Case study · client, in progress
Outdoor advertising: taking a signage maker into search before peak season
A signage and outdoor advertising maker in a million-plus city in the Russian Far East. Orders come from maps and referrals, while search brings nobody, even though 1,600 monthly searches sit right next door. Published in real time: the diagnosis is done, results will follow at honest checkpoints.
- 167
- visits in the 91 days before the start
- 0
- service queries from search
- ~1,600
- monthly searches: the demand nearby
- 13 → 1
- opened the form → one submitted
A classic regional manufacturer
Ten years on the market, its own workshop, orders through word of mouth, maps and classifieds. The site is built on a constructor and barely exists in search: the owner's phone book sells, the site doesn't.
The owner shared analytics access. I broke down a quarter of traffic by source and query, measured demand through Wordstat and checked the competitors in the results. Now the numbers.
Six facts from the review
- 01
Half the traffic is paid
106 of 215 visits in the quarter came from paid ads. Free search brought 38, in a million-plus city with live demand.
- 02
Search only brings people who know the name
Every decoded query is branded: the company name, its phone, its email. Not a single query about signs or plaques. Search brings zero new customers.
- 03
Demand next door, pages missing
About 1,600 commercial searches a month: signs, plaques, banners, permits. Half of them have no matching page on the site at all.
- 04
The site speaks the wrong language
People search for a sign, the site sells outdoor advertising. A five-fold difference in query volume. A whole section is named with a word nobody in the city searches for.
- 05
The form loses 12 out of 13
Thirteen people hit "get a quote" in a quarter; one submitted the form. The rest left for a messenger, where there's no tracking and no history.
- 06
Ads not linked to analytics
Paid ads keep running, but the spend isn't visible in analytics. Nobody knows what one inquiry costs.
The plan and its status
Step 0 · done
- A full numbers-first review delivered to the owner
- A demand map from Wordstat with negative keywords
- A page plan for every service
Step 1 · in progress
- A new site: a dedicated page per service
- Headlines in the language of demand, with the city
- 2GIS and Yandex Business profiles
- Linking ads to analytics and one unified "inquiry" goal
Step 2 · planned
- Growth on the city's commercial queries
- Case pages built on real installations
- Moving ad spend from rare words to frequent ones
What's next and when the numbers come
Demand for signage in this city doubles in January and February, when businesses open and relocate. The plan is built so the site is already ranking by the peak: technical work and pages in summer, growth in autumn, season in winter.
I'm publishing this case before the results on purpose: this way you can see what the method looks like, not just a polished ending.
Half the visits were bought. Organic search sits in third place, right behind maps and directories nobody was managing.
Data: the project's Yandex.Metrica, April · July 2026, published in anonymized form
Honest status
What I'm not claiming yet: lead growth. The first checkpoint on positions is November 2026, on inquiries after the January season. The company name will appear here together with the first results and the owner's sign-off.
Is your site invisible in search too?
Send me the address. I'll break down your traffic, demand and competitors and show where your inquiries are hiding. The review is free.