Background

Stephco Cleaning & Restoration has been serving the South Shore and Greater Boston area for years, offering a wide range of residential and commercial services — from carpet and floor care to water removal, mold remediation, vandalism restoration, and more. They’re a full-service operation with the expertise to handle everything from routine janitorial work to complex restoration jobs.

When they came to Interactive Palette in May 2025, the problem wasn’t their reputation. It was untapped potential. Despite a solid service offering and real geographic reach, they weren’t showing up in local search for most of the services their potential customers were actively looking for.

The Challenge

Stephco’s SEO situation at the start of the engagement told a familiar story for service businesses with broad offerings and multiple locations:

• Most target keywords ranked in the 30s–60s, or didn’t appear in Google’s top 300 results at all
• Organic traffic was modest and not growing
• Their domain authority was low, which made ranking for competitive terms harder
• They had no location-specific landing pages to capture searches tied to their actual service areas
• The website was missing structured optimization — no schema markup, inconsistent metadata, limited internal linking

The gap between what they offered and what Google could find was significant. For a business that competes on local trust and proximity, that gap costs real customers.

The Strategy

Interactive Palette onboarded Stephco starting with 20 carefully selected, high-intent keywords targeting their core service areas. The approach was built around a few principles:

Hyperlocal keyword targeting. Rather than chasing broad, competitive terms, we focused on location-paired service searches where Stephco could realistically rank and where intent was clearly tied to hiring — the kind of searches that bring in actual leads, not just traffic.

Technical foundation first. During onboarding, we optimized metadata across key pages, implemented schema markup, cleaned up URL structures, and built out a strategic internal linking framework.

Location-based landing pages. We created dedicated pages for several of Stephco’s core service areas — giving them a structured, indexed presence in towns where they were previously relying on a single catch-all page.

Ongoing content production. As part of the monthly retainer, we published keyword-optimized blog posts each month to support long-tail visibility and overall domain growth.

Backlink building. We built and maintained backlinks across relevant platforms to strengthen Stephco’s standing in local search results and on Google Maps.

About midway through the engagement, given the strong early performance, we expanded the program from 20 to 40 keywords — adding a second set targeting additional service areas and service types where Stephco had clear room to grow.

The Results

Keyword Rankings

The original 20 keywords tell the clearest story. At the start of the engagement, most either ranked in the 30s–60s or weren’t visible in Google’s top 300 at all. As of May 2026, every single one ranks in position 1 or 2.

The second batch of 20 keywords added mid-campaign is also moving. Several have already reached page 1 within just a few months, with the rest continuing to climb.

Traffic Growth

Over the past year (June 2025 – June 2026), stephcocleaning.com generated 25,931 total sessions — an 82.77% increase compared to the prior year.

Organic search grew nearly 33% year over year, with a 58% engagement rate — meaning visitors coming from search are staying, browsing, and taking action. Organic sessions are also producing consistent key event completions, including contact form fills and phone calls.

Direct traffic grew 36.55% as well, a signal that improved search visibility is building broader brand familiarity over time.

Domain Strength

Stephco’s domain authority score grew from 15 to 19 over the course of the engagement — a meaningful gain that reflects the cumulative impact of consistent backlink building, content production, and on-page optimization. Their organic keyword footprint and referring domain count have both expanded steadily as well.

SEO Works Better When the Client Does Too

The results above reflect a year of focused SEO work — but it’s worth being transparent about something: Stephco didn’t rely on SEO alone.

Throughout this engagement, they’ve been active in their own marketing efforts outside of what Interactive Palette manages. That kind of business-owner engagement matters. When a company is out there building its reputation, staying active in the community, and driving awareness through its own channels, that activity reinforces what SEO is doing — and the combined effect is greater than either would produce alone.

We’ve written about this directly: SEO is a powerful foundation, but it works best as part of a broader traffic strategy. Stephco is a real-world example of what that looks like in practice.

One Year In

Stephco Cleaning & Restoration went from ranking in the 30s–60s (or not at all) for most of their target services to holding the top position across the majority of their keyword list. Their website now attracts significantly more organic traffic, more engaged visitors, and measurable leads — from a market that was always there but couldn’t find them.

The work continues. The newer keyword set is still climbing, and there’s more service-area coverage to build out. But the foundation is solid and the results are real.

If your local service business is struggling to show up where your customers are searching, we’d love to help. Get in touch with Interactive Palette to talk through what an SEO strategy could look like for you.