Case Studies July 16, 2025

How SEO Increased Organic Traffic by 19%

To gain more visibility and brand recognition from potential customers, Arc of Northern Virginia partnered with Blacksmith Agency to deploy comprehensive SEO services. This resulted in a 19% increase in web traffic, an 18% reduction in bounce rate, and greater domain authority.

About Arc of NoVa

BSA implemented strategic SEO for Arc of NoVa to make the brand more engaging and visible online.

The Arc of Northern Virginia provides a lifeline for thousands of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and their families. For such an important mission, the brand needed to be easily discoverable on search engines by families, caregivers, and community members in their moment of need. However, Arc of Northern Virginia’s online presence wasn’t achieving the search engine visibility required to connect effectively with all facets of their community. This case study of their journey with Blacksmith Agency outlines how a dedicated SEO strategy was implemented to bridge this gap, ensuring their services reached a wider audience through improved online discoverability.

Services Rendered

To ensure potential customers could easily find our client on Google, we provided a complete SEO solution.

Technical SEO

We audit your website to make sure search engines can easily find, read, and understand your website. By fixing technical issues and optimizing for speed and mobile-friendliness, we ensure your site is built to rank well and provide a great user experience.

Local SEO

For businesses that serve a specific community, we help you show up in local searches and on Google Maps. We make sure your business information is correct and consistent everywhere online, so customers in your neighborhood can find and visit you easily.

Content Optimization

We take the great content you have (or help you create it) and make sure it’s exactly what people are searching for. By aligning your message with the right keywords, we help you answer your customers’ questions and turn your website into a go-to resource.

Technical SEO Issues

The website suffered from technical inefficiencies, including slow-loading videos and unoptimized images. These issues created a poor user experience and limited the site’s ability to rank competitively in search engines.

Unoptimized Blog Content

The blog failed to target the right keywords and lacked proper on-page optimization. As a result, posts struggled to rank, missing the chance to capture organic traffic and establish the brand’s authority in its niche.

High Bounce Rate

Even when users landed on the site through search, the content they found often didn’t match their intent. This lack of alignment between search queries and page content caused visitors to exit quickly, resulting in a high bounce rate and missed opportunities for conversion.

The Solution

Content Hub Creation

To address content gaps and lack of topical authority, we developed a centralized content hub organized around high-value keywords and audience interests. The hub connected blogs, news, glosssary, and webinars through an intentional internal linking structure, making content discovery easier for users and helping search engines know that the brand was an authority in its niche.

On-page Optimizations

We conducted extensive keyword research to understand what the community was searching for when seeking support. We then used these insights to optimize all existing pages and provide clear content direction to ensure information was relevant, helpful, and highly visible on search engines.

technical seo foundation for arc of nova

Technical SEO Improvements

We conducted a comprehensive technical SEO audit to identify and resolve any underlying issues that were hindering the website’s performance and crawlability. This ensured the website was easily indexable and technically sound, providing a strong foundation for all other SEO efforts.