How Bad SEO Can Wreck a Local Business
One of the fastest ways to destroy a local business’s visibility is by doing bad SEO. We recently saw this happen when a virtual assistant (VA) working on the Plumbing Pros website spent hundreds of hours creating content that looked productive on paper—but ended up tanking performance in search.
This case has become one of our favorite teaching examples at High Rise Influence because it highlights a problem that happens all the time: people chase SEO volume instead of real value.
The Problem: A VA Who Thought More Pages = More SEO
When Dylan Haugen and I audited the project, it seemed fine at first glance. Traffic was up. The domain rating was higher. Keyword counts had increased. But when we looked deeper, those metrics told a very different story.
The VA had spent weeks creating location service pages for every nearby town—Helertown, Bath, Nazareth, Wind Gap, and more. Each page used the same copy, just swapping the city name:
“Plumbing services in Wind Gap.”
“Reliable plumbing in Wind Gap.”
“Expert plumbing for Wind Gap homeowners.”
That pattern repeated dozens of times. No photos, no examples, no videos, no proof of actual work—just empty repetition.
Why It Failed Miserably
Google doesn’t reward quantity—it rewards E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. These pages had none of that.
They were:
- Repetitive: Nearly identical sentences across dozens of URLs.
- Shallow: No unique examples or local credibility.
- Misleading: Designed to “trick” search engines instead of showing real expertise.
The result? Dozens of pages with zero traffic, zero rankings, and zero conversions—despite the VA billing over 100 hours for this project.
What Real SEO Looks Like
For local businesses, SEO success isn’t about how many pages you publish—it’s about how much proof you can show.
That means:
- Short video clips of real jobs, like “Today we’re fixing a pressure tank in Helertown.”
- Before-and-after project photos.
- Reviews from real customers in specific towns.
That’s the kind of content Google can verify and users actually trust.
The Framework: Metrics → Analysis → Action
At High Rise, we teach MAA — Metrics, Analysis, Action.
- Metrics: The site showed traffic, but not the right kind.
- Analysis: Content was repetitive, low-quality, and off-target.
- Action: Remove the filler, replace it with real examples and proof of work.
SEO doesn’t have to be complicated—it just has to be real.
What Every Young Marketer Should Learn
This case is a reminder that doing more work doesn’t mean doing better work. The VA wasn’t lazy; he just misunderstood what matters. SEO isn’t about making more pages—it’s about showing real experience.
When you build marketing around reality—actual projects, people, and results—you’re not just optimizing for Google. You’re building trust that lasts.
If you’re a young adult—or know one—who wants to learn how to apply strategies like this for real businesses, join High Rise Academy. We teach hands-on, proven methods that turn real work into marketing that ranks and converts.