SAAS Case Study: 5x Organic Traffic Growth

Is your blog a gold mine for untapped search traffic?

Ranking for “money keywords” is important, but SEO success also comes from driving traffic via informational queries.

In this case study I’ll show you how we turned a B2B SaaS blog into a traffic machine, increasing monthly sessions by 391% –

And that’s not all…

We also got a 160% increase in new keywords ranking in the top 10…

…and took engagement from 2.5k to 12.9k.

How did we do that?

This case study uncovers the exact strategy to transform your blog visitors into customers by optimising for conversions.

This is how we did it…

A Closer Look At The Case Study

Our client is a B2B SaaS website providing online services via a mobile application that users can download.

The client already ranked well for commercial keywords, as their solution addressed a very specific problem.

However, they faced challenges in generating additional organic traffic through their blog.

The primary goal was to attract search visitors by targeting informational keywords, with the intent of converting them into customers.

The Biggest Challenges We Had to Overcome

The most pressing challenges that we overcame during the course of this campaign were:

1. Expanding the blog to target top-of-the-funnel, informational keywords
2. Optimising the usability of the blog
3. Implementing internal linking to improve user navigation and search engine discoverability

Create a Plan of Attack

Our tailored strategy aimed at boosting the client’s website growth, primarily through the blog.

Here’s a detailed, step-by-step guide of the process we used to enhance their visibility on Google.

You can apply the same method if your website is experiencing similar challenges.

Step #1: Blog Expansion

The key to sustained SEO growth and dominance is to target users at each stage of the search funnel.

In other words, you don’t want to limit your reach to just users who are looking for your services or products (bottom of the funnel), you also want to reach users who are looking for information related to your offerings (top of the funnel).

Your blog is a great outlet for you to rank for long-tail keywords (more specific, but less competitive search terms) whilst also showcasing your E-E-A-T:

…within your industry to Google and your audience.

Finding Topic Ideas

I’ll show you how to find topic ideas for your blog using a combination of AI and Ahrefs Keywords Explorer.

Using AI is a great way to start your keyword research process, especially if you’re unsure about what you want to write about.

ChatGPT now has custom GPTs that are trained to fulfil specific requests, there are many for keyword research too.

The one I’m using is called “SEO Keywords”.

Click on “Explore GPTs” on the top left hand side

Search for it in the search bar.

Click “Start Chat”.

Here’s a template prompt that you can use:

“What informational keywords can boost the traffic on my website, which is about [topic]? Please categorise the keywords into topics.”

You now have a starting point to put together topics that will be relevant to your audience.

At the same time, you can use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer Tool to find more keywords related to these topics.

Enter a seed keyword (i.e. “coffee beans”) and make sure to select your target location.

Scroll down to the Keyword Ideas section which displays a range of relevant opportunities that you can rank for.

These include:

We’re interested in the “Questions” report.

There’s an option to view the keywords as “Clusters by Parent Topic”.

This basically means that Ahrefs has pooled together related keywords into groups related by topic.

Scroll down, and you’ll find a table of these topics along with useful information such as:

Straight away, you can see that there are 282 clusters available, and that the first few could easily make a great blog post.

If you click on the dropdown under the Keywords column, you’ll see the indibiudal stats for each keyword within the cluster.

Go through each topic and identify which ones are most relevant to your audience, and which ones you can add additional value to.

This will come in handy when writing and optimising the content in the next step.

Writing & Optimising Blog Content

Once you’ve decided on what topics you want to cover, the next step is to write and optimise your content so that it aligns with what your audience is looking for.

For each topic, enter the primary keyword into “Ahrefs Keywords Explorer” and scroll down to “SERP overview” section.

It’ll show you the top pages that’re ranking for your keyword.

In this example, we’ve selected “what to do with old coffee beans” as it’s the parent keyword within the topic.

Analyse these pages and identify the ones that are closest to what you’re trying to create.

For example:

There are a few forum pages that are ranking here, so these should be excluded, but not totally ignored because they still might have some ideas that you can incorporate into your own article.

The rest are listicles which outline different ways to make use of old or expired coffee grounds.

When reviewing the competing pages, pay attention to elements like:

• The Page Title – Write a catchy and engaging page title that clearly describes what the page is about and ideally, includes the main keyword you’re trying to rank for.

