Local SEO Case Study: Furniture Store Ranks #1 in Map Pack and Organic Results!
It’s no secret that the furniture industry is ridiculously competitive, especially in local markets.
Not only do smaller, family-owned stores have to compete with other local furniture providers, but there’s also major heat from online juggernauts like Amazon.
That’s why so many furniture stores turn to SEO to carve themselves a space in the market, and our client, Sofas 2 Furnishings, was no different.
In this local SEO case study, we break down how our team at The HOTH skyrocketed Sofas 2 Furnishings’ traffic, keyword rankings, and online visibility in Google’s Map Pack (which is super important for local SEO).
Major wins included:
- 1.1k traffic increase in just 6 months
- Ranking #1 in Google’s Map Pack and organic search results for crucial keywords
- 1,600 new pages ranking (and still climbing)
- Grew from 8 keywords in the top 10 to 363 (and growing)
Stay tuned to learn the story behind how we achieved these amazing results and how we can replicate them for your business!
The Client: A Family-Owned Furniture Store from Simi Valley, California
Sofas 2 Furnishings began in 2002 as a resale outlet for children’s clothing but soon grew into a bustling furniture store with 25,000 square feet of showroom and warehouse space.
While their brick-and-mortar business was rocking it, they had one very big problem: a serious lack of online visibility.
Since they weren’t attracting new customers through their website, they were leaving a ton of money on the table, and they knew it. This problem was only exacerbated by the pandemic, which caused a huge spike in online shopping and forever changed consumer spending habits.
As a result, local SEO is a NECESSITY for any business with a physical presence in today’s age.
Besides serving the public around Simi Valley, there’s also an eCommerce component to Sofas 2 Furnishings website, and they wanted to boost their online sales, too.
Their team knew they needed industry experts to help them with SEO and digital marketing, so they got in touch with us.
After an initial consultation, they signed up for HOTH X, our managed SEO service, in August of 2023.
Their goals for us included the following:
- Get their website and product pages ranking for local keywords in Simi Valley and nearby cities (i.e., simi valley sofas).
- Boost their organic traffic as much as possible (they were only averaging roughly 8 monthly visitors before we began our campaign).
- Build valuable backlinks tied to products they can ship, such as a queen mattress in a box.
We knew we’d have to put a lot of hard work into this one, so we cracked our knuckles and got to it.
The SEO Audit: Establishing a Foundation
It’s our policy to begin every campaign with a thorough audit of their existing SEO performance, and there are several reasons for this.
First, we need to know where the website currently stands SEO-wise.
If we dive right in and start building backlinks and optimizing new pages, we may miss crucial things like indexing errors, duplicate content, and poor loading speed.
Next, our SEO audits are where we look for easy-win keywords.
These are keywords that a domain is already ranking for, just not in the top 3. Most easy-win keywords rank anywhere from position 4 – 30. The reason they’re valuable is that with a little optimization, it’s easy to boost the rankings for these keywords pretty quickly.
Targeting easy-win keywords has become a staple of our SEO strategy because:
- They’re a great way to hit the ground running since easy win keywords yield quick results.
- They give us an idea of what types of keywords the site ranks for naturally.
We also take an in-depth look at the website’s technical SEO during the audit. This is because things like indexing errors and duplicate content can cause content to disappear entirely from the SERPs (search engine results pages).
With Sofas 2 Furnishings, we ensured their on-page and technical SEO factors were in tip-top shape before moving forward.
Our Strategy: Local Keywords, Optimized Web Copy, and Lots of Link-Building
HOTH X is our managed SEO service that uses a combination of all our products to form a cohesive, goal-oriented SEO campaign.
For Sofa 2 Furnishings, we utilized the following products:
This was a local SEO campaign, and our client had a list of cities they wanted to target close to Simi Valley (Porter Ranch, Thousand Oaks, and Moorpark, specifically).
Improving their online visibility in these cities would drive a ton of local business their way, which was a smart strategy on their part.
