The client operates one of the biggest smoke shop wholesale operations in Texas and is based in the Houston area. The client’s website is not SEO friendly but has had to remain in place due to its tie-in to the inventory management systems being used. To further hinder SEO, the website’s e-commerce section had to be moved behind a password.

The main objective of this project is to get the client rankings locally as well as regionally despite the obstacles presented.

We were able to get the client rankings in local search despite these obstacles. We also found a web developer that could build a custom website that would integrate with the client’s inventory management system and build them an SEO friendly website which is still in the process of being built as we wrote this case study.

Local Maps Rankings Visibility MWI
  • Client profile – The client is one of the largest smoke shop wholesalers in Houston and perhaps in TX.
  • Initial state of the client’s online presence—The online presence was very limiting and not SEO-friendly, and the developers had no intention of fixing the issues we pointed out. As this web presence also tied into the whole backend of the business, we were very limited in what we could do in the realm of SEO.
  • Specific issues affecting their search rankings and visibility – The biggest issue in achieving rankings for this client was their website’s limitations when it came to optimizing the site to rank organically in search.

Objectives

  • Increase organic search traffic despite the limitations of what we can do for onsite optimization.
  • Improve keyword rankings for local search and the map pack.

Challenges

  • Navigating regulations on smoke shops when it comes to social media posting and Google Business Page. The client had already had their current IG account shut down.
  • Overcoming the lack of on-site optimization due to the web presence lack of SEO friendliness. For example, we could not set custom metatitle data. It would only use the name of the page.
  • As we started this project the client turned the site from a site with around 15000 pages consisting of products into a 10-page website.

Strategy and Implementation

Technical SEO

  • Unfortunately, we could not do much in the way of technical SEO as the development team on this project was unwilling to make changes.
  • Improve site speed – We improved site speed by implementing Cloud Flare to speed up the site and optimize caching.
  • The site was already responsive so luckily, we did not have issues on that level.

On-Page Optimization

  • Keyword research and implementation – We worked with the client to come up with an initial keyword list that they wanted to rank on and then took that list and expanded it by doing keyword research based on the keywords the client provided as well as keywords their competitors are ranking on.
  • Content creation and optimization – Since we did not have a good site to create much content on we opted to create 7 pages that we optimized as best as possible given the limitations of the site. We also attempted to set up a blog that was reversed proxied to appear like it was on the main domain of the site but we could not get that approved by the development team so we set up a subdomain to run a WP blog on to have the ability to add some optimized content to the project that did not suffer from the limitations of the main site.
  • We reorganized the main navigation to be more SEO-friendly.

Off-Page Optimization

  • Link building strategies – We focused on getting quality relevant links to the site in order to improve its trust and authority to ultimately improve rankings.
  • Google Business Profile Optimization – We optimized the GBP and also posted on the GBP as it was set up as wholesale and therefore not restricted.
  • Local SEO tactics – We worked on citations to improve local maps rankings as well as optimizing the GBP.
  • Reputation management – We worked with the customer to improve their review rating in Google by getting more positive reviews and soliciting reviews at their location to overcome the 3-star rating they initially had when we started the project.

Content Strategy

  • Development content – We created 7 main landing pages for SEO and also implemented an informational blog on a subdomain for the client. We created pages that targeted the main keywords on the client’s site as well as wrote an optimized homepage for the client to help search engines better understand the business.

Results

  • Increase in visibility in local search – in 2024 we increased the visibility of the GBP by 67%
  • Improvement in keyword rankings – When we started this client did not rank on any of their main terms in local searches and now the business ranks in the top 3 for 14 of their main terms and in the top 10 for 19 of their terms. Given the fact that we are having to overcome many onsite obstacles, these are very good results. Once the client’s new site is finished we expect these numbers to improve drastically.
  • Growth in online visibility – The client’s online visibility in local search grew 67%,
  • GBP Results for 2024 compared to 2023 were. Calls increased by 142%, Directions increased by 165%, and click to the website increased by 69%

We achieved phenomenal results given the fact that we had to deal with a site that was not SEO friendly on top of losing a large amount of content in the way of products which lost us the ability for long tail search on a regional and local level.