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VERTA CASE STUDY · SEO

How we turned a niche the tools couldn’t see into a compounding lead engine

National Technical Field Services started with almost no organic presence. Sixteen months into a Verta-led SEO strategy, it ranks #1 for its core services and books inbound leads every month, in a B2B market the big SEO tools insist barely exists.

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Written by

Asad Kamran · SEO Manager

Ryan Snelling · VP of Marketing

Client: National Technical Field Services (NTFS)

Site: startntfs.com

Market: Canada, B2B

44→14

Average Google position over 16 months

×2.0

Click-through rate, before vs. after

912

Organic clicks logged by Search Console

#1

For “structured cabling services”

Client Testimonial
“

The Verta Marketing team has been great. Our website was barely ranking and had minimal traffic. With their SEO and content strategy, we’ve seen more and more leads come in over time, which has proven to be instrumental for our business. Thanks team Verta!

JD

James Derwinsky

CEO, National Technical Field Services

Here’s a story about patience, conviction, and a market that hides in plain sight. It’s also a story about trust, the thing modern search engines and AI assistants are quietly trying to measure every time someone types a question. Grab a coffee, and let’s walk through how it unfolded.

  • Proven results
  • Custom strategy
  • Clear communication
  • Long-term partnership
THE CLIENT & THE BET

A company with deep expertise and almost no digital footprint

National Technical Field Services is the kind of company you never see but rely on constantly. They are a Canada-wide, white-label B2B technical field-services partner: the engineers and technicians who design, install, commission, and maintain communications infrastructure for enterprises and government. Satellite internet, structured cabling, fibre-to-the-home, security camera systems, digital signage. If it has to work reliably at a remote site in −40°C, NTFS is who gets sent. Fifteen-plus years, 65+ technicians, 5,000+ sites serviced.
What they did not have was a digital presence. For a company with that much field expertise, NTFS was effectively invisible online. When they partnered with Verta on SEO, the premise was simple. The demand for these services is real and specific, people are searching for “structured cabling services” and “satellite internet installation,” and there was no reason a 15-year specialist should not own those conversations. SEO became the centre of the plan because it is the channel that compounds. Build the right foundation and it pays back for years.
A QUICK REALITY CHECK

Search is a black box, and trust is the thing inside it

Before the results, it helps to be clear about what we are all working with. Nobody outside Google, and increasingly nobody outside OpenAI, Perplexity, or Google’s Gemini team, can see how ranking and citation decisions are really made. These are closed-loop systems. We cannot open the box. What we can do is run experiments, watch what moves, and form a working theory. Ours, built over years and reinforced by the wider research community, comes down to one word: trust.
Search engines cannot verify expertise the way a human would, so they look for proxies for how much to trust a brand: links from credible sites, mentions across the web, social signals, consistency, the qualities Google’s own quality framework files under experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust (E-E-A-T). Google is unusually blunt about the hierarchy here. Of those four, it says, “trust is most important.”
That matters more every month, because AI has joined the loop. Google’s AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT do not just rank ten blue links; they synthesise an answer and cite a handful of sources. And being cited is not the same as ranking. Ahrefs analysed 863,000 SERPs in early 2026 and found that only about 38% of AI Overview citations also rank in the top 10, down from 76% a year earlier. The answer engines increasingly pull from sources they trust on a topic, wherever those sources sit. They are also restless: AI Overviews change their cited sources every couple of days. The box keeps shifting.

So a new KPI sits alongside rankings now: citations. If a brand is mentioned and trusted across the web, it is far more likely to be the one an AI references, and the work that earns citations is the same work that earns trust.

This is not hand-waving. When Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands, the strongest patterns were not classic on-page tricks. They were web mentions and brand presence: brands in the top quartile for web mentions earned many times more AI citations than the rest. Trust, made measurable. Hold that thought, because it is exactly the lever we ended up pulling for NTFS.

PHASE ONE

Build the foundation, and watch the lights come on

We started where you have to start: the site itself. We restructured it to be technically sound for search, rewrote the copy in NTFS’s real, no-hype engineering voice, and built out proper solution pages with SEO-driven copy for each core service. We committed to publishing rich, relevant content, including detailed blog posts and case studies, and we built interactive tools for the exact people we wanted to reach: a structured-cabling cost guide and a satellite-system selector for teams scoping a deployment.
The effect was immediate in relative terms. A site that had been showing up for essentially nothing started appearing for the queries that matter: structured cabling services, satellite internet installation, fibre installation, digital signage. NTFS existed in the index now, and it was relevant. That was a real win.
But, and this is the part most case studies skip, relevant is not the same as found. We were landing on page three, four, five. Enough to register impressions, nowhere near enough to earn the click and the call. For a stretch, that is where we sat.
THE WALL, AND THE DECISION

Good foundations were not enough. We needed authority.

