$18K to $1.7M in 11 Months: The Local SEO Strategy That Actually Works

A garage door company hired us for $18,000. They made 1.7 million back in 11 months. Here's the exact SEO strategy we used. This is a breakdown from Mr. Sarvesh Shrivastava, a friend of the podcast. He's going to come on in a few days to talk about this and I'm going to share his written breakdown first and then he's going to be back on in a few days. He's already been on twice and he's become a good friend and he's a great guy and I'm excited to share this with you. So, number one for what he did to turn, he said $18,000, I suppose it was monthly or maybe not, made 1.7 million back in 11 months. Number one, Google Business Profile first, website comes later. Most business owners think their website is everything. Wrong. We fixed their Google Business Profile first, uploaded real photos, not those cheesy stock images with smiling actors, collected at least 10 legit reviews as fast as possible, fixed hours, services, categories, description, everything properly. And I love that. I'm a huge fan of real photos, wherever it is. It could be on your Google Business Profile, it could be on your site. Also, if you want to learn more about how to properly optimize your Google Business Profile, Darren Shaw, who has one of the top local SEO software companies, was on this podcast and he gave this crazy breakdown on it. I'm always sharing this with people who are asking me about Google Business Profile and this episode is called Local SEO Masterclass, Darren Shaw on ranking factors, reviews, and Google Business Hacks, episode 881 of this show for people want to go deeper into Google Business Profile. Number two from Mr. Sarvesh Shrivastava. Oh my gosh, he he puts up these awesome breakdowns. Created pages that actually pulled in cash. Here we go. We killed their old generic services pages. Instead, we built super specific and get ready because this is what a lot of people do wrong. They put up very generic pages that don't have real call to actions or that don't emphasize the benefits. Sarvesh ain't doing that. He goes, "Our money pages like affordable garage door repair in Houston, same day service, no hidden fees." People typing these are desperate for a help now. These pages match exactly what people search when they're ready to swipe their card and get someone over ASAP. And you know what is cool? A page like this can rank for lots of keywords, not just affordable garage door repair in Houston same day service no hidden fees. It can rank for lots of keywords around garage door repair Houston. That's great. Number three, wrote local blog content. Yes, it works for even small businesses. Most business owners think blogs are just for big brands. Nope, we wrote stuff like how to protect your garage door before Houston storms destroy it. This type of content builds massive trust, shows you're a real expert, and pushes you up in Google at the same time. Locals loved it and it got shared too. And something else that's cool about content like how to protect your garage door before Houston storms destroy it is lots of local news publishers like to cover stuff like this. And so, you can write it for them and that's a great guest blog post. You can write it for them or you can give a quote and then they'll link to your site. Storm season is coming and who who's one of the people that they're going to quote? It's going to be the garage door expert saying like this is a huge problem. Here's what you need to know. Fixed their internal links. The most ignored SEO move ever. Their site had, this is number four, their site had zero links between pages. Basically a maze with no doors. We connected all service pages, blogs, and the home page in a smart logical way. This called information architecture for people who don't know. It's actually one of my favorite parts of SEO is figuring out the most straightforward way to organize a site but also a way that properly channels SEO link juice. And Sarvesh said, "Google suddenly understood the whole site better and pages that were dead started climbing fast. Also helped real visitors find stuff easily." And yeah, smart information architecture, very good for users. You can channel SEO link juice and so pages that are dead can start actually performing a lot better because now they're getting proper amount of link juice. You don't have, as he says, a maze with no door. You avoid that. Connect all service pages, blogs, and home page in a smart logical way. I just like, personally, I like a services hub page. Could be something as as simple and straightforward as forward/services and that is linked to in your footer and then you list all your services there. And you have your services organized within categories by H2s. I'm a fan of that. Or you could be offering tons of different types of services. You could have one that is same day services. You could have you could have even have one that is scheduled services. And this way you don't have to put same day or scheduled in every slug if you do it like that. But yeah, information architecture, super important, very awesome. All right, this next one, number five, people listening will be like, "What? This is going to contradict what you always say on this show." But it doesn't really when done well. So, number five, Sarvesh focused on real solid backlinks, not cheap directory junk. We didn't touch spammy directory submissions or fake press releases. Instead, we got guest posts on real legit local blogs and industry sites. That's what I was saying earlier. Built relationships with other local businesses for link swaps and mentions. That is key. If you're a local plumber, you get a backlink from the footer of a local electrician as a partner that the local electrician works with. And maybe you share a link to that electrician because you're working with the electrician. And actually, David Kwain and I, we were talking about that on yesterday's episode. David was sharing his favorite link building methods and that is one of them. That is episode 1006, SaaS SEO in 2026, link building topical authority, and the geo hype. Added strategic links on authority websites that actually move rankings. This is going back to Sarvesh. These links separated them from every other local business stuck on page three forever. Personally, I, very much like Sarvesh, am not a fan of spammy directory submissions, but there are plenty of good directories that one can use. I can ask Sarvesh about this cuz again, he will be on. Let me check my calendar. What day is it that he's coming on? He's coming on on Wednesday and that episode will be out on Thursday. So, I'll ask him about He's been on before when he came on the first time, he did share that he likes guest blogs a lot. But as David Kwain and I were talking about, if you have a guest blog on one a site that doesn't have guest blogs about a variety of different topics or doesn't have topical authority. If you have a if you have a guest blog on that, that's not really going to help you. Google knows that this site is like it's just selling guest posts. If you have a guest blog on a site that isn't filled with tons of other guest blogs and your guest blog is indexed and ranking, that is going to be valuable. If people are clicking on the links in it and coming to your site, that's going to be even more valuable. So, that is the nuance there. Number six, we stopped trying to be famous and focused on local only. They wanted to rank for best garage door or top garage doors nationwide. Pointless. We ditched all that noise and doubled down on keywords like garage door repair Austin. These are the searches that actually make the phone ring and bring in paying customers ready to book today, not just look around. And Sarvesh concludes, "They were a small company struggling to get calls, living off word of mouth and random referrals. The owner was almost ready to shut it all down. Now, they're booked out weeks in advance and turning away to low ticket jobs, all thanks to local SEO done right." Thank you to Mr. Sarvesh get a Sarvesh Shrivastava for sharing this and thank you all of you for watching or listening to this episode. If you want to get my SEO playbook, you can get that at compactkeywords.com. I'm a huge fan of finding keywords that have tremendously high purchase intent like Sarvesh was talking about. Finding those keywords, targeting them exactly, having straightforward information architecture so your site is structured for conversion based SEO landing pages that target these keywords. These are conversion based pages that are meant to convert people, that are meant to turn high intense searchers into customers or users or or warm leads calling you up. My methods of getting links, how I do a site audit, and so much more covers local SEO, but covers a lot of other types of SEO as well. And that is at compactkeywords.com. I hope you will check it out. It is getting people amazing reviews. Actually, the fourth review on the landing page by Jacob Dara is about using the method for HVAC keywords. And a lot of people know that HVAC keywords can be pretty competitive. And Jacob was ranking, he said, "ranking number one on Google for 25 keywords and hundreds on Bing with a new site after starting compact keywords only two months ago. Everyone needs to take this. You will see results you can't even comprehend." That is from Jacob Dara. So, this episode 1007 of the Edward show. This is my daily digital marketing podcast. I make this thing every day. I have not missed a single day since starting 1007 days ago. If you watch this one on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple podcasts, thanks again for listening. And I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.