Cindermoth Tattoo
Four artists, one studio, and the top spot for 'fine line tattoo Austin'
Fine-line tattoo studio in Austin, United States. Four artists with the work to fill a book, and a website that showed Google none of it. A 7-month local SEO engagement, drawn up like a flash sheet.
- Plan
- Local
- Duration
- 7 months
- Region
- North America
+176% consultation requests · base month vs month 7
Plate IThe challenge
The best work in town, invisible to search.
Artists' portfolios lived on personal Instagram accounts, and the studio had no artist or style pages for Google to match to searches.
People don’t search for “tattoo shop” when they want fine-line work. They search for a style, a motif, an artist’s name. Cindermoth had nothing Google could match to those searches, so the map pack and image results went to studios with weaker portfolios and better pages.
Stencil check · audit findings
- TechnicalCritical
The portfolio was an Instagram embed
Every tattoo on the site loaded through a third-party widget after page load. Googlebot saw an empty grid: zero indexable images, no alt text, no captions.
- ContentCritical
No page for any artist or style
One homepage and a booking form. 'Fine line', 'single needle', 'botanical' and 'micro' appeared nowhere on the site, only in Instagram captions.
- LocalHigh
A half-finished Business Profile
Primary category set, no services, three photos (the storefront and two of the same flash wall), opening hours missing on Sundays, and no booking link.
- LocalHigh
61 reviews, 9% answered
Reviews named artists and styles in their own words, useful relevance signals, but sat unanswered while two one-star reviews stayed at the top.
- TechnicalMedium
6.1 MB hero, 4.8 s LCP on mobile
An uncompressed studio photo as the homepage hero. Filenames like IMG_4471.jpg, no width/height, no image sitemap, no structured data.
- LocalMedium
Suite number split three ways
'Ste 104', '#104' and no unit at all across Yelp, Apple Maps and two tattoo directories, diluting citation consistency for the address.
Plate IIThe strategy
Four designs on one sheet: give every artist, style and photo a page Google can read.
Built on our Local plan, with four tactics applied in order of how quickly they move the map pack.
- 01Map pack
Google Business Profile
- Added 'Tattoo artist' and 'Body piercing' as secondary categories and listed 14 services, each a style the studio actually books.
- Weekly flash-drop posts with healed photos, a booking link with UTM tagging, and a seeded Q&A on pricing, minimums and aftercare.
- Cleaned the suite number across 23 citations so the address reads identically everywhere.
- 02Entities
Artist pages
- Four artist pages at /artists/<name>, each with styles, healed-work gallery, books-open status and a Person schema linked to the studio.
- Six style hubs (fine line, single needle, botanical, micro, script, ornamental), each cross-linking the artists who specialise in it.
- Instagram became a link out from each page rather than the source of the portfolio.
- 03Images
Portfolio image SEO
- Re-hosted 312 portfolio photos as responsive WebP with descriptive filenames: fine-line-peony-forearm-austin.webp, not IMG_4471.jpg.
- Alt text written by the artists themselves (style, placement, motif), plus ImageObject schema and an image sitemap.
- Hero cut from 6.1 MB to 148 KB; mobile LCP from 4.8 s to 1.9 s.
- 04Trust
Review responses
- Every review answered within 48 hours by the artist named in it, mentioning the style and placement in plain words.
- A healed-photo follow-up six weeks after each session, which is when clients are happiest and most likely to leave a review.
- Replies to the two one-star reviews with a fix offered; one was updated to five stars.
/artists/mara
Mara
Fine line · single needle
Name + style: #1
/artists/jun
Jun
Botanical · floral
Name + style: #1
/artists/teo
Teo
Script · lettering
Name + style: #2
/artists/iris
Iris
Ornamental · micro
Name + style: #3
Plate III7 sittings
From stencil to healed.
- Sitting 141 consults
Stencil
Full audit, GBP categories and services rebuilt, citation clean-up started, tracking set up for 48 style and local keywords.
- Sitting 249 consults
Linework
Four artist pages and the fine line hub go live. Instagram embed removed; first 90 portfolio images re-hosted.
- Sitting 358 consults
Shading
Remaining 222 images re-hosted with alt text, ImageObject schema and an image sitemap. First artist page reaches page one.
- Sitting 470 consults
Colour
Review-response routine starts; healed-photo follow-up emails begin. Map-pack share passes a third of tracked searches.
- Sitting 582 consults
Second sitting
Botanical, micro, script and ornamental hubs published. All four artist pages now rank for their own name plus a style.
- Sitting 695 consults
Touch-up
Weekly flash-drop posts on GBP, Q&A seeded, internal links tightened between style hubs and artists.
- Sitting 7105 consults
Healed
24 style keywords in the top 3, 58% map-pack share, consultation requests at 105 a month.
- After month 7+176%consultation requests
Plate IVResults
Every design, inked in.
Pick a flash to see the month-by-month series behind it.
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
Flash No. 01 · Rose
Style keywords top 3
2 → 24
Six style hubs gave Google a page to match to each way people describe fine-line work. Of 48 tracked style keywords, 24 now sit in the top three.
Consultation requests, per month
+176% consultation requests- AHollowpine Tattoo4.7 ★ (212) · Tattoo shop
- BBramble & Bone4.8 ★ (164) · Tattoo shop
- CSaltmarrow Ink4.6 ★ (301) · Tattoo shop
Cindermoth Tattoo: #7 in the local finder, not in the pack.
- ACindermoth Tattoo4.9 ★ (118) · Tattoo shop
- BHollowpine Tattoo4.7 ★ (219) · Tattoo shop
- CBramble & Bone4.8 ★ (171) · Tattoo shop
Pack position A on 6 of 9 grid points across central and East Austin.
Keyword movement · sample of 48 tracked
| Keyword | Style | Before | After | Ranking page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| fine line tattoo austin | Fine line | 9 | 1 | /styles/fine-line |
| fine line tattoo artist austin | Fine line | 14 | 1 | /styles/fine-line |
| single needle tattoo austin | Single needle | 100+ | 2 | /styles/single-needle |
| botanical tattoo austin | Botanical | 31 | 1 | /artists/jun |
| micro tattoo austin | Micro | 22 | 3 | /styles/micro |
| script tattoo austin | Script | 100+ | 2 | /artists/teo |
| ornamental tattoo austin | Ornamental | 47 | 3 | /artists/iris |
| dainty tattoo austin | Fine line | 3 | 1 | /styles/fine-line |
| tattoo shop near me (East Austin) | Map pack | 11 | 2 | Business Profile |
| minimalist tattoo austin | Micro | 2 | 2 | /styles/micro |
Your sheet next
Get a plan like this
A studio, a salon, a chair with a waiting list: if your best work lives somewhere Google can’t read, we’ll draw up the pages, profile and photos to change that.
← All case studies