Vertical based SEO strategy for Puma Energy: 46.4% visibility against 10.8% for YPF

Puma Energy runs its service station network, fuels, lubricants and agricultural solutions in Argentina. By mid 2020 organic search was a secondary channel for its site.

The brand showed up when searched by name and did not compete on the generic searches a driver or a farmer runs, which is where the demand that has not picked a supplier yet actually sits.

And it faced competitors with far more digital weight.

• Three different businesses: stations, lubricants and agro share neither searches nor audience, and the site treated them alike.
• Heavy competition: YPF, Shell and Axion Energy with much stronger domains.
• Proximity searches unserved: whoever looks for a station looks for the closest one, not for a brand.

Without separating the businesses, any keyword chosen would serve only one of the three.

We organized the strategy by business vertical, each with its own keyword set and tracking, instead of treating the site as one thing.

The service started in June 2020 and is still running, with a technical, speed and domain audit as the starting point.

Three verticals, three strategies

• Service stations, lubricants and agro, each with its own keyword research and position tracking.
• Titles, meta descriptions and alt text rewritten with each vertical's keywords.
• Optimization of the product PDF datasheets, which were already pulling search traffic.

Proximity search, served where it happens

• The station finder worked as a landing page, with map presence.
• Link building across forums, blogs and media, coordinated with the press team and watching anchor text.
• Writing manual handed over so new content gets optimized without vendor dependency.

Holding the gains, since 2023

• Monthly crawl cycle with errors broken down by type: 4xx, broken links, duplicate or missing titles and meta descriptions, absent headings and images without alt text.
• Actionable spreadsheets for the client team, with mobile and desktop speed diagnostics.

Architecture and technology

• Google Analytics 4 configured in 2022, with a real time metrics dashboard.
• Monthly reporting on rankings, analytics and technical health, with the engagement running since 2020.

Learn more about SEO strategy.

The site went from showing up for its brand to leading visibility in its category, above much larger competitors.

Starting point

• 9,301 organic users and 11,317 sessions, with 71.6% bounce.
• 327 ranking keywords and 2,800 estimated monthly organic visits, June 2020.
• Technical health at 65% and 30 duplicate titles, July 2023.

Results

• 24,300 organic users, up 161%, and 31,060 sessions, up 174%.
• 1,700 ranking keywords and 20,100 monthly organic visits, March 2021.
• 46.4% visibility against 10.8% for YPF and 5.4% for Shell.
• 90.4% of organic traffic from non branded searches, with «service station» at 50.1%.
• Technical health from 65% to 88% and duplicate titles from 30 to 2.

Strategic impact

• 90.4% arriving non branded means the channel captures new demand.
• Monthly maintenance since 2023 prevents giving back what was gained.