Valvoline
How a global automotive brand improved its local search visibility in just three months
About Valvoline
If you’ve owned a car in the US, then you’ll likely know Valvoline.
Valvoline is a leading worldwide supplier of motor oil products and services. The company was established in 1886 — just one year after that first automobile was developed by Karl Benz. So it goes without saying that Valvoline is one of the longest-standing and well-recognized brands in the auto industry.
The Challenge
With over 1,000 service locations across the US, local search visibility is undoubtedly a key driver of revenue for Valvoline. But Valvoline couldn’t just rely on its size and brand recognition to succeed in local search. Each location needed to be supported by a broader local SEO strategy to ensure maximum visibility. To make things trickier, the oil change services industry is extremely competitive.
Not only does Valvoline have to compete with other large franchises, but it also has to get ahead of the many small businesses that operate in each city and town. And getting ahead in a local search would prove extremely lucrative.
The numbers back this up.
There are 550,000 searches* for ‘oil change’ in the US every month. And 830,000 monthly searches for ‘oil change near me’.
Valvoline’s main challenge is typical of businesses of its size — there was no defined local SEO strategy in place — which meant that there were big opportunities available to improve their rankings.
This is where Powered by Search comes in. Powered by Search identified that Valvoline had only covered the basics when it came to managing local business listings. Like most, Valvoline had Google My Business listings for each location, as well as individual profiles on social media. Beyond that, not much else. And that’s common for a business of Valvoline’s size. Local listing management at scale is extremely time-consuming.
Getting Valvoline’s businesses listings into shape was a huge untapped opportunity to improve local rankings, and Powered by Search quickly identified BrightLocal as the best fit to support this.
*Data from Google Keyword Planner
The Solution
Before building new business listings, Powered by Search needed to get an accurate understanding of Valvoline’s local search visibility. This would be vital for informing the strategy and benchmarking rankings to measure success.
Using BrightLocal’s Local SEO Tools, Powered by Search was able to track local rankings for every Valvoline location — right down to the zip code level.
From here, Powered by Search targeted locations just outside of the top 3 on Google Maps and used BrightLocal’s Citation Builder service to create new business listings to improve rankings.
With a network of over 1,600+ sites across 40 industries, Citation Builder was the perfect fit.
With the support of BrightLocal, Powered by Search identified relevant sites where Valvoline lacked presence. BrightLocal was able to curate a campaign that included high-authority listing sites and niche sites within the automotive industry.
By directly submitting Valvoline’s information to these sites, BrightLocal was able to deliver serious scale without compromising on accuracy.
BrightLocal also used data aggregators to quickly push Valvoline’s business information out to dozens of directories in one go.
It wasn’t just about building new listings, though. BrightLocal also cleaned up the inaccurate existing listings and duplicates that may have been harming Valvoline’s local search rankings.
The Results
The turnaround for the campaign was quick and improvements in rankings came soon after.
Before using Citation Builder, Valvoline’s average ranking for ‘oil change’ across its locations was 4.3.
In just three months, the average ranking rose to 3.6. And 50% of locations jumped into the coveted Local Pack — which itself gains 32.3% of clicks in local search results.
Ranking just one position higher was going to have a material impact on the Valvoline’s revenue.
Kyle Goodchild