South Jersey Blinds & Beyond: rankings that held after the handoff
South Jersey Blinds & Beyond, a window-treatments retailer in South Jersey, needed a site that ranked, financing that converted, and lead tooling that worked. We rebuilt on Next.js, integrated Synchrony financing, built custom SEO reporting software, and wired up a HighLevel CRM. Estimated organic footprint grew from 21 ranked keywords to 422 — and the #1 rankings won in 2024 still hold 20 months after the engagement ended.
The owner & the bottleneck
Where it started.
South Jersey Blinds & Beyond sells and installs custom window treatments — blinds, shades, and shutters — across South Jersey. It is a standalone local business, and it faced the challenge most local specialty retailers do: a web presence that did not rank, did not convert well, and did not connect to any system that could manage the leads it produced. At the approximate start in early 2023, the site ranked for an estimated 21 keywords with an estimated monthly organic traffic value of about $7, a single top-10 ranking, and no #1 positions. For a business whose customers search specific, local, high-intent terms — motorized shades, plantation shutters, blackout blinds, window treatments near me — that footprint left most of the market unreachable. Cost was also a friction point: window treatments are a considered, higher-ticket purchase, and without financing at the point of decision, quotes stalled. And the leads that did come in had nowhere organized to go. The objectives were to rebuild the site for speed, mobile, and search; make financing frictionless so a custom-quote purchase did not stall on cost; and put lead management, ad tracking, and reporting on a foundation the business could see and act on.
What we built
The system we put in.
We rebuilt the site on Next.js — fast, mobile-responsive, and SEO-optimized — with heavy media assets delivered from a CDN to keep page loads low-latency. We integrated Synchrony Bank financing directly into the purchase path so customers could get custom loan quotes on window-treatment purchases, removing cost as a point of friction on higher-ticket jobs. On the search side we ran a customized SEO plan and built custom monthly SEO report-generation software so the business had automated, reliable reporting on its own progress. For operations, we integrated a HighLevel CRM for lead management, set up Facebook Ads tracking and fixed the ad funnels, and improved the lead form's qualifying questions so incoming leads were better qualified. As the engagement wound down in late 2024, we set up Semrush tooling and handed it off to the client across sessions in October and November. The combination — a fast, crawlable site, frictionless financing, automated reporting, and working lead tooling — moved the estimated organic footprint from 21 ranked keywords to 422 and, more durably, won top positions the site would keep. The #1 rankings earned in 2024 still hold twenty months after the engagement ended.
The numbers
What changed, measured.
The full story
How it played out.
A specialty retailer nobody could find
At the approximate early-2023 start, the site ranked for an estimated 21 keywords with a single top-10 position and no #1 rankings — it didn't even hold the top spot for its own name. Early-engagement work on the prior site produced a first footprint spike in spring 2023; the Next.js rebuild went live around April 2024 (the first archived capture of the new design is May 11, 2024), and the sustained SEO work converted that foundation into positions that actually win clicks.
Positions that outlived the engagement
The site's first-ever #1 Google ranking landed in April 2024 — its own name, which it had never ranked first for — and it held two #1 positions by the October–November 2024 handoff. Twenty months later those #1s still hold, and the site also keeps non-brand top-5 positions today, including "new jersey blinds" at #3 and "blinds & beyond" at #4. The build outlived the engagement too: the site in production today is still the one we shipped — verified in July 2026, running unmodified. Overall keyword counts drifted down after the handoff, which is normal without active work; the top positions did not.
| Milestone | When | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline | Jan 2023 (approx.) | 21 keywords · 1 top-10 · 0 at #1 |
| First #1 ranking | Apr 2024 | First ever for the domain |
| Handoff | Oct–Nov 2024 | 422 keywords · 6 top-10 · 2 at #1 |
| Still holding | Jun 2026 | 2 at #1 (brand name + LLC variant) · "new jersey blinds" #3 · 20 mo post-engagement |
The system behind it
| Deliverable | Detail |
|---|---|
| Website rebuild | Next.js, mobile-responsive, CDN-delivered media — launched ~Apr 2024 (live by the May 11, 2024 archive capture) |
| Financing | Synchrony Bank custom loan quotes in the purchase path |
| SEO reporting | Custom monthly report-generation software built by Rhize |
| Lead operations | HighLevel CRM, Facebook Ads tracking & funnel fixes, qualifying-question improvements |
| Handoff | Semrush tooling set up and transferred, Oct 16 + Nov 4, 2024 |
How we measure
All traffic and keyword figures on this page are third-party estimates from DataForSEO historical rank data, clearly labeled — no first-party Search Console or Analytics data exists for this client. The dollar figures are modest local-retailer scale (an estimated $7 to $661 a month in organic traffic value) and we present them plainly rather than inflate them. The engagement began around early 2023 on the prior site; the rebuild went live around April 2024, bracketed by archived captures of the old site (September 2023) and the new design (May 11, 2024); the end is evidenced by tooling-handoff sessions in October and November 2024. The two standing #1 rankings are the company's own name and its LLC variant — positions it never held before April 2024 — alongside non-brand top-5 rankings like "new jersey blinds" at #3 that were won during the engagement and still hold.
“Rhize media is a great company to work with. They're really investing in doing the best job possible and care about getting actual good results with there marketing and SEO strategies. Easy to work and communicate with.”
Ronnie Rosso — South Jersey Blinds & Beyond (Google review)
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