Piedmont Locating Services — Case Study
How a full rebuild, plain-talk content, and targeted local SEO gave a 33-year one-man operation the digital foundation it always deserved.
Jay Hubbard has been finding what’s underground for over three decades. He runs Piedmont Locating Services out of Ramseur, NC — a solo operation covering Randolph, Guilford, Alamance, Chatham, and Montgomery Counties. When Jay came to me, he had a site with real content buried in it. The problem was the site itself was working against him at every turn.
This is the story of what we found, what we fixed, and where things stand now.
10
Pages Rebuilt or Refreshed
65→85
Mobile PageSpeed Score
5
Priority Keywords Targeted
01 — The Client
Jay Hubbard Has Been Finding What’s Underground Since Before Google Existed
Jay Hubbard founded Piedmont Locating Services on November 1, 2010, after years working for Southern Bell. He locates underground utilities — water lines, gas lines, electric, septic systems, buried wells — for homeowners, contractors, and municipalities across central North Carolina. His service area covers Randolph, Guilford, Alamance, Chatham, and Montgomery Counties, including Asheboro, Greensboro, Ramseur, Siler City, Troy, and a dozen towns in between.
He’s a solo operator by choice. Thirty-three years of experience, one truck, and the kind of reputation you can only build by showing up and doing the work right. His clients aren’t looking for a big company — they’re looking for someone they can trust with a problem that matters.
What Jay didn’t have was a website that reflected any of that.
02 — The Problem
A Site That Was Working Against Him
When I audited the site, the content was there — Jay had actually written some solid material over the years. But the site’s structure was quietly killing its own chances. Pages sat unlinked and orphaned. The navigation only surfaced four of the twelve pages that existed. There were no H2 headings, no consistent calls to action, and no town names woven into the copy — which is table stakes for anyone trying to rank in the Google Map Pack.
The contact page had no form. The quote request page had stale content. The homepage had no click-to-call button above the fold. And the mobile PageSpeed score sat at 65 — slow enough to push visitors away before they ever read a word.
Before
- ✗Only 4 pages in navigation — 8 others invisible
- ✗No H2 headings on any page
- ✗No town names for local SEO
- ✗No consistent calls to action
- ✗Contact page missing a quote form entirely
- ✗Mobile PageSpeed score of 65
- ✗No schema markup or Search Console
After
- ✓Full 6-page nav with dropdown structure
- ✓H1 → H2 → H3 hierarchy across all pages
- ✓15 town names in footer + copy embeds
- ✓Sitewide CTA block + click-to-call in hero
- ✓WPForms quote form on Contact + Request pages
- ✓Mobile PageSpeed score of 85
- ✓LocalBusiness schema + GSC verified and live
03 — The Work
Five Phases, One Goal: More Calls
Everything we did pointed toward the same outcome — when someone in Greensboro, Asheboro, or Ramseur searches for a private utility locator, Jay’s name comes up and they pick up the phone. That meant working in five overlapping phases.
Phase 01
Content Audit & Strategy
Full audit of all 12 pages. Identified orphaned content, missing SEO signals, and the two-layer architecture the site needed going forward.
Phase 02
10 Pages Rebuilt or Refreshed
Every page got a full rewrite or structured refresh — all in Jay’s plain-talk voice. Services, About, FAQ, Well & Septic, Contact, and more.
Phase 03
Site Structure & Internal Linking
Navigation rebuilt from scratch. New Elementor Theme Builder footer with four columns. Full internal linking pass connecting every CTA to the right destination.
Phase 04
Go-Live & Migration
Staging site reviewed and approved by Jay. Cloned to production via Softaculous. Old install archived for rollback. LiteSpeed Cache configured for performance.
Phase 05
Full SEO Implementation
Title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, LocalBusiness schema, XML sitemap, robots.txt verification, and manual indexing requests submitted to Google.
Ongoing
Retainer & Map Pack Push
Location pages, citation building, and Google Business Profile optimization — all aimed at the Greensboro, Asheboro, and Ramseur Map Pack.
04 — The Content
Writing in a Voice That Wasn’t Mine
The part of this project I’m most proud of isn’t the technical work — it’s the copy. Jay has a voice. He’s direct, he’s honest, and he doesn’t oversell. When he tells you he’ll let you know if you don’t actually need him, he means it. That kind of thing builds trust in rural North Carolina, and I wasn’t going to strip it out in favor of generic contractor-site boilerplate.
Every page was rewritten with that ethos in mind. The FAQ answers read like Jay actually wrote them. The Services page explains the difference between 811 and private locating in plain language a homeowner can understand without Googling anything. The About page tells his actual story: 33 years, Southern Bell roots, solo operator by choice, founded November 1, 2010.
The 65% statistic — that 65% of all underground utilities are private and won’t be marked by calling 811 — runs through multiple pages as a conversion anchor. It’s the single best reason a contractor or homeowner has to call Jay instead of assuming 811 covered everything.
“If you don’t need us, we’ll tell you.”
— Jay Hubbard, preserved as a pull quote on the private locator page
05 — The SEO
Built to Show Up Where Jay Actually Works
Jay doesn’t serve all of North Carolina. He serves the towns in his backyard — and Google needs to know that on every single page, not just the contact form. That meant weaving real town names into body copy, building a footer with 15 service area communities across five counties, and structuring every title tag and meta description around the specific searches his customers are actually making.
| Priority Keyword | Target Page |
|---|---|
| Private utility locating Asheboro NC | Services Page |
| Septic locating Randolph County NC | Well & Septic Page |
| Well locating Greensboro NC | Well & Septic Page |
| Underground utility locating Ramseur NC | Homepage |
| Private utility locator central North Carolina | Homepage / Services |
PageSpeed: 65 → 85 at Launch
LiteSpeed Cache activated with image optimization and CSS/JS minification on day one. A slow site loses customers before they read the first word — this was a non-negotiable fix before anything else went live.
On the technical side, LocalBusiness schema was written from scratch, validated through Google’s Rich Results Test, and deployed via Insert Headers & Footers. The schema covers business name, address, phone, email, founding date, all service offerings, and the full service area list. Google Search Console was verified, an XML sitemap submitted, and manual indexing requested for the three highest-priority pages.
06 — What’s Next
The Work That Turns a Launch Into a Win
A good site launch is the starting line, not the finish line. The Map Pack work that will actually move the needle for Jay is in the months ahead — and we’ve got a clear roadmap.
- →Location pages for Greensboro, Asheboro, and Ramseur — each built around hyper-local search intent
- →Citation building across Yelp, Angi, BBB, Apple Maps, and Bing Places
- →Google Business Profile full audit — service area cities, categories, photos, and a review push
- →Customer feedback strategy — embedding top reviews sitewide and keeping the standalone page
The site is clean, fast, and structured correctly. Now we build the authority signals that push it to the top of the Map Pack in the markets that matter most to Jay’s business.
07 — The Takeaway
What Good Work Actually Looks Like for a Solo Operator
Jay Hubbard didn’t need a flashy website. He needed one that worked — that told his story honestly, showed up when his customers were searching, and made it easy for them to call him. That’s what this project was about.
The technology is just the means. The goal is always the same: more calls, more jobs, more of the right customers finding the right person at the right time. Everything we built points toward that.
If your site is working against you the way Jay’s was, let’s talk.
Interested in a Similar Project?
David’s always a phone call or text away — no ticketing systems, no waiting on hold, no runaround. Just straight answers from the person who’ll build your site.