When Samantha Wise of East + West Designs reached out to me, she was in the middle of a big shift in her business.

She wanted to move toward working fully virtually, she was creating a new semi-custom wedding stationery collection, and she knew that if she wanted to grow her business in a more sustainable way, her website needed to be easier for people to find on Google.

She had already dabbled in SEO before, but like a lot of small business owners, she felt like she was mostly guessing.

And honestly, that’s such a common place to be.

A lot of business owners know SEO matters, but they’re not always sure what to fix, what’s actually worth focusing on, or how to make sure they’re attracting the right people through search.

And that’s what they have me for!

Where this stationer was leaving leads behind

Before we started working together, Samantha was already getting some traffic from Google, which was a great sign. But most of that traffic was going to blog posts, not the website pages that were actually meant to convert visitors into inquiries.

So while Google was finding her website, it wasn’t understanding and ranking her services for the kinds of searches potential clients were making. That meant there was a lot of untapped potential in her website.

It also had some user experience and SEO issues that were making it harder for both search engines and visitors to navigate the website well, including:

• Mobile site speed issues
• Large images slowing down performance
• Menu and navigation improvements needed
• Missing image alt text
• Title tags and meta descriptions that needed optimization
• Website copy that could do more to support rankings
• Multiple H1 headings on pages
• A Google Business Profile that wasn’t fully optimized

None of these things are “bad” but, combined, it meant that Samantha’s SEO had a lot of opportunity for growth. And because she already had quality content and some established trust with Google and Bing, the improvements we planned to make could make a big difference.

How we improved her SEO

For Samantha’s project, I made both front-end (the content and other things you can see) and back-end (technical, behind-the-scenes SEO things) changes so that users, search engines, and AI would all have a clearer understanding of what the website was about. 

Over the course of six weeks, I completed:

• Fixing site speed problems
• Making navigation and user experience changes on pages and recent blog posts
• Increasing font size and improving accessibility
• Streamlining the menu
• Optimizing calls-to-action
• Keyword research
• Optimizing image alt text
• Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions
• Writing and optimizing additional website copy
• Fixing heading structure so each page had only one H1
• Optimizing the Google Business Profile
• Creating a 12-topic editorial calendar with researched keywords

A lot of SEO projects are really about helping all the pieces of a site work together better. It’s not usually one magical fix. It’s improving the technical setup, the copy, the keyword strategy, and the user experience so Google, Bing, and AI engines can better understand the site and visitors are more likely to stay, click around, and inquire.

Why Samantha saw results fast

One reason Samantha started seeing results relatively quickly is because her site wasn’t starting from zero. She already had blog posts that were ranking well on Google, which meant Google had already built some trust with her website.

That’s important because SEO results do usually take time. In many cases, it can take a few months to start seeing bigger improvements in rankings, traffic, and inquiries.

But in Samantha’s case, because her site already had some traction, optimizing the website pages helped her start showing up more for keywords related to her actual services, especially around custom and semi-custom wedding stationery.

So instead of mostly being found for informational blog content, her site became better positioned to bring in people who were actively looking for what she offers.

The result: regular inquiries from Google

About a month after we wrapped up the project, Samantha emailed me with exciting news: she had gotten an inquiry for her new semi-custom stationery collection from someone who found her on Google! 

Before that point, Google wasn’t a consistent source of quality leads for her. They were often price shoppers who weren’t a good fit for her high-quality stationery designs.

Since our SEO work, Samantha now gets inquiries from Google regularly and that those leads are actually converting. This reinforced something I say often: SEO isn’t about getting more traffic, it’s about getting the right traffic.

What Samantha said about the experience

One of the things Samantha shared that meant a lot to me was how relieved she felt during the process.

She said:

“Throughout our collaboration, she worked so intentionally and based on actual research, which helped me trust her + her expertise that much more. It also felt like such a sigh of relief to have her in my corner.”

She also mentioned how helpful it was that I didn’t just make changes and disappear. I gave her resources, keywords, and instructions so she could continue maintaining and growing what we had built. That’s always really important to me because I want clients to understand what I’m doing and why.

SEO can feel really confusing and overwhelming, and I never want clients to feel like they’re left in the dark.

The takeaway

Samantha already had a beautiful brand and strong services creating gorgeous stationery. She just needed her website to do a better job of communicating that to Google and to the people searching for wedding stationery.

By improving the SEO foundation of her site, we were able to help her website rank better for service-related keywords and start bringing in more qualified leads from Google.

And now, instead of feeling like SEO is just a guessing game, she has a stronger website foundation and a clearer path forward.

If your site is already getting some traffic but not turning that traffic into inquiries, or if you know your services should be easier to find on Google, SEO improvements like these can make a huge difference over time.

And sometimes, they can start working even sooner than you think 🙂

If you want help improving your SEO so your website can attract more of the right clients, reach out today, and let’s chat!