Case study · Home services SEO
Franchise SEO case study: home services, from 1K to 69.8K monthly organic visits
A franchise SEO case study: six years of multi-location SEO for a home services franchise group with plumbing and HVAC brands — the strategy, the keyword rankings and organic traffic growth, and the recent dip, all stated.
Overview
From almost no organic traffic to 69.8K a month
In 2020 the site drew roughly 1,000 organic visits a month. Six years later the same measure sits at 69.8K — with 34.1K ranking keywords and no paid search in the mix.
The challenge
Where it started: a 2020 diagnosis
A recognisable brand, with almost none of that recognition showing up in organic search.
estimated monthly organic visits — for a brand serving homeowners across the United States.
Barely visible in organic search
Around 1,000 estimated organic visits a month. On the all-time chart, organic traffic sits close to zero until 2020.
A huge service catalogue to cover
Home services spans repairs, cleaning, maintenance and installation — each with its own searches, in every market the brand serves.
Results crowded by directories
Home-services searches are contested by directories and lead-gen marketplaces, all competing for the same homeowner’s click.
A complex brand structure
One parent brand, many service brands and local providers — hard for search engines to interpret as a single, connected entity.
The strategy
A multi-location franchise SEO strategy: four pillars, one compounding result
No single tactic does this. Each pillar makes the others work harder — which is why growth kept building for six years instead of levelling off.
Cover every service intent
Map the full service catalogue to the searches homeowners actually run.
Build for scale
Architecture and templates that let a large, growing site stay crawlable and consistent.
Earn authority
Relevant links and mentions, earned on merit rather than bought in bulk.
Make it understandable
Clear entities, schema and practical answers that search engines and AI assistants can interpret and quote.
The process
How we worked: five steps, on repeat
The same loop, run again and again as the site grew — each cycle building on the last.
Diagnose
Audit the site, the market and the competition. Set the baseline.
BaselineMap
Match every service and market to the searches that carry demand.
Keyword mapBuild
Create and improve the pages, templates and content that answer them.
Pages & contentEarn
Grow authority through relevant links, mentions and citations.
AuthorityMeasure & refine
Track rankings, traffic and AI visibility — then move effort to what works.
Reporting↻ Then back to step one — with a bigger footprint to diagnose each time.
Implementation
What we ran — and where it shows
Seven workstreams, each paired with the number in the snapshot that reflects it.
Technical SEO cleanup
Crawlability, indexation, duplicate-content controls, canonicals, redirects and internal-linking improvements.
Search-led information architecture
Pages organised around service, brand, location and homeowner intent.
Scalable service & location pages
Stronger templates with genuinely useful, locally relevant content — not interchangeable city-page copy.
Content strategy
Practical guidance on seasonal maintenance, repairs, home improvement and common homeowner questions.
Entity & schema optimisation
Clarified the relationship between the parent brand, its service brands, services and local providers.
Authority growth
Earned and strengthened relevant links and brand mentions to compete on national service terms.
Ongoing measurement
Tracked pages, keyword groups, technical health and search visibility to prioritise the next opportunities.
The result
Franchise SEO results: roughly 70 times the organic traffic of 2020
Before & after
Then vs now
The same site, measured the same way, six years apart.
— = not captured for 2020. AI answer engines were not a meaningful search channel before 2022.
Milestones read from the Semrush all-time traffic chart; values between the two measured points are approximate.
The evidence
Franchise SEO case study evidence: four screenshots, three sources
Semrush estimates show the franchise’s keyword rankings and organic visibility. The client’s own Search Console and Analytics show what actually happened on Google and on the site.
Domain overview: 69.8K organic visits a month
- Organic traffic
- 69.8K−18% on period
- Ranking keywords
- 34.1K+5.1%
- Authority Score
- 454.8K referring domains
- Paid traffic
- 0Earned, not bought
What it tells usNear zero before 2020, a steady climb from 2020, a peak near 100K in early 2026 and 69.8K now — roughly 70× the 2020 starting point, with 26% of traffic share in the United States.
AI search breakdown
Where AI answers mention the brand
Total: 1.8K mentions · 585 unique cited pages · AI visibility score 27. Pages can be cited on more than one platform.
