The numbers.
- Website visitors: 1,047 to 1,222 (+17 percent)
- Organic traffic: 167 to 239 (+43 percent)
- GBP searches: 950 to 1,075 (+13 percent)
- GBP profile views: 2,500 to 2,867 (+15 percent)
- GBP website clicks: 160 to 186 (+16 percent)
- GBP phone calls: 40 to 47 (+18 percent)
- Bounce rate: 59.0 to 58.1 (modest improvement)
What we did.
- Audited and cleaned the Google Business Profile (categories, services, attributes, hours, photos)
- Deployed review response automation so every review got a thoughtful reply within 24 hours
- Built city-specific service pages targeting Inland Empire and Greater LA metros
- Cleaned local citations (NAP consistency across 50+ directories)
- Rewrote thin service pages with original content and proper schema
- Improved on-site conversion with new CTA placements and bounce-rate fixes
Why it worked.
Credit repair is a regulated, trust-sensitive category. The GBP is the highest-trust surface most prospects see first. Optimizing it, responding to every review, and keeping the local pack signal clean compounded faster than chasing organic-blue-link rankings would have.
Different industry. Same machine.
Mastodon works with home services and contractors. This client is neither, and that's the point of showing it. A credit-repair operator lives or dies on the same things a roofer or plumber does: showing up when people search, a Google profile that looks trustworthy next to competitors, reviews that get answered, and a phone that gets picked up. We ran the same playbook we run for the trades, and the numbers moved the same way. If the machine transfers across an industry this different, it transfers to your shop.
The work that powered it.
- SEO services (local SEO focus)
- Review response automation
- City-pages content build
What the situation looked like at engagement start.
Online Credit Repair operates in a heavily regulated, trust-sensitive vertical. The category is full of bad actors, so prospects pre-qualify obsessively via reviews, BBB ratings, and Google Business Profile signals before they even visit a website. OCR had a real operation and real outcomes for clients but a thin GBP presence: 60-percent review response rate, four-year-old photos, no posts in 18 months, and inconsistent NAP across local citation directories. The bet: invest in the GBP signal first, the on-site SEO second, because for this category the local pack is the bigger lever than the blue-link organic.
The work in detail.
| Workstream | What we shipped | Why it mattered for this category |
|---|---|---|
| GBP optimization | Categories cleaned, attributes filled, services list complete, hours + holiday hours accurate, 40+ current-year photos uploaded | GBP completeness is a documented ranking signal; thin profiles get ranked below complete ones for the same query. |
| Review response automation | 100 percent response rate within 24 hours, AI-drafted in OCR voice, negatives routed for human approval first | Response rate + speed are documented map-pack ranking signals. For trust-sensitive categories, prospect read-through of responded reviews matters even more than the count. |
| Local citation cleanup | NAP consistency verified across 50+ directories (Yelp, BBB, Yellowpages, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook, industry-specific) | Inconsistent citations dilute trust signals. Cleanup is unglamorous but lifts the floor on which everything else compounds. |
| City service pages | Inland Empire + Greater LA metro pages with per-city legal context, regulator references, neighborhood specifics | Generic city pages do not differentiate. Per-city legal and regulator context did. |
| Conversion lift | CTA placement audit, friction removal, bounce-rate fixes, trust-signal placement above fold | Driving more traffic to a converting site is the multiplier; driving traffic to a leaky site wastes the lift. |
Lessons that transfer to similar engagements.
- For trust-sensitive categories, GBP is the bigger lever than organic blue links. Prospects pre-qualify there.
- Review response rate + speed compound faster than most agencies expect. 60-90 day measurable lift, every time.
- NAP consistency is unglamorous, mandatory. Cleanup is week-1 work that lifts everything downstream.
- City pages without local specifics are noise. Per-city legal + regulator + neighborhood context made the difference.
- Conversion optimization should ship alongside traffic-driving work. Otherwise you pay for traffic that bounces.
FAQ.
- How long was the engagement?
- Concentrated 90-day sprint plus ongoing tuning. Most measurable lift inside that window.
- What was the investment?
- Specific numbers private per client. Reach out for a fit call to discuss what comparable engagements run.
- Are these numbers from real reporting tools?
- Yes. Pulled directly from Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and GBP Insights, period-over-period.
- Can we expect identical results?
- No two engagements identical. Numbers depend on starting state, category competitiveness, and execution. We share these to set realistic expectations, not as guarantees.
- What's the next step if I want similar?
- Book a fit call. We will scope honestly and tell you if the engagement makes sense.
More case studies.
- RJT Construction: doubled traffic in 90 days
- Online Credit Repair: GBP-led visibility lift
- Core KHI Restoration: after-hours lead capture
- 911 Restoration Tampa: franchise local SEO
- Leal Funeral Home: bilingual multi-location rebuild
- Pro-Fresh Houston: premium-positioning pivot
- Upright Forklift: B2B SEO + static homepage layer