Case Study: Cool Kids AC, Heat & Plumbing

JJ wanted more calls...

He just wasn’t sure how to get enough of them to fuel his business.

He was transitioning away from working for a big HVAC company in his area to starting his own business.

And his biggest problem was attracting new customers.

Luckily, he already had a base of small customers who followed him to his new company, and found some success hustling on Facebook to get work...

But he knew he had to get A LOT of calls to scale up.

And as a one-man show, it was hard for him to continue trying to hustle to get work AND service his existing customers.

Those are two full-time jobs in and of themselves.

That’s when he started working with us.

How Cool Kids Took on Huge HVAC Companies in Texas As a Startup (and Actually Won Business)

The competition in Round Rock, Texas is fierce.

Summers are sweltering hot, and there are tons of big companies that have a huge grip on the market.

But when we started working with Cool Kids, we noticed an opportunity in the market…

Only a few of the big brands were actually doing SEO well.

…which is a trend we’ve since noticed in just about every other market we’ve worked in.

Only a few companies are doing a great job. The rest are accidentally ranking well.

And that means it's often not as hard to get those glorious "map pack" rankings in Google as you think.

IF...you have the right strategy.

For Cool Kids, this meant getting to the first page in Google when someone in the area searched “ac repair round rock” or “ac repair near me” was actually much less difficult than the competition in the market would suggest.

So, there was a HUGE opportunity to rank in the top 10 and generate a heck of a lot of calls.

And after 3-4 months of the process we implemented (which I’m about to reveal), they ended up grabbing a spot in the top 7.

The result?

He had his first 100-call month in his first full summer with these rankings.

And now after working with together for several years, he routinely sees 300-400 calls per month in the summer.

The 5 Key Strategies We Implemented to Secure Top 3 Rankings

1. Site Optimization

We did a ton of work on the Cool Kids website to create specific service area pages and optimize their entire website to make sure their SEO foundation was strong.

This isn’t the most glamorous part of the SEO process, but it’s critical nonetheless.

Without clearly telling Google what you do and the locations you serve, there’s no chance you’re going to see SEO results.

And the way you do this is through a careful combination of:

• How successful HVAC companies in your area structure their sites
• How you want to differentiate yourself
• Once you find the right formula for your situation, you’ll be able to create a rock-solid foundation to build from.

We built an intricate site architecture that had a combination of service pages and service area pages.

Then, we made sure they were all internally linked and had supporting content so we could show Google ALL of the services we wanted to rank for...and all the places we offered them.

When you do this right, you can rank for specific sub-services even if people are 5+ miles away from your physical location.

2. Citation Building

We worked for several months to get Cool Kids AC listed in many massive directories.

This is a pretty standard local SEO practice.

But we did it a bit differently than most, and it worked.

We monitored each competitor and noticed all the citations they were getting every month, and we went and got the same ones.

We also constantly looked for new citations to secure.

Most local SEOs simply build the 30-40 core citations and call it a day.

That’s a mistake.

Citation building is an ongoing activity that shows Google your presence in certain service areas. The more you get, the better your relevance is in the eyes in the search engine.

And now, with LLMs in the picture, this becomes even more important.

You have to constantly keep your big profiles updated and drive reviews to them. ChatGPT search, for instance, will pull things like Yelp or BBB frequently.

The more quality sources it finds you in (and the more good reviews you have), the more likely it is that it'll recommend you.

3. Link Building

This is a key activity most SEOs these days don’t do.

It’s similar to citation building, in that you’re getting links from other sites to yours, but this is more focused on getting links from associations in your area, HVAC blogs, and extremely reputable websites.

Even just a few of these can power up your SEO fast.

But they’re hard to get…unless you know what you’re doing.

We built a handful of great links for Cool Kids that helped them rank much faster than usual. And we’re now acquiring more on an ongoing basis.

Specifically, we were able to get links from HUGE sites like The Spruce, Southern Living, AOL, and Homes & Gardens.

4. Google My Business Optimization & Posting

Your GMB profile is the lifeblood of your local SEO presence.

It’s where you get your calls.

People see you in the map pack or on the listings and click to call you directly from the search results.

And the more optimized your GMB profile is, the better you’ll perform (when you’re also doing the other strategies on this list).

With Cool Kids, we did a deep dive to discover the best:

• Business category to use
• Services to list
• Business description
• And ways to use photos and content

5. Review Generation

Reviews are obviously critical, but they can often be hard to get...especially if you're asking people for them manually.

Over the past 5 years, we've created and refined an automated sequence that gets reviews on autopilot.

For Cool Kids, that meant somewhere between 20-40 reviews EACH MONTH.

That very quickly supercharged their Google Business Profiles, and therefore their map pack rankings.

The Results...

• Top 3 rankings across Round Rock in a fiercely competitive market for "ac repair round rock", "ac repair", and "ac repair near me".
• 200+ calls per month from SEO traffic...even in shoulder seasons (with summer months reaching 300-400 calls).
• Reaching $2M+ in revenue and acquiring a plumbing business after starting as a one-man shop.