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Michigan Bat Experts removes bats and wildlife across Oakland County, Michigan, and owner Sam Sullivan has built more than a decade of proof — 700-plus five-star reviews. This audit found that none of that reputation has made it onto the website, where a domain rating under 2 keeps the company nearly invisible in organic search. Here is how to close that gap.
<2
domain rating, with just 50 backlinks — most look spammy
110
organic keywords, almost entirely the brand name
700+
five-star GMB reviews the site never puts to work
Michigan Bat Experts has over a decade of recorded experience and the reviews to prove it — an established brand we do not have to build from scratch. The problem is that the proof lives on the Google Business Profile, not the site. We start every audit with the SEO data, then move to the website and the paid levers that drive Michigan wildlife removal SEO toward more calls.
Read The SEO And Backlink Signals
With a domain rating under 2 and only 110 organic keywords, the site gives potential customers few ways to find it. Remember that you cannot simply “do” SEO — rankings are the byproduct of proving to search engines that you do good work in your area, and one of the strongest proofs is backlinks from high-authority sites. Michigan Bat Experts has just 50 backlinks, and the pattern of 301s and “10 best” list links says most were bought.
Bought links pass no authority — a single relevant link from BlitzMetrics, at a domain rating of 63, does more than all 50 combined. The keyword profile is almost entirely branded: 51 clicks on the company’s own name is great for recognition but rarely brings new customers. The goal is to rank for terms like “bat removal,” “wildlife removal,” and “raccoon removal” across the Michigan service area, which takes more content and more authority.
| Signal | What the audit found | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Domain rating | Under 2 | Almost no organic visibility |
| Backlinks | 50, mostly 301 / “10 best” lists | Bought-pattern links pass no authority |
| Keywords | 110, almost all branded (51 clicks on name) | Recognition is high; new-customer reach is low |
| GMB | 700+ reviews, ~2,000 impressions/mo | Trust signals the website never uses |
RUN THIS YOURSELF
Open a client’s organic keyword list and tag each term as branded (the business name) or non-branded (the service). If nearly every click comes from the brand name, the business is only being found by people who already know it — not new customers. That branded-vs-non-branded split is a fast, concrete finding any young agency owner can pull and explain.
Replace Stock Art With Real Field Proof
Every change here follows Google’s EEAT standard — experience, expertise, authority, and trust. The homepage does the basics well: it states what the company does, where it operates, offers a quote form, and keeps the phone number top-right. The fix is to strip out the stock art, which violates Google’s standards, and replace it with real images of crews extracting bats and wildlife from Michigan homes. The full standard lives in the EEAT framework.
The about-us page is the biggest open opportunity. It should tell Sam Sullivan’s story — how this family-owned business got started — alongside photos of team members and what each one does. The service pages have a solid start describing trapping and relocation, but every one of them has room for more real detail, more photos, and more proof of the actual work.
Add Local Service Pages For Michigan Towns
The fastest route to ranking locally is dedicated location pages. Michigan Bat Experts should build pages for Oakland County, Ann Arbor, Flint, Monroe, and the other towns it serves, so a search for “Ann Arbor wildlife removal” has a real chance of surfacing the company. The service-area page already gives a blueprint — it just needs to be fleshed out into full pages.
High-quality blog posts are the complement. Each one should answer the real questions homeowners ask about wildlife control and demonstrate expertise rather than restate generic advice. That is how the site starts earning non-branded rankings instead of waiting for them.
RUN THIS YOURSELF
List the towns a client actually services, then check how many have a dedicated page on the site. Empty cells are missed rankings — a search for “[town] [service]” cannot land on a page that does not exist. Turning that list into one real location page, with local jobs and photos, is a concrete first deliverable.
Generate Calls Now And Measure The Source
SEO is the long play, so the fast lever is Local Service Ads — Michigan Bat Experts qualifies, making it the highest-ROI move available. We just raised the budget from $110 to $500 a week and replaced the LSA stock art with real EEAT content pulled from Facebook and the Google Business Profile. There is no reason qualified calls here should cost more than about $150. Google PPC is the second lever, with weekly reports on iteration and call volume.
The surprise on the onboarding call was that there is no clear attribution yet — nobody knows which channel the calls come from, and what does not get measured does not get improved. The first move is CallRail across the website, GMB, and ads to track volume, source, and quality. From there it is mostly repurposing proof that already exists, measured and analyzed in order, the way the MAA framework lays out.
THE DELIVERABLE
See Why 700 Reviews Aren’t Ranking You
We pull your backlinks, reviews, and service pages apart the same way we did for Michigan Bat Experts — and tell you what to fix first to turn a decade of proof into qualified calls.
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The founder behind the business. Michigan’s Bat Expert is led by Sam Sullivan. We audited Sam Sullivan’s personal brand — how their own name shows up in Google and AI search — as a separate entity. Read the Sam Sullivan personal brand audit.
Dennis Yu
Dennis Yu is the CEO of Local Service Spotlight, a platform that amplifies the reputations of contractors and local service businesses using the Content Factory process. He is a former search engine engineer who has spent a billion dollars on Google and Facebook ads for Nike, Quiznos, Ashley Furniture, Red Bull, State Farm, and other brands.
Dennis has achieved 25% of his goal of creating a million digital marketing jobs by partnering with universities, professional organizations, and agencies. Through Local Service Spotlight, he teaches the Dollar a Day strategy and Content Factory training to help local service businesses enhance their existing local reputation and make the phone ring.
Dennis coaches young adult agency owners serving plumbers, AC technicians, landscapers, roofers, electricians, and believes there should be a standard in measuring local marketing efforts, much like doctors and plumbers must be certified.