Full Case Study: Waste Hauling
How a Multi-Location Colorado Waste Hauler Doubled Organic Traffic in a Competitive Market
Primary services
35,848 more sessions
1,990 more conversions
2,037 more sessions
The Situation
A Competitive Market, Three Service Lines, and a Digital Presence That Was Not Keeping Up
The Denver metro waste hauling market is not a forgiving environment for independent operators. National haulers have spent years building brand recognition and domain authority. Established regional players have deep local roots. And the search landscape for terms like trash service denver, dumpster rental denver, and commercial trash service is crowded at every position that matters.
This client is a multi-location Colorado waste hauler with a full service line spanning residential trash collection, commercial waste service, and dumpster rentals. The operation was solid. The digital presence was not producing at the level the business warranted. Organic visibility was limited, the website was not converting traffic efficiently, and paid search was underbuilt relative to the opportunity in the market.
NLA Media came on board in 2024 with a mandate to build the full digital program from the ground up: new website, local SEO across the full keyword landscape, and a Google Ads structure that could produce results immediately while organic rankings built over time.
What NLA Built
Website First, Then Traffic, In That Order
Website Design
Built for conversion across all three service lines. Mobile-first, fast-loading, with city-specific pages designed to rank and convert rather than just exist.
Local SEO
Programmatic city and service page architecture covering Denver metro, Colorado Springs, and secondary Colorado markets. 239 keywords tracked.
Google Ads
Separate campaign structures for residential, commercial, and dumpster rental. Geographic weighting toward highest-value route corridors.
The sequencing was deliberate. Before any traffic channels went live, the website was rebuilt to convert the visitors those channels would send. City-specific landing pages were built for the markets that mattered most, each with genuine local content rather than templated copy with city names swapped in. Service line pages were structured around how customers actually search, not around how the business preferred to describe itself.
Google Ads launched alongside the website rebuild to produce results while organic rankings built in the background. The paid search structure separated residential, commercial, and dumpster rental campaigns to allow independent budget control and keyword targeting for each service line. Negative keyword lists were built from the start to keep spend focused on actual service intent rather than informational or competitor research queries.
SEO Performance
Position 1 in Secondary Markets. Climbing Fast in Denver.
Organic search is where the program tells its clearest story. Sessions from organic search doubled year over year, from 35,517 to 71,365, with an engagement rate of 68% and an organic key event rate that produced 5,333 conversion events in the current period versus 3,343 in the prior year, a 59.5% increase.
Denver's competitive density means the organic program is still building toward its ceiling. The secondary market performance shows what it looks like at maturity: position 1 across every relevant high-intent term.
The keyword data across 239 tracked terms shows a program at different stages of maturity across markets. In the Colorado Springs and secondary corridor markets, the program has reached full maturity with position 1 rankings across every major service term. In Denver, the program holds top 10 positions across multiple service terms and is actively climbing on the highest-volume terms in the market.
Selected keyword positions, Colorado Springs market:
| Keyword | Monthly Searches | Position |
|---|---|---|
| trash collection colorado springs | 1,600 | 1 |
| trash companies colorado springs | 1,600 | 1 |
| trash service colorado springs | 1,600 | 1 |
| colorado springs trash companies | 1,600 | 1 |
| colorado springs garbage collection | 140 | 1 |
| commercial trash service colorado springs | 10 | 1 |
Colorado Springs keyword rankings — AWR Cloud
Selected keyword positions, Denver metro market:
| Keyword | Monthly Searches | Position |
|---|---|---|
| denver trash service | 390 | 9 |
| roll off dumpster rental denver | 110 | 6 |
| denver commercial trash service | 10 | 7 |
| dumpsters denver | 170 | 4 |
Denver metro keyword rankings — AWR Cloud
Paid Search Performance
Google Ads Doubled While SEO Built in the Background
Paid search sessions grew 111% year over year, from 1,834 to 3,871, with conversion events up 61% over the same period. The Google Ads program was structured to run efficiently alongside the organic program rather than compete with it, covering terms where organic rankings were still building while allocating the highest bids to the highest-intent searches across all three service lines.
The 63% engagement rate on paid sessions indicates the landing pages built for the program are doing their job. Traffic arriving from paid search is engaging with the content and converting at rates that justify the spend, a direct result of building the website and the ad program as an integrated system rather than treating them as separate projects.
The Trajectory
18 Months In. Still Building.
The results through mid-2026 represent an organic program that is 18 months into a build in one of Colorado’s most competitive hauling markets. The secondary market performance, with position 1 across every major Colorado Springs service term, suburban corridor coverage across Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree, Westminster, Centennial, Arvada, Aurora, Littleton, and Parker, shows what the Denver program looks like when it reaches the same stage of maturity.
Organic traffic has already doubled. Conversion events are up nearly 60%. The Denver keyword positions are moving in the right direction on terms that represent thousands of monthly searches. The program is not at its ceiling. It is still climbing.
Want Results Like These for Your Business?
NLA Media builds full-service marketing programs for waste haulers, junk removal companies, and local service businesses across the US. Call us at (719) 635-9988 or click below.
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