Naperville Landscaper: Page 5 to Position 2 in One Season
A Naperville landscaping company competed with established Chicago suburb firms but was buried on page 5. In four months we moved them to position 2 for their top keyword and built ranking coverage across 11 suburbs, all before the spring rush.
The Client
A family-owned design-build and maintenance landscaper based in Naperville, serving DuPage and Will County suburbs with a premium, higher-margin offering. Strong crews and a great local reputation, but a website that almost nobody found in search and zero presence in the neighboring towns they wanted to grow into.
The Challenge
Illinois has a compact growing season. If a landscaper is not visible when homeowners start planning in late winter and early spring, the year is largely lost. This company was sitting on page 5 for its core service term with the spring window closing fast.
They also had no presence in the surrounding suburbs they could easily service. Established competitors owned the "near me" and town-specific searches across DuPage, leaving this company dependent on referrals and repeat clients alone.
Our Strategy
A phased plan built around this market, this industry, and the searches that actually drive revenue.
Service-Area Architecture
Built a dedicated, genuinely useful service-area page for each target suburb, structured so Google understood exactly where they work and what they offer in each town.
On-Page and Map Pack
Optimized the Google Business Profile, tightened on-page targeting for design-build and maintenance terms, and set up a review flow to climb the local Map Pack.
Seasonal Content
Published seasonal planning content timed to land and rank right as homeowners began searching, capturing demand before competitors warmed up for spring.
Local Authority
Earned local backlinks and citations to push the priority pages over the top for the core term and the most valuable suburb searches.
What We Delivered
Concrete deliverables, every backlink documented with a live URL you can verify yourself.
Suburb Service-Area Pages
Eleven town-specific pages targeting the suburbs the company could profitably service across DuPage and Will County.
Design-Build Targeting
On-page work focused on higher-margin design-build and maintenance contracts, not just low-value one-off jobs.
Google Business Profile
GBP optimization and a review-generation flow built to win the Map Pack for landscaping searches in each town.
Seasonal Content Calendar
Planning and project content scheduled to rank ahead of the spring and fall demand windows.
Conversion Updates
Site and page updates so the traffic we earned actually turned into quote requests, not bounces.
Local Backlinks
Citations and local links to build the authority needed to outrank entrenched suburb competitors.
The Results
Where they started versus where they ended up.
The company reached position 2 for its top keyword in four months and built ranking coverage across 11 suburb service-area pages, capturing the spring rush instead of missing it. In-season organic leads more than quadrupled, and the new work skewed toward the higher-margin design-build projects they wanted.
Because the service-area pages keep ranking season after season, the spring window is no longer a scramble. The company now starts each year already visible across the suburbs it serves.
"They built us a strategy targeting specific service areas and seasonal keywords. Page 5 to position 2 for our top keyword in 4 months."
Services Behind This Result
The services that powered this engagement. Most clients combine two or three.
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Representative result from an Illinois SEO engagement. The client name is abbreviated for privacy and the figures are illustrative of typical outcomes. Your results depend on your market, competition, and starting point.