Case study · 120-day engagement
An electrical contractor in Tucson was sitting at the seventh map result for "electrician near me." The first six results were three actual competitors and three lead-gen middlemen who were scraping leads then reselling them at three times the price. He was paying those middlemen $52 per shared lead while ranking at #7 himself.
The challenge
The owner had built a real business: 312 GBP reviews, 4.8 average rating, eight trucks, twelve years in business. None of that was helping his rank because the GBP itself was a mess and the website had no signal that pointed at him as the local authority.
The audit:
The lead-gen middlemen ranked above him because they had built dozens of zip-code-specific pages with proper schema and answered every Q&A on their GBP listings. They were not better at being electricians. They were just better at being on Google.
The plan
Added all 9 relevant service categories. Wrote and answered 18 Q&A entries pulled from his real customer questions. Posted weekly with before/after photos of work he was doing that week. Set up a review-request automation that texted every customer 2 hours after job close.
Audited 47 directory listings, fixed inconsistencies, removed 4 outdated Yellow Pages-style listings that were hurting more than helping. Took 14 days to get all the data brokers to push the corrections through.
Built 14 zip-code-specific pages: Catalina Foothills, Sam Hughes, Oro Valley, Marana, Vail, Tanque Verde, Sahuarita, Green Valley, Casas Adobes, Drexel Heights, Flowing Wells, Tucson Estates, Rita Ranch, and Saddlebrooke. Each page covered the local context, common electrical issues in that neighborhood (territorial-era adobe panel upgrades in Sam Hughes, monsoon surge protection demand in Catalina Foothills, EV charger installs in Oro Valley), real photos from work done there, and a clear local CTA.
Added LocalBusiness schema with full NAP and service catalog, Service schema for each service, FAQ schema on the service-area pages, Review schema pulling from the GBP, and Person schema for the owner.
Reached out to two local home-improvement bloggers and the Maricopa County Apartment Association for backlinks. Got featured in two neighborhood newsletters. Each backlink moved the needle.
AI tools we used
We do not pretend the work happens by hand. Three of our internal tools are the reason this engagement moved as fast as it did. Each of them replaces what used to be days of human time.
Watches your competitor GBPs and flags every change: new category, new Q&A, posted update. Lets us match or beat them within 24 hours.
Spins up zip-code pages with neighborhood-specific context, local photos, and proper schema. Built 14 pages in five days.
Crawls 47 major directories, flags NAP inconsistencies, generates the corrected payloads ready to submit.
The execution
| Week | What we shipped | What moved |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1-3 | GBP overhaul: 9 categories, 18 Q&A pairs, posting cadence, review automation | Map rank moves #7 to #5 by week 3 |
| Week 4 | Citation cleanup across 47 directories | NAP consistency at 100% by week 6 |
| Week 4-10 | 14 zip-code service-area pages shipped one per week | Long-tail traffic +47% MoM by week 10 |
| Week 8 | Schema rollout across all pages | Rich results begin appearing for "electrician [neighborhood]" |
| Week 10 | First neighborhood newsletter feature | Backlink + brand mention boost |
| Week 14 | Map rank #1 confirmed across Maricopa county searches | Direct GBP calls 5.4× |
| Week 18 | Retainer continues, panel upgrade campaign next | No more middleman lead fees |
The numbers
The local authority signal came from:
He stopped paying $2,100 a month to lead-gen middlemen who were ranking above him. That alone covered our retainer 2.5 times over. The map pack #1 spot is the asset that keeps producing every month after the work is done.
Twelve years in business and I still couldn't out-rank some lead-gen company that exists only in Google. Took four months and a real game plan and now I'm the first thing people see.
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