Thrive Services Used
Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)
Project Overview
With more than 40 years in the commercial and industrial painting space, the client had built a solid reputation around service excellence. However, their website wasn’t keeping up. Much of their traffic came from irrelevant searches, and their visibility in high-value service areas was limited. A blog archive bloated with outdated posts and technical SEO inconsistencies further stalled growth.
Thrive Internet Marketing Agency stepped in to clean up the client’s web presence and refocus their SEO around reaching commercial clients. The team streamlined outdated content, improved visibility in key metro areas and centered the strategy on high-intent keywords. Over time, this led to a 146% boost in organic conversion rate and a 91% increase in qualified leads tracked through call data.
From the Client:
“Thrive has restored our faith in marketing. After years of working with agencies that kept us in the dark, we’re thrilled to partner with a team that truly cares about our success — and consistently delivers results. Diondra leads our partnership with enthusiasm and dedication, Abbas brings incredible knowledge and support, and Gerrit continues to prove the power of effective paid media. We couldn’t be happier with the Thrive team.”
The Results
+147%
Organic Conversion Rate
+91%
Qualified Leads
+125%
Organic Form Submissions
+45%
Keywords in Top 10
Thrive’s long-term SEO strategy centered on three priorities:
- Remove low-value content
- Optimize high-opportunity industry pages
- Tighten technical performance across the site
This approach aligns with evolving search algorithms while sharpening the client’s relevance for commercial buyers. As a result, the client saw a noticeable shift — not just in volume, but in value.
The improvements included:
- +50% search impressions for industry pages
- +45% organic clicks on those same pages
- +91% qualified organic leads (via CallRail)
- +22% organic conversion rate (quarter over quarter)
Although total traffic dipped due to removing irrelevant blog content, the shift toward high-intent visitors drove stronger lead quality and engagement. This proved that less, when focused, can lead to more.
In addition, Thrive achieved significant position gains for commercially valuable search terms:
- “Commercial painting companies near me”
+6.2 positions | +8 clicks/month - “Industrial painting contractor”
+31 positions | +8 clicks/month - “Hotel painting services”
+14 positions | +5 clicks/month
- “Industrial painting companies near me”
+41 positions | +5 clicks/month - “Tank lining companies near me”
+6 positions | +4 clicks/month
These improvements reflect the power of commercial keyword targeting and long-tail search optimization to attract higher-converting leads.
The Execution
The client came to Thrive with a visibility problem. Not a lack of content, but too much of the wrong kind. A blog archive packed with over 1,100 posts had become more of a liability than an asset, with most articles failing to generate rankings, traffic or leads.
Compounding the issue were technical SEO gaps, a lack of local relevance in B2B searches and traffic skewed toward low-intent keywords like do-it-yourself (DIY) paint tips and job inquiries.
Thrive tackled these challenges with a multi-phase SEO strategy:
Technical and On-Page Optimization
To build a stronger foundation, Thrive addressed core site performance and on-page structure. Page speed improvements and Core Web Vitals fixes helped stabilize the site technically.
On-page SEO cleanup involved refining title tags, metadata, schema and internal linking. This ensured consistency across priority pages. The updates were monitored through monthly SEO health checks to maintain long-term site quality.
Blog and Content Restructure
A full-scale audit of the blog uncovered significant content inefficiencies. Thrive consolidated overlapping posts, redirected outdated pages and curated a leaner content library focused on business-relevant topics.
High-value service pages were refreshed with improved structure and keyword alignment. This significantly boosted their potential to rank for targeted industry terms.
Commercial Keyword Targeting
The strategy deliberately steered away from general and consumer-focused search traffic. Instead, Thrive built keyword maps around core commercial and industrial services and tied those terms to specific metro areas, even where physical offices weren’t present. This shift brought in traffic from decision-makers, not browsers.
Authority Growth
Thrive built high-quality backlinks from domains with authority scores of 50 and above to support long-term search visibility. Harmful or irrelevant links were disavowed to protect domain health, and ongoing link audits ensured the client’s backlink profile remained competitive in their industry niche.
Together, these efforts formed a cohesive strategy that re-centered the client’s web presence around clarity and intent.