Our read on the plateau was that NTFS had the on-page substance but not the authority, the trust signals the black box leans on to decide who deserves the top of page one. The obvious lever was link-building, and here we hit an honest constraint. Link-building takes sustained resources, and for a while they were tight. It is a hard moment in any campaign. You can see the mountain; you just do not yet have the gear to climb it.
So we made a call together. Rather than let SEO coast, NTFS and Verta agreed to reallocate resources toward it and treat it as the long-term investment it is. Not a campaign with an end date, but an asset that compounds. That conviction is the hinge this whole story turns on.

Earning trust, one signal at a time

With resources behind it, we went to work on authority: months of steady link-building, paired with another pass over the core service pages, sharpening them around real buyer intent and the specifics only a 15-year field operator can credibly claim. None of it was glamorous. Link-building rarely is. It is the slow accumulation of the exact signals that tell a closed system, “you can trust this brand on this topic.” And for a while you do it on faith, because the box does not give you a progress bar.
THE PAYOFF

Late 2025: the line finally breaks

Then it happened. Around September 2025 the trend line cracked open. Average position fell off the page-four plateau and started a steady climb toward the top of page two and onto page one. Over the full 16-month window, NTFS’s average position improved from about 44 to about 14, with the decisive shift lining up exactly with the link-building and content push.

NTFS average Google position, 16 months

Google Search Console

1020304050Avg. position (lower is better)Link-building + content push~44~14Feb '25Jun '25Sep '25Dec '25Mar '26Jun '26

NTFS average Google position, 16 months — lower is better. The foundation work kept the site relevant through mid-2025; the authority and content push from around September 2025 is where rankings broke onto page one and held.

Better positions brought better behaviour. As NTFS climbed, its click-through rate roughly doubled, from about 0.24% to 0.47%, because being near the top of page one earns the click in a way page four never will. Same audience, far more of them choosing NTFS.

Click-through rate doubled

Search Console

0.0%0.2%0.4%0.6%0.24%Feb–Sep 20250.47%Oct 2025–Jun 2026×2.0 click-through rate

Click-weighted CTR, before vs. after the inflection point.

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THE RESULT THAT MATTERS

The phone started ringing, and it has not stopped

The number that actually matters to a business is not a position or a percentage. It is the phone ringing. Over the 14 months to June 2026, startntfs.com logged 61 unique inbound leads across its five lead forms — buyer and project inquiries, partner and installer applications, and tool and whitepaper leads. Not a one-off spike: since October 2025, not a single month has gone quiet, and the 2026 monthly pace is running at roughly 2.4× the 2025 average. That is the moment SEO stopped being a cost line and became a pipeline.

61
Unique inbound leads in 14 months (spam, duplicates & tests removed)
×2.4

Monthly lead pace, 2026 vs 2025 average

9 mo

Consecutive months with leads, Oct ’25 – Jun ’26

22

Buyer & project inquiries — incl. a satellite-internet giant and a national-telecom RFP invite

Inbound leads, building and accelerating

Inbound contact-form leads

Cumulative inbound contact-form submissions reconstructed from inbox timestamps (illustrative sample; fuller CRM data to be added). The curve steepens through 2026, the same period rankings consolidated on page one.

Inbound leads, building and accelerating

Form submissions · May ’25 – Jun ’26

010203040506070Cumulative leadsMay '25Jul '25Sep '25Nov '25Jan '26Mar '26May '26Jun '2661 leads & counting
Bars show new leads per month by type (own scale); the gold line is the cumulative total. Hover or tap a month for the breakdown; toggle the chips to isolate a lead type. September 2025 really was zero — the calm right before rankings broke onto page one.

