01
Commercial intent
Content addressed pickup eligibility, cardboard value, scrap-metal services and operational questions tied to real service demand.
Local business · Commercial recycling · Updated through Aug 31, 2026
Local SEO & Content Case Study
How Willis Recycling Grew to 181.5K Google Impressions—and Won Major Commercial Contracts
The Mighty Quill turned near-invisible search visibility into a compounding discovery engine for a Sacramento recycling company. The result: 1,614 Google clicks, measurable AI referrals and client-reported contracts with Macy’s, Lowe’s and other businesses.
Source data verified in Google Search Console and GA4 on September 8, 2026
181,525Google impressions
1,614Google clicks
50.1%Sessions from search + named AI
The client
A mobile recycling partner built for busy California businesses
Willis Recycling is a family-owned, Sacramento-based mobile recycling service. The company provides on-site pickup for scrap metal, cardboard bales, e-waste and equipment, serving businesses across the Sacramento region and Northern California.
When the campaign began in September 2025, co-owner Tavon Willis described the business as having “a particularly slow year.” Search visibility offered a clear opportunity to connect the company with businesses already looking for its services.
The baseline · Sep 3–14, 2025
Visibility was limited and average position sat on page three.
8Google clicks
584Google impressions
32.0Average position
49/dayImpression pace
What we did
A practical content engine for high-intent recycling searches
Beginning September 15, The Mighty Quill built a consistent search-led content program around the services, locations and questions most likely to matter to facility managers, contractors, retailers and operations teams.
02
Local relevance
Pages connected broad recycling topics with Sacramento, the Central Valley and California-specific needs.
03
Compounding coverage
Consistent publishing, internal links and topic clusters expanded Willis beyond branded discovery into a much wider query footprint.
The results
Google Search Console: a clean before-and-after
Through August 31, the campaign recorded more than ten times the baseline daily impression pace, while average position improved from 32.0 to 11.8 across a far broader mix of searches.
10.6× more impressions per day
The completed campaign period reached 181,525 impressions and 1,614 clicks through August 31, averaging 517 impressions per day versus 49 per day in the 12-day baseline. The image above is explicitly retained as the August 15 verification capture.
Month by month
The compounding growth timeline
Growth was not perfectly linear. Early months built the foundation, visibility accelerated in winter and the site sustained more than 25,000 impressions in every completed month from May through August.
Sep 15–30
1,866
22 clicks · 117 impressions/day
PartialOct 2025
2,407
34 clicks · 78/day
Nov 2025
2,690
51 clicks · 90/day
Dec 2025
4,973
59 clicks · 160/day
Jan 2026
10,574
138 clicks · 341/day
Feb 2026
14,336
136 clicks · 512/day
Mar 2026
15,913
159 clicks · 513/day
Apr 2026
21,154
161 clicks · 705/day
May 2026
27,445
192 clicks · 885/day
25K+ streak beginsJun 2026
27,483
253 clicks · strongest click month
Jul 2026
26,931
208 clicks · 869/day
Aug 2026
25,753
201 clicks · 831/day
4th straight 25K+Real-world impact
Visibility that supported real commercial opportunities
According to the client’s testimonial, Willis Recycling secured work from Macy’s, Lowe’s and several other businesses after being discovered through Google and AI-assisted search. These outcomes are client-reported and are not presented as a controlled attribution study.
“They found us through Google.”
Co-owner Tavon Willis explains how stronger discovery helped bring in larger commercial conversations.
Macy’sLowe’s+ other businesses
Top-performing content
One article generated 579 clicks and outperformed the homepage
579 clicks
The “Cardboard Bale Recycling California” guide became Willis Recycling’s leading Google entry point, earning 242 more clicks than the homepage during the campaign.
49,926GSC impressions
7.4Average position
35.9%Share of campaign clicks
| Top page | Clicks | Impressions | Avg. position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cardboard bale recycling guide | 579 | 49,926 | 7.4 |
| Homepage | 337 | 20,758 | 26.3 |
| Free scrap-metal pickup guide | 230 | 25,169 | 9.6 |
| Commercial scrap-metal pickup | 94 | 10,747 | 19.8 |
| Scrap copper pickup guide | 77 | 21,249 | 9.5 |
Traffic mix
Search and named AI sources accounted for 50.1% of all sessions
From September 3, 2025 through August 31, 2026, Willis Recycling recorded 4,641 GA4 sessions. Conventional organic sources contributed 2,167 sessions, while identifiable named AI sources added 160. Together, those discovery channels generated 2,327 sessions.
Google organic1,933
Bing organic104
Yahoo organic95
DuckDuckGo + Ecosia35
Named AI sources160
ChatGPT 146Perplexity 8Copilot 3NotebookLM 2Gemini 1
The Analytics image is the August 15 verification capture; the adjacent source totals reflect the completed period through August 31.
1,000 query rows
The campaign expanded Willis Recycling from limited early visibility to Google Search Console’s 1,000-row query interface cap. This is an interface limit—not a claim of exactly 1,000 ranking keywords.
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