Lyons National Bank could rank for its own name — and almost nothing else. With regulatory review on every public-facing word, the usual content-led SEO playbook was off the table. So we rebuilt the bank’s technical foundation instead, and pointed it at the non-branded searches that win new customers.
for terms beyond the target set
vs the 11.4% industry benchmark
into top 150, from beyond #200
Executive summary
8 – month engagement
May 2023 – Jan 2024
The bank ranked for branded searches but sat beyond position 200 on most of the 50 non-branded terms that drive new-customer discovery — and compliance review on every public word ruled out content-led SEO
With content constrained, we rebuilt the technical layer — migrated to WordPress, added schema, restructured on-page, and improved speed — then re-pointed the entire program at non-branded discovery terms
43 of the 50 targets reached the top 150; 10 hit page one and 11 page two. Beyond the target set, 100+ brand-new #1 rankings appeared and organic traffic rose 30% in six months — nearly triple the industry benchmark
01 / About & challenge
ABOUT THE CLIENT
Lyons National Bank is a community bank serving Lyons, Auburn, and the surrounding Finger Lakes region. Like most banks, its digital presence was strong on brand searches — people who already knew the name — but thin on the high- value, non-branded queries prospective customers actually use.
And the usual growth lever, a steady stream of optimized content, was largely off the table. In banking, every public- facing word can be subject to regulatory and legal review, which makes high-volume content SEO slow, expensive, and risky
SNAPSH0T
Community banking · financial services
Lyons · Auburn · Finger Lakes region, NY
Compliance review on all public-facing copy
SEO · CMS migration · technical rebuild (May 2023 – Jan 2024)
THE CHALLENGE
Fifty high-value keywords tied to the bank’s locations and services — many sitting beyond Google’s first 200 results. The fix most agencies reach for first, publishing content, was constrained by compliance. That left the technical foundation as the real lever.
Most of the 50 target keywords ranked beyond position 200 —
effectively invisible to searchers
The bank appeared for “LNB Auburn,” not “bank in Auburn NY.”
Regulatory review on public copy ruled out high-volume
content publishing.
The legacy platform limited schema, structure, and site-speed
control.
New customers find banks through non-branded search — and
the bank wasn’t there.
01 / About & challenge — evidence
As of October 2025
Audit read: With most target terms sitting beyond position 200 and content-led SEO ruled out by compliance, the only realistic path to discovery visibility ran through the site's technical foundation — the CMS, schema, on-page structure, and speed.
02 / Strategy & approach
Moved the bank off its legacy platform onto WordPress — the foundation that made real technical SEO possible: control over templates, metadata, schema, and speed.
Implemented structured data so search engines could unambiguously read the bank’s locations, services, and entity signals — the machine-readable layer that also feeds rich results and AI answers
Corrected heading hierarchy, titles, and meta so each page mapped cleanly to a single high-intent, non- branded query — no content rewrite required.
Improved load speed and cleaned up technical debt to lift both rankings and the on-site experience for real
visitors.
Re-pointed the entire program at non-branded, high-value terms like “bank in Auburn NY” instead of branded terms like “LNB Auburn” — putting the bank in front of people who don’t yet know it.
02 / Strategy & approach — results
for terms beyond the target set
vs the 11.4% industry benchmark
into top 150, from beyond #200
BEFORE 2023 NOW 2024
About Site Hub
Rochester, NY · 650+ clients
Founded ~2012
Site Hub is a scrappy, senior digital marketing agency built for small and mid-sized B2B businesses with an allocated marketing budget. We do SMARTSites, SEO, paid media, and brand work — and we white-label for other agencies. No tech jargon, no hostage fees, no agency theater
LET’S TALK
Tell us what’s broken, what’s working, and where you want to be in 12 months. We’ll build the plan, no agency theater, no hostage fees.
