LeadSquared

“Our goal is simple: Grow organic search traffic from the US”.

That’s what Rajat Arora, VP Marketing at LeadSquared, shared in the first call.

Along with Rajat, we had Meenu Joshi, Director of Content and Nidhi Agarwal, SEO manager in the meeting.

“We’ve spent more than a year on SEO but have only seen 1X growth from US search.” He said.

It’s a challenge a lot of companies face.

They put in the work, but don’t see the SEO results they expect.

“Let’s aim for 3X growth in 6 months. What do you think?” I said.

“Wow, that would be amazing!”, Nidhi said.

And just like that we we’re up and running with LeadSquared.

We had 6 months to 3X organic search traffic from the US.

As it turned out, we didn’t need 6 months to reach it.

We only needed 90 days.

Tell me more about LeadSquared…

LeadSquared is a sales CRM and marketing automation platform.

Found in 2013, then a lead management platform, LeadSquared has spent the last decade building a vertical-centric, use-case first approach to software.

The Result: A configurable, scalable, industry-first solution with sales empowerment at its core.

LeadSquared’s mission is to offer the best sales execution platform for high-velocity sales teams and they are well on their way to achieving that with 2,000 customers and 200,000 active users.

And with $32 million in Series B funding led by Gaja Capital in late 2020, they had ambitious growth goals for 2021.

They spent several months working on their SEO strategy, and in September 2021, they began their search for an agency to collaborate with. That’s when they reached out to INEVO.

“For a long time, we could not see any considerable changes in the US traffic even though we were publishing content regularly. We had a feeling that something is not right, so we reached out to you to help us identify causes and move the needle on the US traffic.” – Nidhi Agrawal

Developing a US-centric Content & SEO strategy

All companies want to achieve fast growth.

But a trend we’ve noticed over the last 12 months is specific growth from one country.

At LeadSquared, their focus was US traffic.

Although our 3-step process works for all B2B SaaS clients, having a specific country in mind meant we had to make some adjustments, so we developed a process that was tailored to them.

The 3-step process included:

1. Create guidelines, structure and frameworks for writers to follow
2. Identify content that ranks in positions 4-10 and improve them
3. Create new content targeting high search volume keywords

1. Create guidelines, structure and frameworks for writers to follow

Our team has published content that ranks in position one globally for keywords like customer experience, B2B Sales, email marketing strategy and social selling and has earned backlinks from Tech Crunch, Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

Because of this, we’ve discovered what type of content Google wants to return in their search results.

LeadSquared have a team of in-house writers and external writers – which led to an inconsistency in quality, tone of voice and results, so we developed a set of guidelines specifically for them.

For example, LeadSquared’s goal was to US search traffic so one of the guidelines for their writers was to reference US cities in their content (i.e. Basecamp, a software company based in Chicago…). This helps Google understand who the content is targeted at.

Another reason we developed guidelines for LeadSquared is to scale.

It’s much easier to onboard new writers if you have guidelines to share with them. It sets expectations and makes the review process easier. Content that follows the guidelines is much more likely to be published (and with fewer edits).

We find the content guidelines very helpful. It gives our writers clarity on what's expected from them.

Once the guidelines were shared, we then looked at existing content.

2. Identify content that ranks in positions 4-10 and improve them

We were lucky - we didn't have to start from scratch with LeadSquared.

They had a high domain authority (80+) and have more than 4,000 pages indexed in search. So, the best place to begin was by improving existing content that ranks well but should be ranking higher.

How do you identify content you want to improve?

We take a data-driven approach with content at INEVO, so we analyzed keywords that rank on page one but have yet to crack the top 3.

To find these keywords, we used Ahrefs Organic Keywords Report and included a filter to show content that ranks in positions 4-10 in the US.

This data, along with traffic data for the last 30 days from Google Analytics, was used to create a document that outlined which content we would improve and in what order. This was calculated by including traffic potential, based on current position and total search volume (SV).

We wanted to keep the process simple, and Nidhi and her team began working on improving existing content quickly. Within weeks, content was being refreshed and published on the website.

The process of improving existing content is great. It's comparatively easier to do, and we have seen positive changes in their ranks and traffic.

Here’s 3 examples of content we worked on together to improve:

• 17 Sales Goals Examples for Individuals and Teams [with an Action Plan]
• How to Build a High Converting Sales Funnel [Best Practices, Tips and Examples]
• Lead Management: How to Convert 35% More Leads into Customers

As soon as this process was up and running, we then moved onto creating new content.

3. Create new content targeting high search volume keywords

There are dozens of ways to find content topics.

You can speak with your customers…

You can talk to sales and support teams…

Or you can guess… (not something we recommend).

We used SEMrush’s Keyword Gap report.

It’s a report that shows you what keywords your competitors rank for, that you don’t.

(Think of it like s cheat sheet to getting content topics, fast).

To find topics we wanted to create content for, we compared LeadSquared with SuperOffice and Hubspot.

In minutes, you have a list of keywords you can target.

Not all keywords will be relevant, so we created a document that prioritized keywords based on relevancy and search volume – topics including customer profile, CRM marketing and follow up email.

Top of funnel topics like B2B sales and customer experience are highly competitive.

But it was this change in direction that LeadSquared were missing from their existing strategy.

This collaboration changed our approach to solving the ranking problem. Earlier, we were trying to build traffic by publishing more content on easy to rank keywords, which didn't really work.

Topics that have a search volume of 300-500 searches per month will only generate 100-200 visits per month – and that’s if you rank in position one.

While topics that have a search volume of 5,000 to 8,000 per month can generate thousands of visits. Yes, these topics are more competitive, but this strategy will generate far better results.

(We also had an ace up our sleeve – the content guidelines).

Each new article we published was long form, expert-driven and practical.

Collectively, the new content now ranks for more than 2,000 keywords in the US – helping the LeadSquared website rank for more than 15,000 keywords combined.

Here’s 3 examples of new content we published:

• How to Create Your First Customer Profile [Checklist, Template, and Examples]
• How to Write Follow-up Emails After No Response [25 Ready-to-use Templates]
• CRM Marketing: The Secret Recipe for Higher Engagement and Faster Sales!

Better content, higher rankings and more US traffic

Working together on this strategy increased overall search traffic by 30,000 visits per month.

However, increasing overall organic traffic wasn’t their goal.

Growing US search traffic was.

We had 6 months to hit 3X growth, but only needed 90 days – growing organic traffic from 5,000 visits per month to 17,000 visits per month from the US market.

LeadSquared’s growth didn’t come from one single article; it was from a combination of the strategy we laid out from the beginning – follow specific guidelines, improve existing content and produce new content - and is based on a proven formula we’ve perfected over the last decade.

The strategy, which is a mix of revamping existing and creating new content parallelly worked for us. Steven [and INEVO] gave us the formula to gain more from less, and now we're on track to 3X our US Google Search traffic in just 3 months.

But make no mistake: this was a collaboration.

If we didn’t work together in the way we did, we wouldn’t have been able to scale and reach the target – and that’s thanks to Nidhi and her team. They were engaged and motivated to create better quality content for the LeadSquared website.

And because of this, US traffic continues to climb. If they continue to scale high quality content, then they are on track to 10X their US organic traffic before the end of the year.

Next steps

We’ve helped dozens of B2B SaaS companies grow organic search traffic.

We follow a specific process – and it works, every single time.

Do you want to collaborate with INEVO on your B2B content strategy?

Let us conduct a 15-minute audit on your website, for free, and share what we find on a quick 3-minute call. We’ll share key recommendations, too.

Easy, right?

Get my free 15-minute audit