A fence contractor SEO case study: twelve times the clicks from Google across Metro Detroit
eastsidefencemi.com, the fence contractor website behind the numbers below.
Fencing and home services | Warren and Metro Detroit, Michigan | Local SEO, Google Business Profile, on-page
Recent performance measured against the preceding period of equal length.
| 12x more clicksfrom Google | +17.7 places gained inaverage position | 10 keywords now rankingin the top three | 0% of the map wherethey are invisible |
The client
Eastside Fence is a third generation, family owned fence contractor on Dequindre Road in Warren, Michigan, serving homeowners and commercial property owners across Metro Detroit. Forty years in business, a two year labor warranty, a VMA certified rating and more than eighty five star Google reviews behind them.
Four decades of reputation on the ground. Almost none of it visible in search.
The challenge
Search Console laid the problem out precisely. Eastside was appearing in results, but at an average position of 33.9, which is roughly page four. Across the preceding period the site converted 25,800 impressions into just 82 clicks.
For a fence contractor, that is the difference between existing and being found. Nobody scrolls to page four to book a fence, so almost none of that visibility was turning into fence leads.
The underlying issue was not volume, it was quality of ranking. The site carried a long tail of positions buried far down the results, spread thin across terms that were never going to convert, while the searches that actually produce work in Metro Detroit sat out of reach. Local SEO for fence companies lives or dies on a small number of high intent local terms, and Eastside was not competitive on them.
| The problem in one line Eastside did not need more impressions. It needed to move from page four into the positions where a Metro Detroit homeowner actually clicks and calls. Everything below follows from that. |
The strategy
The work targeted rank quality rather than raw coverage, in order of impact on the phone ringing.
- Google Business Profile optimization first. For a fence installer the map pack is where the jobs begin. A homeowner searches, taps one of the top three and calls. GBP optimization for fence installers came before anything else: correct primary category, complete services and service areas across Metro Detroit, and a profile kept active so Google reads it as a live, trusted business.
- Consolidated relevance instead of chasing volume. An average position in the thirties usually means a site is spread across too many low value terms and competitive on none of them. We focused the fence contractor website on the services and areas that generate real work, so each page had a specific job rather than competing for everything at once.
- Rebuilt how the site presents in results. A click-through rate of 0.3 percent is partly position and partly presentation. Titles and descriptions were rewritten to lead with the service and the location, so the listing earns the click once it reaches a page where clicks are available.
- Leaned on four decades of trust signals. Forty years in business, a third generation family name, a labor warranty and more than eighty five star reviews are strong differentiators in a crowded market. We made sure those signals were visible in the profile and on the site rather than buried.
- Tracked Google Maps SEO from a full grid, not one point. A map ranking changes depending on where the searcher is standing, so we track nine commercial fence keywords from a grid of coordinates spanning the service area. That is what turns fence GBP results into something measurable rather than something claimed.
Result: twelve times the clicks from Google
First party data, straight from Google Search Console, comparing the recent period against the preceding period of equal length. Not an estimate.
| METRIC | PRECEDING PERIOD | RECENT PERIOD | CHANGE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 82 | 1,010 | 12x |
| Impressions | 25,800 | 160,000 | +520% |
| Click-through rate | 0.3% | 0.6% | +100% |
| Average position | 33.9 | 16.2 | +17.7 places |
Google Search Console. Recent period against the preceding period of equal length.
| The number that actually matters Impressions rose roughly six fold. Clicks rose twelve fold. Click growth ran to double the rate of impression growth, which is the signature of better positions rather than simply wider exposure. Moving the average from 33.9 to 16.2 is what turned 82 clicks into 1,010, and that is the difference a fence contractor feels as fence leads rather than as a chart. |
Result: rankings that actually earn clicks
Third party tracking shows where that position gain came from. Eastside is not ranking for more terms than before. It is ranking far better on the terms that matter.
| SEARCH VISIBILITY | START OF PERIOD | NOW |
|---|---|---|
| Keywords ranking in the top three | 1 | 10 |
| Keywords ranking in the top ten | 2 | 13 |
Ahrefs. Keywords holding a top ten position over time. The climb at the right of the chart is the current period.
| Fewer, better, and that is the point Top three rankings went from one to ten. This is what a focused fence content strategy looks like in the data: instead of a long tail of positions nobody ever sees, the site now holds a compact set of rankings in the places that generate clicks. For a fence contractor, ten keywords on the first three results is worth more than four hundred keywords on page five. |
Result: strong across the Metro Detroit map
We track nine commercial fence keywords across a grid of coordinates spanning the service area, refreshed on an ongoing basis. Each pin is a real search run from a real location. Green stars are number one rankings.
Live geo grid rank tracking, Eastside Fence.
| See it for yourself. This dashboard is live. Every figure on this page comes off one screen, and that screen is public. Open the live rank tracking dashboard |
Across the grid for “agricultural fencing”, Eastside holds high visibility in 71 percent of the service area at an average rank of 2.92, with the remaining 29 percent still in the middle of the map. Low visibility sits at zero, and so does the share of the grid where the business fails to appear at all. There is no point in the Metro Detroit service area where a homeowner can search and not find Eastside Fence.
| AVERAGE GOOGLE MAPS RANK, BY KEYWORD | RANK |
|---|---|
| agricultural fencing | 2.92 |
| wood fence installation | 4.08 |
| electric gate opener installation | 4.15 |
| fence installation | 4.24 |
| chain link fence installation | 4.33 |
| fence company | 4.71 |
| fence contractor | 4.89 |
| All nine tracked keywords | 5.15 |
Lower is better. The seven strongest tracked keywords all average inside the top five across the entire grid.
Want results like these?
Fence Marketing Xperts runs local SEO for fence companies, Google Business Profile optimization and content for fence contractors across the United States. If you are wondering how to get fence leads without buying them, this is what it looks like when the rankings do the work instead.
We will run a free geo grid scan on your business and show you exactly where you rank today, from every corner of your service area. Not an estimate. The real map.