How Ottawa Safe Drivers Ranked Top 3 in Just 4 Months

How we helped Ottawa Safe Drivers attract more students by restructuring their website and building high-quality backlinks.

View Problem
View Solution
View Results

The SEO Problem

Ottawa Safe Drivers is a Ministry-approved driving school in Ottawa that wanted to enrol more students through Local SEO.

An Ottawa Safe Drivers vehicle.

When Ottawa Safe Drivers approached us, they already had a well-established Google Business Profile that helped attract students. However, they were struggling to rank organically on Google.

Their goals were to:

Improve rankings for keywords that would drive student enrollment. They were not appearing organically for many important keywords.
Redesign the whole website to clearly show their services and make it easier for students to find what they need.
Consolidate service pages to ensure Google targets one page for each unique keyword.

Street sign featuring Ottawa Safe Drivers.

Our SEO Solution

1. Keyword Research & Competitor Analysis

Our team went through the keywords of all of their local competitors to find important opportunities.

We found a list of services Ottawa Safe Drivers could rank for, including terms like “Ottawa Driving School,” “MTO Approved Driving School,” and “Driving Lessons Ottawa.”
We also identified all the sub-locations we wanted to target for each service, like Barrhaven and Orleans.

2. On-Page Optimization

We revamped the entire site to make it more structured and visually appealing:

New Site Map: We collaborated with the Ottawa Safe Drivers team to restructure the website so that all services are easy to find.

Before and after: Improved menu structure making services easier to find.

Content Optimization: Using SurferSEO, we analyzed competitor pages to ensure each service page had the most relevant and optimized content possible.

Using SurferSEO to optimize the content for the home page.

Design Refresh: We updated the website's common elements to make it more modern and easy for students to use.

Before and after: Updated homepage design

3. Technical SEO Fixes

Using Screaming Frog, we identified and resolved numerous technical SEO issues:

Meta Descriptions and Page Titles: We updated these to make them more relevant to the targeted keywords for each page.
URL Optimization: We added location-specific terms to URLs to improve local SEO for Ottawa-based searches.

Example of location-specific URL to improve local SEO for Ottawa searches.

3. Local SEO & Link Building

We focused on obtaining links from authoritative Canadian and Ottawa-specific websites:

Directory Listings: Adding the site to Ottawa and national directories helped build website authority and improved their search rankings.
High-Authority Link: We built a high-quality, relevant link by securing a sponsorship with the Canada Safety Council as a member, increasing Ottawa Safe Drivers’ credibility with Google.

Our team got Ottawa Safe Drivers featured as a member on the Canada Safety Council website.

Our Results

Ranking position #3 for G2 and G Test Preparation Ottawa
Ranking on first page for Ottawa Driving School
Ranking position #3 for MTO Driving Schools Ottawa
Ranking position #4 for Road Test Preparation Ottawa
An increase of 418 positions in Google rankings across all tracked keywords
The website’s daily impressions rose by 167% (from 300 to 800), and daily clicks increased by 150% (from 8 to over 20) in just six months.

Impressions the keyword 'Ottawa Driving School,' showing an increase of over 1200% in visibility.

An increase of 418 positions in Google rankings across all tracked keywords

Current Google rankings as of Nov 4, 2024, showing each keyword’s position and improvement in ranking.

Nearly doubled organic traffic and referring domains through high-quality backlink acquisition.

Growth in organic keyword rankings, with a significant increase in keywords reaching the top 1-10 positions on Google.

Close
Search

Hit enter to search or ESC to close