Bail Bonds Technical SEO: 8-Point DR Boost + Traffic Gains
This case study tells the story of how we achieved an 8-point DR (Domain Rating) increase and a 24% rise in traffic in only 3 months for a bail bonds business in Florida.
The bail bonds industry is extremely competitive, especially online. It’s also localized, meaning you’re up against other bail bond businesses in your immediate area, of which there are likely many!
Thus, high rankings and visibility on search engines like Google are essential to achieve consistent success.
After all, bail bonds aren’t something you spend much time comparing providers for, as the need tends to be urgent and immediate, meaning most prospects will click on the first result they come across.
The client we’re focusing on today was getting outranked by local competitors, something which was negatively impacting their bottom line.
Yet, after signing up for our managed SEO service and receiving a technical audit early in the campaign (which we highly recommend), they were able to turn the tables.
They now rank in the #1 organic spot for money-generating keywords like ‘orange county bail bonds orlando’ and ‘orlando 24-hour bail’, just to name a few:
They also saw a major increase in their Domain Rating, which represents how trusted their domain is by Google, something that’s essential for top rankings.
How were we able to achieve these results using primarily technical SEO?
You’ll have to keep reading to find out!
The Client: An Experienced Bail Bonds Service in Florida
This particular client runs a 24/7 bail bonds service that serves the Orlando, Florida, area.
They have 12 years of experience and are renowned for their flexible payment plans, timely support, and quick releases.
Yet, there’s no shortage of competition in the Orlando bail bonds market (and surrounding areas).
Such is the case with many cities around the US, so the local search landscape is highly competitive.
Countless other bail bonds services compete for the aforementioned keyword ‘orlando 24-hour bail’ and related terms to drum up business. While our client was by no means doing terribly, there was plenty of room for improvement, and they knew it.
They also knew they had various technical issues plaguing their website, such as broken links and crawling errors.
These types of issues inevitably occur on websites after certain periods of time, which is why regular technical audits are so important.
The client got in touch with us for a free consultation after hearing good things, and we agreed a HOTH X campaign (our 100% managed SEO service) alongside a Technical SEO Audit was what they needed to achieve their goals.
The Strategy: HOTH X Plus a Technical Audit During Month 2 of the Campaign
We always recommend that clients receive a technical audit as early as possible during an SEO campaign, and this scenario was no exception.
Our team carried out the audit during the 2nd month of the managed campaign, and we would go on to resolve all the issues that we found.
What do our technical audits consist of?
There are two stages.
First, we needed access to the client’s Google Search Console (GSC) account.
Once we had their credentials, we gave their website a head-to-toe audit that covered the following:
- Site speed and performance (leads to a better user experience)
- Crawlability and indexing
- Optimizing meta tags and schema markup (crucial for appearing in Google Rich Snippets and AI Overviews)
- Site architecture (ensuring the site has a logical architecture that’s easy for users and crawlers to navigate)
- Link architecture (checking for broken backlinks and missing internal links)
Stage two was to present the client with a concise report covering everything we found.
Here’s an overview of the most pressing technical issues that we discovered:
Sitemap issues
Problems with the client’s sitemap received the highest priority because they posed the most significant threat to their site performance.
Your sitemap helps Google better understand your website’s structure, but it must be formatted properly to work.
In this client’s case, some of their files used HTTP headers instead of HTTPS, which was causing errors. Google prefers HTTPS, and it’s more secure.
Besides that, they had 13 non-indexable URLs in their sitemap file that needed to go.
Robots.txt
Their robots.txt file (which tells Google which pages to crawl and index) included a subdomain that featured the same content as the main domain.
This was a waste of their crawl budget, so we recommended not indexing that particular subdomain (it’s crucial to save crawl budgets for important promotional pages).
Broken links (404 Not Found)
During our audit, we uncovered 20 broken links on the client’s site with the 4xx status code. Broken links can cause valuable content to disappear from the search results.
Since they were on our managed service, we went ahead and carried out all the fixes ourselves (normally, clients have the option to either use our team or handle the fixes internally).
The Results: Higher Domain Authority, 24% More Traffic, Top-Ranking Keywords
We’re here to tell you that technical audits can yield tangible results on your SEO.
Just 3 months after implementing the client’s fixes, their Domain Rating score improved by 8 points, they saw 24% more traffic, and they began ranking for more keywords.
As you can see from their Ahrefs data, there were improvements across the board:
Here’s what their traffic looked like during that time:
Here’s another look at organic traffic:
As mentioned before, they’re now ranking in the #1 organic position for crucial money-making keywords related to bail bonds in Orlando.
Do you want to achieve results like this for your bail bonds business?
Then, you need to check out our Technical SEO Services today!