Multi-location SEO keyword rankings: 94% non-branded
- US traffic
- 65.1Kfrom 29.7K keywords
- Non-branded
- 60.9Kvs 4.1K branded
- Traffic value
- $973.8Kmonthly ad-cost equivalent
- Commercial intent
- 22Kvisits, the largest share
What it tells usAlmost all US visits come from people searching for a service, not the brand. The franchise ranks at position 2 for “local plumbers” (110K searches) and “plumbers”, position 3 for “plumbing company” (135K) and position 4 for “hvac company”. US traffic is down 20.9% on Semrush’s period comparison, in line with the recent dip.
Search Console SEO results: 56.3K clicks in three months
- Total clicks
- 56.3Kfrom Google search
- Impressions
- 69.5Kin search results
- Average CTR
- 81.0%clicks per impression
- Average position
- 19.0across all queries
What it tells usGoogle’s own data shows a steady climb: daily clicks rose from under 100 in late June to around 1K a day by September.
Analytics: organic search drives 78.8% of sessions
- Organic sessions
- 46,550in the period
- Share of sessions
- 78.8%of 59,075 total
- Engaged sessions
- 17,73478.8% of all engaged
- Vs next channel
- 10.7×Paid Other (4,361)
What it tells usOrganic search is by far the franchise site’s biggest source of visits — nearly four in five sessions, more than ten times the next channel.
Proof & limits
What this proves — and what it doesn’t yet
✓What it shows
- Estimated organic visibility up roughly 70× since 2020
- A 34.1K-keyword footprint that is still growing
- All of it earned — no paid traffic or paid keywords
- Strong AI search presence: 1.8K mentions, 585 cited pages
- Most US organic traffic is non-branded (60.9K vs 4.1K branded)
- First-party GA4 data: organic search drives 78.8% of all sessions
–What it doesn’t show yet
- Leads, booked jobs or revenue from organic search
- Why traffic has eased back from its early-2026 peak (−18% on Semrush’s period comparison)
- The effect of brand, franchise and other marketing activity over six years
That’s why we call this a visibility result, not a revenue claim — and why the recent dip is on the page rather than cropped out.
FAQ
Your questions, answered
Straight answers on the numbers, the dip, and what they do and don’t mean.
01Is 69.8K real measured traffic?
No — it is a third-party estimate. Semrush models estimated monthly organic visits from ranking positions and keyword volumes. It is a reliable way to compare visibility over time, but it is not the same as sessions in Google Analytics or clicks in Search Console, which is why we label it an estimate throughout.
02Why does the snapshot show traffic down 18%?
The −18% is Semrush’s comparison with the previous period. It follows an early-2026 peak near 100K, so today’s 69.8K is roughly 30% below the high point. A snapshot alone does not show why — seasonality, ranking changes and branded demand can all move it. We show the dip rather than crop the chart, because the six-year trend is the result, not the peak.
03How much of this traffic is branded?
Very little, on Semrush’s US estimate: 4.1K branded visits against 60.9K non-branded — about 94% of US organic traffic comes from people searching for a service, such as “local plumbers” or “hvac company”, not the brand name.
04Does 70× more traffic mean 70× more leads?
No, and we will not claim it does. Traffic creates the opportunity for enquiries; how many convert depends on the pages, the offer, booking flows and the branded versus non-brand mix. Lead and revenue claims need CRM, call-tracking and analytics data.
05What did SDM actually do for this client?
Seven workstreams, run continuously: technical SEO cleanup, search-led information architecture, scalable service and location pages, a content strategy built around homeowner questions, entity and schema optimisation across the group’s brands, authority growth through relevant links and mentions, and ongoing measurement to decide what came next.
06How is franchise SEO different from single-location SEO?
Franchise SEO has to work at two levels at once: the parent brand and every local territory. That means a clear entity structure linking the brand, its service brands and local providers, location pages that are genuinely local rather than copy-pasted, and authority that supports competitive national terms while each location still wins its own local results.
07Is this a plumbing and HVAC SEO case study too?
Yes. The franchise group includes plumbing and HVAC brands, and its strongest non-branded keyword rankings are plumbing and HVAC searches: position 2 for “local plumbers” and “plumbers”, position 3 for “plumbing company” and position 4 for “hvac company”. The same multi-location SEO approach is how we run plumbing SEO and HVAC SEO for single-location companies too.
08Can you do the same for my home-services business?
It depends on where you start — your current rankings, service areas, technical health and competition. We set a measurable baseline in a free audit before any work begins, so you can hold us to the movement from it.
Work with SDM
Want this kind of visibility in your service area?
A free audit of your visibility, the pages worth fixing first, and a baseline to judge us against.