— The American Leather Hospitality Case Study · B2B Hospitality Furniture —
From zero organic search to 713 ranked keywords.
A 17-month SEO build for a B2B contract furniture brand — through a global pandemic. Run in partnership with Télia Agency, who led PR and social.
Scroll to read the file
— The Overall Client Goal —
"Build organic search visibility from zero in a competitive B2B category."
Delivered: 0 → 713 ranked keywords · +1,100% YTD organic sessions · 17 months · through COVID
2024 Baseline
0
Keywords ranking on Google. No organic visibility in a competitive B2B category.
Organic Rankings
None
Site SEO foundation
Weak
Then six weeks in
Covid Hit
01 / The Situation
A strong product. A category that just shut down.
American Leather Hospitality (ALH) is a Dallas-based manufacturer of premium leather furniture for the hospitality industry — hotels, design firms, and contract spaces. Strong product, strong parent brand, but a digital presence that wasn’t earning its keep.
Going in, ALH had zero keywords ranking on Google. No technical SEO foundation, no on-page optimization, no schema strategy worth the name. In a B2B contract category where buyers research and validate long before they ever reach out, being undiscoverable in search is being undiscoverable, period.
Then six weeks into the engagement, COVID-19 collapsed the hospitality industry. Hotels closed. New-build pipelines froze. The category ALH sells into lost its buyers overnight.
A lot of B2B brands paused their marketing through that stretch. ALH didn’t — they made the call to keep the work going through the uncertainty, and we kept building. That decision is the reason the numbers below exist.
02 / The Strategy
A partnered engagement with SEO and PR running in parallel.
This was a joint engagement. Télia Agency brought WTF SEO in to own the search workstream while they ran PR, paid social, organic social, and the email program. We split the work cleanly: SEO on us, everything else on them. Both agencies report on the wins they actually executed.
The SEO half — what’s in this case study — treated COVID as an accelerant. Every dollar spent on SEO during the shutdown bought ranking position that competitors gave up.
01 · Foundation
WTF SEO
Full audit, keyword research, competitor analysis.
Customized website quality audit. Robots.txt deployed. Sitemaps rebuilt and submitted to Google. Conversion tracking built across every search touchpoint.
02 · Technical
WTF SEO
Technical SEO and crawlability.
The site rebuilt to be readable to Google — clean structure, proper canonicals, indexable pages where it mattered, blocked where it didn't.
03 · On-page
WTF SEO
On-page optimization across 30+ pages.
H1s, H2s, meta descriptions, and title tags rewritten to match real B2B hospitality buyer intent — not consumer search patterns.
04 · Schema
WTF SEO
Schema markup rebuild.
Schema re-evaluated and rewritten for better crawlability — making the catalog legible to search engines indexing a contract furniture brand.
05 · Backlinks
WTF SEO
Backlink acquisition campaign.
Built domain authority through a targeted backlink campaign in design, hospitality, and contract trade publications — the rooms where ALH's buyers actually live.
06 · Local
TÉLIA
Run in parallel by Télia Agency.
Télia owned the PR, paid media, organic social, email program, founder personal brand, and Joomag digital catalog. Their wins on that side compounded with our search work.
The Approach
5
SEO workstreams, run as the search arm of a joint engagement with Télia Agency.
WTF SEO
SEO · Technical · On-page · Schema
Telia Agency
PR · Social · Email · Paid
Window
Jan 2020 – Dec 2021
— Results · YoY · 2020 → 2021 · Organic Search —
Metric
Window
Change
Organic Search Sessions
Feb 2020 → Apr 2021
0+ → 713
Organic Engaged Sessions
YTD May 2021 vs YTD May 2020
+~1,100%
/pay-now/ Conversions
Jan 2021 vs Jan 2020
+1,258%
Total Sessions
Jan 2021 vs Jan 2020
+987%
Sessions (YoY)
May 2021 vs May 2020
+206%
YTD Organic Sessions · YoY
+1100%
608 sessions YTD May 2020 → 4,467 sessions YTD May 2021.
Keyword growth
0 → 713
New users YoY
2.20×
Through a pandemic
Yes
03 / The Results
Zero rankings to 713 — through a pandemic.