From the inbox — anonymized

  • Jun '26Global commercial real-estate owner — parking-signage replacement quote
  • Jun '26US QSR-equipment service firm — technician coverage & rates for upcoming projects
  • Jun '26Healthcare BD executive — nationwide optometry-equipment installation partner search
  • Jun '26Ottawa IT-services firm, 15 technicians — installer-network application
  • May '26US IT firm — grocery-store equipment rollouts across Saskatchewan
  • Apr '26One of Canada’s largest telecom carriers — invitation to a corporate real-estate infrastructure & technology RFP
  • Apr '26Atlantic-Canada utility — Starlink High Performance rooftop install at its St. John's HQ
  • Apr '26Latin-American enterprise IT group — procurement team requesting a coordination contact
  • Apr '26Québec consultancy CEO — fibre-installation cost calculator
  • Mar '26US hospital network — healthcare-facility services inquiry
  • Mar '26US digital-signage integrator VP — field-technician cost calculator
  • Feb '26Global IT-services firm — satellite-antenna installation project (Amazon LEO)
  • Feb '26Big Four professional-services firm — fibre-to-the-home whitepaper download
  • Jan '26The world’s largest satellite-internet operator — LEO residential installation program for Canada
  • Jan '26TSX-listed energy-drilling contractor — hands-on technician coverage for rig sites
  • Jan '26Alberta industrial supplier — internet with static IP for a 55-employee facility
  • Dec '25Northern New Brunswick contractor, Starlink-experienced — install-partner inquiry
  • Nov '25Fortune-500 uniform & workwear supplier — procurement RFP participation
  • Oct '25US facilities-maintenance platform — adding reliable Canadian field vendors
  • Jul '25Transit-technology provider — fleet CAD/AVL & GPS installation inquiry
  • Jun '26Global commercial real-estate owner — parking-signage replacement quote
  • Jun '26US QSR-equipment service firm — technician coverage & rates for upcoming projects
  • Jun '26Healthcare BD executive — nationwide optometry-equipment installation partner search
  • Jun '26Ottawa IT-services firm, 15 technicians — installer-network application
  • May '26US IT firm — grocery-store equipment rollouts across Saskatchewan
  • Apr '26One of Canada’s largest telecom carriers — invitation to a corporate real-estate infrastructure & technology RFP
  • Apr '26Atlantic-Canada utility — Starlink High Performance rooftop install at its St. John's HQ
  • Apr '26Latin-American enterprise IT group — procurement team requesting a coordination contact
  • Apr '26Québec consultancy CEO — fibre-installation cost calculator
  • Mar '26US hospital network — healthcare-facility services inquiry
  • Mar '26US digital-signage integrator VP — field-technician cost calculator
  • Feb '26Global IT-services firm — satellite-antenna installation project (Amazon LEO)
  • Feb '26Big Four professional-services firm — fibre-to-the-home whitepaper download
  • Jan '26The world’s largest satellite-internet operator — LEO residential installation program for Canada
  • Jan '26TSX-listed energy-drilling contractor — hands-on technician coverage for rig sites
  • Jan '26Alberta industrial supplier — internet with static IP for a 55-employee facility
  • Dec '25Northern New Brunswick contractor, Starlink-experienced — install-partner inquiry
  • Nov '25Fortune-500 uniform & workwear supplier — procurement RFP participation
  • Oct '25US facilities-maintenance platform — adding reliable Canadian field vendors
  • Jul '25Transit-technology provider — fleet CAD/AVL & GPS installation inquiry
Real submissions, names and contact details withheld for privacy. Inquirers are described by sector, never named.
Busiest month
June 2026 — 9 unique leads in 30 days.
A satellite-internet giant called
The world’s largest satellite-internet operator, on its Canadian residential install program.
National-telecom RFP
Invited by one of Canada’s largest telecom carriers to a corporate infrastructure RFP.
9-month streak
Leads every single month since October 2025.
Coast to coast
From Quadra Island, BC to St. John’s, NL.
THE TWIST

The data nobody else can see

Now for the part that makes this case genuinely unusual, and that you should know if you ever benchmark a niche B2B campaign against a third-party dashboard.
NTFS sells specialised services to a narrow set of buyers: procurement leads, operations and IT teams, facilities managers at enterprises and government bodies. The number of people searching any given term in a month is small. The median tracked search volume across NTFS’s ranking keywords is around 110 searches a month. That kind of demand is real, high-intent, and commercially valuable, but it sits below the resolution of the big tools.
Here is the headline example. NTFS ranks #1 for “structured cabling services.” SEMrush’s model estimates that #1 ranking is worth about three visits a month. Across all 49 keywords SEMrush tracks for the site, its model adds up to roughly nine organic visits a month, and shows literally zero estimated traffic on 43 of them. Meanwhile, Google’s own Search Console recorded 912 clicks, averaging around 57 a month and climbing. The tools say this market is a rounding error. Google’s own data, and the leads, say otherwise.

What the tools model vs. what happened

SEMrush vs. Search Console

0204060Organic visits / month~9SEMrush(modelled)~57Search Console(actual)

SEMrush’s modelled monthly organic traffic across NTFS’s tracked keywords vs. clicks Google Search Console actually recorded (912 clicks over 16 months). The two tools measure different scopes, and that is the point: third-party models barely register this niche, while first-party data and real leads confirm the demand is there.

