Stewart J. Guss, Attorney at Law's, Client Volume Tripled
- Suburban office location severely hampered local rankings.
- Extremely active, unethical competition.
- Wary of slick SEO firms selling unsustainable “snake oil” schemes.
- Desire to significantly increase volume of quality leads.
In the past four years, Stewart J. Guss, Attorney at Law has grown from a staff of just 12 into one of Houston’s largest personal injury law offices, employing more than 50 staff members.
In the region’s ruthlessly competitive personal injury legal market, achieving that kind of growth has been no easy feat for owner and attorney Stewart Guss.
After more than two decades of practice, Stewart knew that in order to grow, he needed to keep a steady stream of qualified leads coming in fast and hard, every month, without fail.
The problem was, the local personal injury marketplace was crowded with fierce competition, many of whom were willing to do anything to rank.
In the early days of the firm, Stewart focused on making his website front and center for clients seeking help. He worked with a team of digital marketers and content creators to create attractive pages full of unique content. But it just wasn’t enough.
Because of his office’s suburban location, far from the Google-favored downtown area, Stewart continued to have trouble getting his site to rank — and low ranking meant little rain.
Concerned with the lack of growth and eager to find a more effective solution, Guss’ digital marketing vendor invited the SEO experts from Rankings.io to assess the current SEO strategy and implement small tweaks.In just a short time the gains began to roll in – and they were higher than anything the Guss team had seen before.
Recognizing the potential for even more growth, Stewart hired Chris Dreyer and the Rankings.io team to conduct a full SEO overhaul of AttorneyGuss.com.
- Comprehensive onsite/offsite SEO audit.
- Creation and promotion of targeted content assets.
- Link building with reputable institutions, high-authority sites.
- Clear, digestible and frequent results reporting.
Rankings.io’s first promise to Stewart was to drive traffic using tactics that were Google-approved: nothing sketchy, sneaky, or hidden.
This integrity was refreshing for Stewart; he knew he was signing on with a partner he could trust.The campaign devised by Chris and his team was multi-faceted and completely tailored to AttorneyGuss.com.
First, Rankings.io conducted a comprehensive SEO audit to dig deep into the site’s metrics and find the issues keeping it from ranking well.
Using what they’d learned, Rankings.io re-optimized the content and structure of the site to improve crawlability and relevance while better satisfying searcher intent.
Next, Rankings.io developed a research-driven content marketing strategy, along with a plan to promote the content on the firm’s social accounts.
With the content underway, Rankings.io began cleaning up AttorneyGuss.com’s citations, ensuring that a consistent company name, address and phone number were used across the firm’s entire web footprint to boost local map rankings.
But to outrank their competition located closer to major metropolitan areas (a Google local ranking factor), AttorneyGus.com needed serious site authority.
To solve this, Rankings.io undertook a large-scale link building campaign that included one-to-one outreach to industry professionals as well as the creation of a scholarship program.
The goal was to drive coveted (and highly trusted) “.edu” links from post-secondary institutions and high-authority websites, and only personal relationships would open the door to a link.
Throughout the process, Stewart was given timely, transparent reports that explained what was being done, why, and what the results were — all in plain English.
- 300% increase in cases opened per month
- 47% increase in organic phone calls
- 4x increase in staff due to strong growth
- Consistently strong organic search engine rankings
When comparing January 2017 to the previous year, organic traffic has skyrocketed from just 3,076 sessions in Soon after Rankings.io began their first campaign, and then steadily throughout the next four years, Stewart watched his lead volume explode.
Today, he estimates his firm opens about triple the number of cases each month compared to when he started working with Rankings.io – thanks to a 47% increase in phone calls as well as significantly larger numbers of online contacts coming through the website.
This substantial increase has made Stewart’s decision to renew his investment in SEO an easy one.
