Before Profit Labs™, this U.S.-based HR consulting team had a solid business but a thin organic search presence. They were getting about 8 RFPs a month from organic, which meant search was helping, but not at the level it should have for a national firm. They had only 19 page-one rankings, just 2 top-3 positions, and a Domain Rating of 24. The main friction was visibility: they had service expertise and a credible offer, but their site was not consistently showing up for the terms buyers actually used when looking for HR consulting, compliance help, and outsourced support. They reached out because paid channels were expensive, referrals were uneven month to month, and they wanted search to become a steadier source of qualified pipeline.
## What we changed
First, we rebuilt the content plan around search intent. Instead of publishing broad thought leadership pieces, we mapped content to the actual services and problems prospects searched for. That included rewriting core service pages, building out supporting pages around HR compliance, employee relations, handbook support, and outsourced HR, and adding location-relevant modifiers where they made sense for a national audience. We also tightened internal linking so authority flowed into the pages most likely to drive RFPs.
Next, we worked on authority. The site needed stronger signals to compete nationally, so we ran a focused backlink campaign tied to pages with clear commercial value. That meant earning placements on relevant business and HR-adjacent sites, cleaning up weak links where needed, and improving anchor text distribution so rankings could grow without looking forced. The goal was not just more links, but better links pointed at the right pages.
We also addressed technical issues that were holding pages back. We improved crawl paths, cleaned up indexation noise, updated metadata at scale, and fixed page structure problems that made it harder for search engines to understand priority pages. We spent time on site speed and mobile usability too, since a large share of decision-makers were finding the brand on mobile before returning later to submit an inquiry.
Because this was on the national SEO track, local work was not the main driver, but we still handled foundational brand consistency. That included tightening key citations and making sure core business information matched across major directories, which helped reduce trust issues and supported overall entity signals.
## Results
After 6 months, organic RFPs grew from 8 per month to 31 per month. That is an increase of nearly 288%, and in practical terms it meant the practice was getting almost four times as many inbound opportunities from search without having to buy each visit through ads. Page-one keyword rankings climbed from 19 to 87, while top-3 rankings moved from 2 to 14. That shift matters because top-3 positions are where clicks and calls start to become consistent.
Domain Rating improved from 24 to 39, which gave the brand a stronger base to rank new pages faster and compete for tougher national terms. The business impact was straightforward: more qualified form fills, more discovery calls, and a healthier pipeline from people already looking for HR support. Instead of relying so heavily on referrals and paid traffic, this team had a search channel that was starting to produce predictable demand.
## 90-day plan from here
Over the next quarter, the focus is on pushing more page-one terms into the top 3, expanding content into adjacent high-intent service areas, and building deeper topical clusters around compliance and outsourced HR. We will also keep adding high-quality links to the pages already gaining traction, refresh early winners to improve conversion rates, and tighten reporting around which keyword groups turn into the best RFPs so the campaign keeps moving toward revenue, not just rankings.