
The Results
Over 500+ Keywords ranking #1 in Google
After a long time, a lot of work, and perseverance from the client and ourselves at W3 Affinity, we were able to conquer the search engine rankings. It was a slow and steady pace that Parkside grew at and it wasn’t in year 1 or even 5 that we had helped them rank #1 for all of these keywords. The list has grown over the past 8+ years to achieve such a goal of 500+ keywords hitting the #1 spot in Google.
We targeted long tail, branded, and niche keywords in first and expanded from there to generic trophy keywords like “Barbershop near me” which currently produces a large sum of Parkside’s business.
We have more work to do, there are new ways users search every day and we look forward to building this up more as the client expands his business to more locations.
When You’re at the Top of Google, What do you do next?
Conversion rate optimization of course! We’ve owned the search engine for years with Parkside, so while we’re battling all the competition who wants that spot, we’re constantly making improvements to how we can convert more traffic on the website.
In June of 2018, we grew the website’s conversions by 431% for their booking appointments goal. This is through effective design of the site and deliberate A/B testing of the way the site looks and speaks to the user.
