CST Academy
CST Academy runs eight pediatric therapy clinics across Chicago and the North Shore. In February 2026 the eight location pages shared one block of copy between them. CST Academy hired Digital Authority Partners, who rewrote all eight, built 32 service pages underneath, and spent the next seven months pushing the set up the local rankings. By August every location was earning more organic clicks than it had in December 2025, and the eight pages together had gone from 108 clicks a month to 502.
CST Academy is the highest rated provider of pediatric therapy in Chicagoland, working with autistic children and diverse learners from 18 months to 18 years. Speech language pathologist Karen George founded it in 2009 as Chicago Speech Therapy. It now runs eight clinics and employs more than 260 people across applied behavior analysis, speech, occupational, physical, and feeding therapy, plus a therapeutic preschool program.
Project Summary
CST Academy hired Digital Authority Partners to make eight clinic locations findable to the families searching for them. DAP rebuilt every location hub on a 13 section template the client approved, added a page for each service at each clinic, and pointed guest article links at the service pages that needed them. Forty pages now stand where eight thin ones did, and the set earns more than four times the organic clicks it did in December 2025.
The Challenge
Shared Location Copy 98% Match Across the Chicago Pages
The three Chicago pages ran on the same 800 words with roughly 15 words changed per page. The five suburban pages worked from the same template. Over the 90 days to 15 February those three pages drew 248 organic views and four organic conversions between them.
Open Local Keywords Zero Overlap in 12 Months of Data
Search Console showed no overlap between the local terms CST Academy wanted and anything the site already ranked for. Five of the eight clinics had no organic presence. Every local applied behavior analysis term sat open to whoever built for it first.
Homepage Conversion 1.3% Homepage Key Event Rate
Across 13 months the homepage drew 44,231 pageviews from 31,833 users and recorded 573 key events. Visitors stayed 25.5 seconds. The form sat at 50 to 60% scroll depth, and 92.4% of the people who reached it moved on without starting it.
Paid Reach Nine Conversions in 92 Days
Google Ads ran without geographic limits, which left room to concentrate budget on the areas the eight clinics serve. Connecting a click to a patient inquiry was the second lever, and the bigger one.
How We Helped CST Academy
Eight Location Pages, Written Eight Times
Bucktown went first, in February. The page moved from four templated sections to 13 written for that neighborhood: Blue Line directions, drive times, the staff who work there, Google reviews from Bucktown parents. CST approved it, and that page set the pattern for the other seven.
- Rebuilt eight location hubs on a 13 section template CST approved on the Bucktown page
- Wrote 32 service pages, one per service per clinic, each on its own local search term
- Verified neighborhoods, drive times, transit, and cross streets on every page before publication
- Linked each hub to the four service pages beneath it, and each service page back to its hub
- Held every page to 80% or more unique body copy
Google Ads Rebuilt Around the Service Area
Digital Authority Partners rebuilt the account in three phases between February and June, starting with geographic targeting. Paid inquiries went from nine in the 92 days to 31 January to 29 in the 80 days to 21 April.
- Set geographic targeting to the areas the eight clinics serve
- Split campaigns by service line so each one carried its own leads and its own judgment
- Moved match types from broad to phrase and exact
- Wrote copy and developer handoffs for three dedicated landing pages
- Built a negative keyword and search term framework the team kept running monthly
A Conversion Tracking Audit and the Fix List
Greg Hall ran the conversion tracking audit in May. It found roughly 75% of paid form submissions never reached Google Ads, form tracking firing about 24% of the time, and 32 of 109 Google Ads contacts in HubSpot sitting under the wrong source.
- Audited GA4, Google Tag Manager, and Google Ads conversion tracking end to end
- Rebuilt the paid conversion path on 15 May and verified it against 30 automated checks
- Reconciled call tracking against Google Ads and HubSpot attribution
- Documented the June key event break and every event registration needed to close it
- Handed the remediation list to CST with the September search handover
Conversion Work on the Pages Parents Land On
A May audit measured four service pages over 90 days. 1,211 sessions reached them, 190 got as far as the form, and 16 submitted. DAP rewrote the three strongest pages and CST republished all of them in July.
- Audited 13 months of homepage behavior down to scroll depth and form interaction
- Designed two homepage versions and handed both to CST for a live test
- Measured four service pages across 90 days of sessions, form views, and submissions
- Rewrote the applied behavior analysis, speech, and occupational therapy pages
- Refreshed titles and descriptions across the highest impression pages in July
What We Achieved
The eight location pages earned 502 organic clicks in August 2026 against 108 in December 2025, the best month on record for the set. Impressions across the same span went from 15,971 to 77,830.
Every clinic earned more organic clicks in August 2026 than in December 2025. Bucktown moved from zero to 179, Gurnee 17 to 76, Buffalo Grove 20 to 58, Park Ridge 22 to 54, Lincoln Park 9 to 38, Wilmette 21 to 36, Northbrook 15 to 32, and Wicker Park 4 to 29.
Referring domains went from 264 in December 2025 to 780 in September 2026. Six DAP written guest articles carried links to the applied behavior analysis pages for six of the clinics. The rest came from the site’s own content earning links.
CST Academy holds 94 tracked keywords in Google’s top three and 129 in the top 10. Applied behavior analysis is the strongest cluster, with 34 tracked rankings on page one and 13 at position one.
Eight location hubs and 32 service pages are live and indexed, one page for every service at every clinic. Four hubs hold a top five position on most of their core local terms.