When it came to making this goal a reality, we put our expert copywriters to work.
The first task was to add the target cities to their product pages so that they would pack a local punch. The idea was to combine product names with city names as keyword targets.
As an example, remember the keyword we mentioned earlier, ‘simi valley sofas?’
Well, thanks to our optimization, they now rank #1 for it on both Google’s Map Pack AND the organic results.
This is a testament to the power of local keywords in the hands of industry experts like us. In the world of local SEO, visibility on Google’s Map Pack is undeniably crucial.
It’s a SERP feature that appears at the very top of the results page, and it has a convenient map pinpointing each location.
Research shows that Map Packs account for 44% of all clicks whenever they appear, so being able to top the list for local keywords like the one seen above is one heck of a feat.
Achieving this involved a ton of web copy optimization and link-building, but it was well worth it.
Adding backlinks to shippable products
Since Sofas 2 Furnishings had eCommerce available on their website, we placed a heavy emphasis on building backlinks to shippable products.
In particular, they’re able to ship mattress in a box products, so they were the main keywords that we targeted. An example would be targeting the keyword ‘king mattress in a box.’
It’s important to note that these were completely new keywords for their website, as they hadn’t ranked for them in the past (not even in low-ranking spots).
They’re now ranking for hundreds of new keywords related to products they can ship directly to customers, providing a massive boost to their eCommerce sales.
Also, we know that if you want to outrank competitors and claim the #1 spot on the SERPs, you must have a robust backlink profile.
Without backlinks coming from trusted websites in your field, Google won’t view you as authoritative, and you’ll have a hard time snagging top rankings.
That’s why we went hard with link-building right off the bat, incorporating both our Link Insertions and Link Outreach products. Our goal was to build as many valuable links pointing toward eCommerce products as possible, and that’s exactly what we did.
New pages ranking on the SERPs
Through a combination of guest posts and link placements (that we had inserted into existing pieces of content), we were able to get 1,600 new product pages ranking on the SERPs.
Sofas 2 Furnishings is now a major player in furniture eCommerce for their respective areas around Simi Valley.
The Results: HUGE Boosts to Organic Traffic, Keyword Rankings, and eCommerce
Now, it’s time for the fun stuff.
After just 9 months of a HOTH X campaign, Sofas 2 Furnishings’ SEO performance looks COMPLETELY different (hint: it’s way better now).
They now rank #1 for super important local keywords in Google’s Map Pack and the organic results simultaneously (note that this is a different #1 keyword than the one from before):
Let’s take a look at their current SEO stats on Ahrefs:
As you can see, there are vast improvements across the board.
We provided a significant boost to their backlinks and referring domains, and their keyword rankings and traffic are now through the roof.
To put things in perspective, their average organic traffic in December 2023 was just eight monthly visitors.
That’s now catapulted to 1,500 monthly visitors, and it’s continuing to climb as we speak.
The results don’t stop there, though.
In July 2023, they had a total of 8 keywords in the top 10. As of right now, they have 363 top 10 keywords, and that number also continues to grow.
Here’s a peep at the overall SEO performance as the months went on:
Once our efforts began paying off, their organic traffic started to shoot into the stratosphere, and it’s still on an upward projection.
The same is true for their keyword rankings, which began to take off in March 2024 and haven’t let up yet.
This graph illustrates the raw power of a well-coordinated SEO strategy. Once the results start pouring in, they don’t let up!
As a result, the Sofas 2 Furnishings website has become an Energizer Bunny of SEO. It just keeps growing and growing.
Wrapping Up: Replicating Sofas 2 Furnishings Success
The future is now extremely bright for Sofas 2 Furnishings, and we’re excited to see where they’ll go moving forward.
Our work with the company was far from a fluke, as we’re able to replicate these stellar results for all our clients.
Do you need help dominating the SERPs for your local space?
If so, make like Sofas 2 Furnishings and sign up for a HOTH X campaign today!