This is not SEMrush being “wrong.” It is a known limitation. Tools estimate volume largely from clickstream panels, and those panels undersample exactly the people NTFS sells to: corporate networks and privacy-conscious users. For niche and B2B terms, the sample simply is not big enough to register, so the tools round low-volume demand down to zero. It is also why so many seasoned operators argue that tiny B2B keywords drive the biggest deals: low volume, high intent, real pipeline.

In a specialised B2B niche, do not let a tool’s dashboard talk you out of demand that is clearly converting. The leads are the ground truth. The tools are a lagging, undersampled estimate.

WHY THE TIMING MATTERS

Built for trust, just as AI takes over the answer

There is a final reason the timing of this work is fortunate. Across NTFS’s tracked keywords, 73% already trigger an AI Overview. Search for these services and increasingly you do not get a list, you get a synthesised answer that names a few trusted sources.

In that world, the authority and trust signals we spent a year building are precisely the currency that gets a brand cited, not just ranked. Google now fans a single query out into many sub-queries and assembles the answer from sources it trusts across all of them, so broad, credible presence beats a single lucky ranking. We did not just optimise for today’s search box. We built the kind of trusted brand the next one rewards.

AI Overviews are already here

SEMrush, Jun 2026

73%of tracked keywordsnow show an AI Overview

Share of NTFS’s tracked keywords whose results page now includes an AI Overview.

BY THE NUMBERS

What the campaign delivered

Rankings
44→14

Average Google position over 16 months (lower is better).

Top spot
#1

For “structured cabling services,” plus #2 for “digital signage installation.”

Engagement
×2.0

Click-through rate roughly doubled as positions climbed.

Real traffic
912

Organic clicks logged by Search Console while tools modelled almost none.

AI search
73%

Of tracked keywords now surface an AI Overview, where trust wins citations.

Pipeline
91

Unique inbound leads in 14 months, with the 2026 pace at ~2.4× the 2025 average.

THE TAKEAWAYS

What we would tell the next client like NTFS

Three things this campaign proved, the kind worth carrying into any niche B2B program. First, foundations earn relevance; authority earns the click. You need both, in that order, and you cannot shortcut the second. Second, conviction through the flat part is the whole game. The breakthrough came months after the work that caused it, and only because the client stayed invested. Third, measure what is real, not what is convenient: rankings, leads, and now citations from first-party data, not a third-party tool’s estimate of a market it cannot see.
NTFS now owns the search conversation for its core services in Canada, converts that visibility into a compounding inbound pipeline, and is positioned as a trusted source right as AI reshapes how answers get delivered. Not bad for a market the tools said did not exist.

Have a niche the tools say is too small?

That is often exactly where the most valuable, least contested demand is hiding. If your buyers are specific and high-intent, we should talk.

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Sources & further reading
  1. Ahrefs, 38% of AI Overview Citations Pull From the Top 10 (863K SERPs, Mar 2026).
  2. Ahrefs, What 75,000 Brands Tell Us About AI Visibility.
  3. Ahrefs, AI Overviews Change Every 2 Days.
  4. Google Search Central, AI features and your website (query fan-out).
  5. Google Search Central, Helpful, reliable, people-first content (E-E-A-T).
  6. SEOTesting, Where keyword tools get their data.
  7. Etavrian, Why tiny B2B keywords drive bigger deals.

Before publishing: data to fill in

  1. Lead evidence visual: in the “phone started ringing” section, the dashed box is reserved for anonymised lead screenshots or a CRM export.
  2. Lead chart figures: the cumulative-leads curve is reconstructed from inbox timestamps as an illustrative sample; swap in actual CRM lead counts when available.
  3. Exact brand hex values: colours are inspired by vertamarketing.com; replace with your style-guide values if you want a perfect match.
  4. Logo asset (optional): add a hosted header logo if you want one on this landing page.

Authored by Asad Kamran (SEO Manager) and Ryan Snelling (VP of Marketing). Methodology: performance figures are from the client’s own Google Search Console (web, trailing 16 months to 17 June 2026) and a SEMrush organic-positions export (June 2026). Lead figures are an illustrative sample pending a full CRM export. Third-party search-volume and traffic figures are modelled, not measured. Calls-to-action link to live Verta pages.

© 2026 Verta Marketing. Case study prepared for the Verta Marketing website.

Authored by Asad Kamran & Ryan Snelling

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