By April 2021, ALH was ranking for 713 organic keywords. By YTD May 2021, organic sessions were up ~1,100% against the same window the year before. New users were up +1,258% against January 2020.
The compounding showed in the trail: first rankings appeared in March 2020 (122 keywords, traffic +302% MoM); by December 2020 the backlink work pushed that to 450; by January 2021 the on-page rebuild moved Comfort Sleeper from rank #10 to #5; by April 2021 the catalog had broken 700.
The competitors who paused SEO during the shutdown gave up ranking position. ALH kept investing — and that’s what compounded into 713.
— 04 / Goal Met · The Page That Drives Revenue —
"comfort sleeper"
#5
Branded High-Difficulty
From
#10
To
#5
Page
1
"bethany couch"
+120%
Difficulty 78/100
From
#23
To
#8
Page
1
"leather hotel furniture" + similar
Top 4
Hospitality SERPs
Sessions
Top 4
YoY
Top 4
Window
+43 pos.
04 / Goal Met
Ranking for a ton of keywords is cool, but do you know what's cooler? Ranking on Page 1 nationally for converting keywords.
713 ranked keywords is a volume number. The ones that move revenue are the ones that hit page one — especially on the national, high-difficulty terms a B2B contract furniture brand actually competes for. These weren’t local SERPs; ALH was competing against every furniture and hospitality brand in the country.
Comfort Sleeper — a high-difficulty branded term in a crowded national category — moved from #10 to #5. Bethany Couch (national difficulty score 78/100) climbed from #23 to #8. Sofas, sleeper sofas, hospitality sleepers, leather hotel furniture — all secured top-4 positions nationally. The Sunset Outdoor line climbed 43 positions.
Those are the terms a hotel buyer or design firm actually searches before specifying. They’re now in front of them.
/pay-now/ Conversions · YoY
713
🎶Zero to hero. Just like that.🎶 Window Feb 2020 → Apr 2021
Page-1 wins 6+ terms
From zero in February 2020 to 713 in April 2021.
— 04 / Goal Met · The Page That Drives Revenue —
From unranked to page one.
The clearest proof the strategy worked: the high-intent BHPH and local terms that drive dealership revenue went from nowhere to the top of the page. Every "New" below is a keyword the site didn't meaningfully rank for before.
Keyword
Organic Desktop
Change
Jan – Feb 2020
0
Starting line
March 2020
122
First rankings · +302% MoM
September 2020
296
▲ New users +22.62% MoM
December 2020
450
▲ Backlinks compounding
January 2021
542
▲ Comfort Sleeper #10 → #5
April 2021
713
▲ Peak ranking volume
Source: ALH monthly SEO reporting · Feb 2020 baseline through April 2021 peak
What made this work.
01
SEO compounds. Pause it during a downturn and you give competitors free ranking space.
The reason ALH crossed 700 keywords in 17 months is that no one else in the category was investing. Every competitor who paused gave up position. Long-cycle B2B is exactly the category where this math is brutal.
02
Branded high-difficulty national terms move with on-page work, not magic.
Comfort Sleeper #10 → #5 came from the on-page rebuild — title tags, H1s, meta, schema. Bethany Couch climbing 23 → 8 came from the same playbook. These were national SERPs against every furniture and hospitality brand in the country — not localized search. There's no secret to it; it's discipline applied consistently.
03
The first six months look slow. Months 12 through 18 don't.
First rankings appeared in March 2020 with 122 keywords. By April 2021 it was 713. The +1,100% YTD lift didn't happen at month 4. It happened because the work at month 4 was still running at month 14.
Steven de Brueys
Founder & SEO Director · WTF SEO · New Orleans
Steven has been running SEO and content strategy for local service businesses and national portfolios for years. Auto Approval was a solo WTF SEO engagement, referred to us by Télia Agency.
Want results like American Leather's?
713 ranked keywords from zero, +1,100% organic, page-1 on high-difficulty national terms — through a global pandemic. Same SEO playbook, run with discipline. We do this work for our own clients and as the SEO arm of partnered engagements.
Get Your Audit →or call (504) 233-2660