Industry: Moving Services
Location: Connecticut, USA
Timeline: April 2024 – September 2024
Brand: Collegian Movers
About the Client
Collegian Movers is a moving company specializing in relocation services for residential and commercial clients. Their website had potential but was hindered by technical SEO issues, limited keyword visibility, and a lack of optimized content. They partnered with our SEO team to overhaul their digital presence and drive more organic traffic to their site.
The Objectives
- Increase organic traffic from search engines
- Improve rankings for moving-related keywords
- Resolve technical SEO issues to enhance crawlability
- Develop a content strategy to attract and convert visitors
- Strengthen online reputation through positive reviews
- Their website had a lot of keyword cannibalism.
SEO Challenges for a Connecticut-Based Moving Company
Goal: Rank for keywords like “Best Moving Company in Connecticut” and city-specific terms such as “Milford Movers” and “New Haven Movers” to drive qualified traffic and leads.
Key Challenges:
- Technical SEO Issues:
1,289 Semrush errors, including crawl issues and 404s, harmed site indexing and visibility. - Service Area Limitations:
The company only moves from Connecticut to other states — not into Connecticut — making keyword targeting tricky and limiting relevance for many high-volume terms. - Poor On-Page Optimization:
Missing or weak meta tags, headers, and internal links hurt page performance and search rankings. - Weak Content Strategy:
Overuse of generic, low-value blog content (often AI-generated) with no geographic focus or service intent diluted SEO efforts. - Low Keyword Visibility:
The site lacked rankings for critical terms, including state and city-specific keywords. - Reputation Management Issues: Fake negative reviews from non-customers on platforms like Google and Yelp damaged trust and conversion potential.
🛠️ Our Strategy
1. Technical SEO Fixes
Resolved Technical SEO Issues
- Fixed 404 errors, cleaned up redirects, and resolved indexing problems.
- Reduced Semrush-reported errors from 1,289 to just 4, significantly improving crawlability and visibility.
Improved Site Speed & Mobile Experience
- Compressed images and minimized scripts to enhance page load times.
- Optimized mobile layout and responsiveness to improve user experience and Core Web Vitals performance.
Implemented Structured Data
- Added FAQ, Organization, and Breadcrumb schema markup.
- Enhanced SERP appearance and helped search engines better understand the site structure.
2. Solutions Implemented
Corrected Website Targeting
- Adjusted keyword strategy to reflect the company’s Connecticut-only outbound service model (Connecticut to other U.S. states).
- Avoided targeting irrelevant inbound queries from outside states.
Created Valuable, Location-Focused Content
- Replaced generic, AI-generated blog posts with helpful, locally relevant content.
- Included topics like Connecticut-specific moving tips, licensing requirements, and neighborhood insights.
Launched New City Pages
- Created SEO-optimized landing pages for cities such as:
- Milford Movers
- New Haven Movers
- Stamford Movers
- Targeted city-level keywords to capture local search demand.
3. On-Page Optimization
Enhanced Meta Data
- Developed unique meta titles and descriptions for all key service and city-specific pages.
Restructured Content
- Organized headers using keyword-driven hierarchies (H1 → H2 → H3).
- Strengthened internal linking to create topic clusters and guide crawlers.
Mobile Optimization
- Fixed layout issues, numbering inconsistencies, and improved CTA visibility on mobile devices.
4. Content SEO System
Developed Blog Content
- Published focused blog posts such as “Collegian Movers: Your Trusted Moving Partner”, ranking for 2 relevant keywords in Google’s top 100.
Created Service-Intent Content
- Targeted long-tail keywords like “reliable moving services in Connecticut” to attract high-conversion users.
Added Engagement Tools
- Integrated social media icons and a newsletter signup, improving user interaction and return visits.
5. Backlink Building
Increased Backlinks
- Earning high-quality backlinks, growing from 1,260 to 1,800.
- Included links from Medium, GitHub, and Blogger, strengthening domain authority.
Added Citations
- Secured business citations on reputable directories such as:
- NeustarLocaleze
- eBusinessPages
- Houzz
- All with Domain Authorities ranging from 30 to 98, boosting local SEO signals.
5. Reputation Management
- Removed Fake Negative Reviews: Eliminated 1 Google, 5 Yelp, and 9 Facebook negative reviews, with ongoing efforts for others.
- Generated positive reviews by reaching out to satisfied clients: Resulting in 130 new reviews across platforms like BBB and Movers. This helped improve ratings — for example, BBB increased from 4.71 to 4.98.
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
| Organic Traffic | Baseline | +700 visits (Peak: 1,000) | 📈 Significant |
| Keywords Ranking | – | 1,500 | 📈 Boosted visibility |
| Semrush Errors | 1,289 | 4 | ✅ -99.7% |
| Backlinks | 1,260 | 1,800 | +42.9% |
| Referring Domains | – | +140 | 📈 Expanded |
| BBB Rating | 4.71 | 4.98 | ⭐ Trust increased |
Tools Used for Collegian Movers SEO Project
🔍 SEO & Keyword Research
- SEMrush – Full site audit, keyword tracking, backlink analysis, and competitor gap analysis
- Ahrefs – Backlink audit, domain authority, keyword research
- Google Search Console (GSC) – Indexing, search query analysis, impressions, click-throughs
📈 Analytics & Performance Monitoring
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – User behavior, engagement, conversions, bounce rates
- Google Tag Manager (GTM) – Implementing tracking tags, event tracking
🏗️ Technical SEO & On-Site Optimization
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider – Crawl analysis, duplicate content detection, meta audits
- PageSpeed Insights / Lighthouse – Core Web Vitals, speed & mobile usability
- Schema Markup Generator (Merkle, RankRanger) – Structured data for rich results
- GTmetrix – Page speed testing, waterfall reports
📄 Content & On-Page Tools
- Surfer SEO – Content optimization based on keyword density and SERP analysis
- Grammarly / Hemingway Editor – Grammar, clarity, and readability for content quality
- ChatGPT – Content strategy ideation, outline drafting, long-tail content suggestions
🔗 Backlink Building & Authority Monitoring
- Moz Link Explorer – Domain authority and spam score
- Hunter.io / Voila Norbert – Outreach for backlink building
- HARO (Help a Reporter Out) – Earned media backlinks
⭐ Reputation Management
- Google Business Profile (GBP) – Review monitoring, Q&A optimization
- Yelp for Business – Review responses and flagging fake reviews
- BrightLocal – Local SEO audit, citation building, review management
- BBB Profile Dashboard – Review handling and score tracking
🗺️ Local SEO Tools
- Whitespark – Local citation building and tracking
- GeoRanker – Local keyword rank tracking
- GMB Everywhere Chrome Extension – Competitor GMB audits
Why This Matters
This case study demonstrates how a comprehensive SEO strategy can deliver measurable results for a service-based business in USA . By addressing technical issues, optimizing content, Earning backlinks, and managing reputation, Collegian Movers achieved significant growth in traffic, visibility, and credibility. This approach aligns with Google’s E-E-A-T standards (Google E-E-A-T) and is replicable for other businesses.