Reversing a Multi-Year SEO Decline and Doubling Qualified Leads Case Study – ESWCompany.com

How ESW Company Restored Top Rankings and Achieved 2x Year-Over-Year Lead Growth

The Business

ESW Company operates in a segment of the market where credibility truly drives opportunity. As a Microsoft-focused consulting and development firm, ESW supports organizations implementing and optimizing SharePoint, Office 365, Power Apps, SQL, and related Microsoft technologies. Their engagements are complex, often high-value, and typically involve multiple decision-makers carefully evaluating expertise before initiating contact.

In this environment, organic search is not about brand exposure. It is about entering serious buying conversations. Decision-makers searching for terms like “SharePoint consultant,” “Office 365 migration services,” or “Power Apps development company” are usually deep in evaluation mode. These searches represent active pipeline potential, not casual browsing.

Between 2024 and early 2025, ESW’s organic performance deteriorated. Rankings slipped across high-value service terms. Traffic declined sharply, falling from approximately 19,900 sessions in January 2024 to roughly 4,008 by January 2025. More importantly, inbound inquiries declined alongside visibility.

For a consulting firm, that decline directly impacts revenue forecasting. When the search weakens, pipeline pressure follows quickly.

The Objective

The mandate was straightforward but demanding: restore organic search as a dependable acquisition channel within a 12-month window.

ESW needed to:

Regain page-one visibility for non-branded, high-intent Microsoft consulting terms
Recover the top 3 and Top 10 placements tied to consultation requests
Increase qualified organic sessions, not inflated traffic
Drive measurable year-over-year growth in consultations, web forms, and phone calls
Establish structural stability to reduce vulnerability to future ranking volatility

Success would not be defined by impressions or temporary traffic spikes. It would be defined by consistent, qualified lead flow.

Key Business Challenges

1. Decline in High-Intent Service Visibility

Core commercial keywords tied to SharePoint, Office 365, and Microsoft consulting slipped from competitive positions. These are not exploratory queries; they are searches from decision-makers narrowing down vendor options.

2. Shrinking Pipeline from Organic

As rankings declined, form submissions and consultation requests dropped. Organic was no longer reliably contributing to new opportunity creation.

3. Brand Visibility Without Expansion

Branded queries continued to perform, but branded demand does not create new market share. Without non-branded exposure, growth remained capped.

4. Structural Technical Weakness

Crawl inconsistencies, indexation issues, and diluted authority signals limited the site’s ability to compete. When foundational clarity weakens, service-page performance erodes first.

5. Conversion Path Inefficiencies

Even where traffic remained, the path to inquiry required refinement. Consulting businesses cannot afford to hesitate at the moment a prospect is ready to reach out.

The Strategic Challenge

Publishing more content or using only technical fixes could not solve this problem. Restoring performance required aligning four moving parts at once:

Technical integrity
Service-page intent alignment
Topical authority depth
Conversion pathway clarity

Addressing only one dimension would have produced partial gains. ESW needed a coordinated recovery. The objective was to reconnect visibility directly to revenue, rather than pursue rankings in isolation.

The Strategy

Optimum7 approached the engagement as a coordinated rebuild rather than a sequence of disconnected fixes.

1. Technical SEO Stabilization

The priority was restoring search engine confidence in core service pages. Work included:

Resolving crawl inefficiencies affecting priority URLs
Correcting indexation inconsistencies
Clarifying canonical structures
Enhancing page hierarchy for clearer intent signaling
Implementing structured data to expand SERP feature eligibility

The goal was structural clarity. Without it, ranking recovery would not be sustained.

2. Keyword Mapping and Service-Page Realignment

Once technical constraints were stabilized, service pages were remapped to reflect real buyer search behavior. Improvements included:

Rewriting headings and content architecture around decision-stage queries

Integrating FAQ sections aligned with live SERP patterns

Strengthening relevance signals for high-intent consulting terms

Eliminating keyword cannibalization across overlapping services

Service pages were repositioned as authoritative consulting destinations rather than generic service descriptions.

3. Content Authority Expansion

Sustainable recovery required depth and completeness. Optimum7 expanded ESW’s content footprint across interconnected Microsoft service areas, including:

SharePoint customization and governance
Office 365 migration planning
Workflow automation through Power Apps
SQL integrations and data infrastructure

Long-form guides and technical resources were structured to support both research-stage and evaluation-stage search behavior.

Content was formatted for modern SERP participation, improving eligibility for People Also Ask placements and AI-generated summaries without weakening authority signals.

4. Authority and Link Acquisition

In competitive consulting SERPs, authority must be earned. Optimum7 secured contextually relevant backlinks within technology and Microsoft-aligned ecosystems, strengthening domain trust signals where ranking competition is most intense.

The emphasis was on relevance and credibility rather than sheer volume.

5. Lead Flow and Conversion Optimization

Visibility without conversion does not stabilize the pipeline. Improvements included:

Streamlined consultation request forms
Clearer call-to-action hierarchy across service pages
Strengthened phone inquiry visibility
Clean GA4 tracking for form, call, and consultation events

This ensured performance improvements translated into measurable opportunity flow.

Results

Recovery appeared in both visibility metrics and lead performance indicators.

Organic Visibility Improvements

June 2025 – January 2026:

Top 3 rankings increased from 11 to 20 (+82%)
Top 10 rankings expanded from 45 to 101 (+75%)
Page-one presence returned across high-value Microsoft consulting terms

The ranking distribution shifted upward, reflecting stronger competitive positioning rather than inflated keyword volume.

YoY Keyword Movement

Recent reporting also showed continued forward movement, with more improving positions than declines and significant SERP shifts that indicate sustained recovery momentum.

Qualified Lead Growth

Lead generation improved in a way that was easy to validate year-over-year, particularly across the actions ESW relies on to drive consulting revenue:

Web form submissions increased from 20 to 49 in December, a 145% gain
Consultations increased from 14 to 31, up 121%
Phone calls increased from 10 to 18, up 80%

Conversion efficiency improved alongside volume:

Form submission rate rose from 0.11% to 0.29%
Consultation request rate increased from 0.08% to 0.18%

The outcome was clear: December leads more than doubled compared to the prior year, reflecting both stronger visibility and a more effective conversion path.

Metric	Dec 2024	Dec 2025	% Change
Web Forms	20	49	+145%
Consults	14	31	+121%
Phone Calls	10	18	+80%

High-Intent SERP Wins

ESW captured prominent placements for high-value commercial terms and technical discovery queries, including top visibility for searches such as “sharepoint consultant,” “computer consulting nyc,” and “sharepoint development companies.”

Visibility also expanded into People Also Ask and AI Overview surfaces, increasing exposure across both research-stage and decision-stage searches.

Strategic Outcome

ESW’s organic channel shifted from decline to controlled growth.

Technical stability restored search engine trust.
Service pages aligned with buyer intent.
Topical authority reinforced credibility.
Conversion pathways captured regained demand efficiently.

The result is not a temporary ranking rebound. It is a reinforced acquisition channel capable of generating predictable consulting inquiries in a competitive Microsoft services market.

ESW moved from reactive performance loss to sustainable inbound growth, doubling qualified leads while rebuilding long-term organic resilience.

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