Creative Agency SEO Case Study
Top-3 keywords from 3 to 14 of 20 tracked. #1 for “brand strategy agency”. #2 in San Francisco for a 49,500-search term.
By Andy Wang · founder of SERP Masters, ran this engagementB.S. Pharmacology, UC Santa Barbara · Pokémon, Disney, Mastercard, Mailchimp · About Andy →
This creative agency SEO case study covers Mortar, an advertising, branding and creative agency in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tracked in Keyword.com for San Francisco, the agency grew its top-3 keywords from 3 to 14 of 20 (+367%), took #1 for “brand strategy agency” and “creative agency san francisco”, and reached #2 for “advertising agency”, a term with 49,500 searches a month nationally.
of 20 tracked+367%top-3 growth
since tracking start#2for a 49,500-search
term, San Francisco
Figures describe one engagement within the window and tool named beside each one. Rankings move with competitors, algorithm updates and crawl timing, so results from one site do not predict results for another, and no ranking outcome can be projected with certainty.
Agencies are hard to rank because every competitor is a marketer. This engagement was built on title tags rewritten from Ahrefs SERP analysis and content around agency topics, and tracked in Keyword.com for the San Francisco market.
The client
Mortar is an advertising, branding and creative agency in the San Francisco Bay Area that describes itself as “an advertising agency and a bonding agent.” It works with technology, healthcare, education and destination brands, providing identity and branding, creative development, strategic messaging, media planning and buying, and research and analytics. Its client work includes Cisco, VMware, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, the Exploratorium and Reno Tahoe USA.
The starting point
Three of 20 tracked keywords sat in the top 3 when tracking began. “brand strategy agency” and “creative agency san francisco” were at #5, and “advertising agency” was at #5 in San Francisco results.
The results
Not every tracked term rose. One branding term fell out of the tracked range in the same period, and the page says so rather than leaving it out.
What the work covered
What this means for agency SEO
An agency ranks on the same rules as its clients: one page per term, titles that match the SERP, and content that answers the buyer. The web design agency case shows the same pattern in a smaller market; the scope lives on the on-page SEO page.
Figures describe one engagement within the window and tool named beside each one. Rankings move with competitors, algorithm updates and crawl timing, so results from one site do not predict results for another, and no ranking outcome can be projected with certainty.