Local SEO case study · Porta potty rentals
How Bay Area Sanitation reached #1 on Google in city after city
Local since 1906 · Monthly Local SEO client since February 2026 · 12+ city pages
The situation
Bay Area Sanitation has been renting porta potties and portable toilets across the Bay Area since 1906. When I started in February 2026, the website had city pages, but most of them sat low on page one or on page two. “Porta potty rental san jose” was at #15, “porta potty rental oakland” at #9, and the site wasn't ranking at all for key San Francisco searches.
The challenge
Rank one website in many separate city markets at once (Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco and a growing list of suburbs), each with its own competitors. On top of that, Google released two core updates during the campaign (March and May 2026), and portable toilet demand is seasonal, so the work had to hold up through ranking swings and slower months.
What I did
Technical SEO foundation
Full site audit, fixes across the site, and schema markup for LocalBusiness, Services and FAQs.
City landing pages
A dedicated page for each target city, now 12+ pages, plus a San Francisco pricing page.
GBP optimisation
Google Business Profile fully optimised, with daily GBP posts to keep the listing active.
Local citations
New citations every month with a consistent business name, address and phone number.
Content & service pages
Blogs, an FAQ page, new service pages, compliance pages and geo-targeted case studies.
Authority building
Guest posts, profile backlinks and Web 2.0 properties supporting the key pages.
The results
Google Business Profile: calls up every month since June
June → August 2026 · +124% in two months
July → Aug 2026 · +65%
July → Aug 2026 · +77%
Feb–Jun 2026 · +69.8% YoY
Feb–Jun 2026 · +107.1% YoY
Source: Google Business Profile Performance.
Google rankings: February vs July 2026
| City | Keyword | Feb 2026 | Jul 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oakland | porta potty rental oakland | 9 | #1 |
| Oakland | porta potty rental oakland ca | 10 | #1 |
| San Jose | porta potty rental san jose | 15 | #2 |
| San Jose | san jose porta potty rental | 18 | #2 |
| San Jose | portable toilet rental san jose | 11 | #2 |
| San Francisco | portable toilets san francisco | Not ranking | #2 |
| San Francisco | porta potty rental san francisco | Not ranking | #3 |
| Tracy | portable toilet rental tracy | 19 | #2 |
Organic Google positions from the live rank-tracking sheet (16 July 2026) against the campaign-start baseline.
Website traffic & AI search
Month 1 → Month 3 · +54%
Aug 2026 · +22.9%
28 days to Aug 2026
and still growing
Source: Google Search Console (United States).
Timeline
Foundation
Audit, fixes, schema and rank tracking. All 8 Oakland keywords reach #1.
Feb 2026Expansion
New city and service pages, FAQ page, citations. SF's main keyword climbs to #2.
Mar – MayScale
Alamo, Sunnyvale and South SF pages hit page one. San Jose keywords reach #2.
Jun – JulMomentum
56 Business Profile calls in the month, up from 25 in June.
Aug 2026
Key takeaway
In a multi-city market, one page can't rank everywhere. Giving every city its own well-built page, backed by a clean technical foundation, citations and an active Business Profile, took Bay Area Sanitation to #1 in city after city, got new pages onto page one within weeks, and turned Business Profile calls around after two Google core updates.
The proof
Real screenshots, unedited. Click any image to view it full size.
Keyword rankings from the live tracking sheet
Google Business Profile
Google Search Console
Services used in this project
Multi-location SEO
Each branch needs its own profile, page and local signals, set up so locations support each other instead of competing.
Learn more →Technical & on-page SEO
If Google can’t crawl, understand or trust your pages, nothing else works. I find and fix the issues that matter.
Learn more →Google Business Profile optimization
Your Google profile is often the first thing customers see. I set it up so Google understands exactly what you do and where.
Learn more →
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- Your Google Business Profile, checked line by line
- Where you rank on the map across your service area
- Your website's service and location pages
- Reviews and listings compared with your top 3 competitors
- How fast your leads get a reply