• Headings – This’ll inform how you structure and prioritise the order of your content. Remember, users will skim the content – so ensure your headings clearly describe what users will find within that particular section.

• Content Format – This will inform what kind of content users are expecting to find based on their query. For example, is the page in the form of a listicle, a comparison guide, a how to guide etc?

• Content Length – This will give you an idea on how much detail is needed in order to satisfy the user’s intent. If you see your competitors have written thousands of words because the topic in question requires that level of detail, then writing a 100 word article won’t be enough.

For example, this competitor has only written a sentence or two per tip.

• Rich Media – Identify whether you’ll need to create additional content such as infographics or perhaps even videos to support the textual content.

Looking at the competition will only make your article as good as what’s already out there.

But you don’t just want to match your competitors, you want to outrank and outshine them.

As an expert within your field, aim to include unique information that nobody else will have.

This is what will show Google and your audience that you’ve gone above and beyond what’s already out there.

After all, if you’re just going to repeat what everyone else has already said, why would Google want to rank you any higher?

Following the above steps will help grow your search visibility for informational keywords and target users at the top of the search funnel.

Step #2: Improving Blog Usability

Attracting visitors to your blog is no longer enough in today’s highly competitive SEO environment.

While ranking for informational keywords is an important starting point for increasing search traffic, you need to be able to turn those visitors into meaningful outcomes: whether that’s lead generation, sales, or other key actions that are important to your business.

If your blog posts aren’t leading to at least some conversions, you’re missing out.

There are two effective ways that you can achieve this:

1. Adding related posts
2. Engaging calls to actions

Add Related Posts

Related posts are blog articles that are topically related to what a user is currently reading.

By presenting content that aligns with the reader’s interests, these posts help increase on-site engagement and keep users on your website for longer.

Additionally, they offer a natural way to introduce internal links, including those that direct traffic to your “money making” pages like product or service pages.

When adding related posts to your blog articles, think about:

• Relevance – only add posts that are actually relevant to the current article. There’s no point adding a link to an article about vacuum cleaners on a blog post about smartphones. Instead, a more relevant article to add might be about smartphone accessories.

• Placement– Adding related posts at the bottom of your articles encourages a natural flow and boosts engagement without interrupting the reading experience.

• Don’t Add Too Many – Stick to 3-5 related posts. Offering too many can overwhelm readers and dilute SEO value, as search engines may not prioritise any particular link when too many are present.

• Make Them Stand Out – Add a clear subheading like “Related Posts” or “You Might Also Like”. Include the title and the featured image to further make these posts stand out and clickable.

• ​​Track & Update Links Regularly – Monitor the performance of related posts and update links as needed. Use analytics tools to identify which links are driving traffic and conversions, and adjust your related post strategy accordingly.

When it comes to adding related posts, there are several plugins and tools you can use.

For example if you’re on WordPress, you can use:

For Shopify websites, there’s the Related Blog Posts Pro plugin.

Add CTAs

Although the primary purpose of blog posts is to inform readers, you can still drive traffic towards your core pages and convert these visitors into potential customers through Calls to Actions (CTAs).

For example, in our client’s case, we added CTAs to encourage users landing on their blog posts to download their application.

A Call to Action is a prompt that encourages users to take a specific action, such as:

CTAs are typically found in the form of buttons, links, or banners within content and are designed to guide visitors toward a desired outcome, helping drive conversions and engagement.

Step #3: Implementing Internal Linking

Another key SEO tactic for driving traffic towards your most important pages (i.e. service or product pages) from your blog posts, is internal linking.

Adding internal links also helps search engines discover your content and understand how your pages are related to each other.

Here are some tips on what to consider when adding internal links:

Identify Key (Relevant) Pages

Prioritise linking to the pages where you want users to convert.

For example, eCommerce sites should link to category or product pages whereas SaaS or B2B websites should link to their service pages.

Whichever page you choose, make sure that it’s relevant to the blog post that you’re linking from.

Link Placement

Strategically place internal links within relevant sections of your blog post so that they naturally fit the context of your article and guide users to related content or key pages.

Remember to use anchor text that describes the linked page clearly, incorporating relevant keywords where appropriate.

Here’s an example of a blog post about storing records, which naturally links to a category page for record player needles.

Organise Blog Posts Into Clusters

Develop articles on topics that are important to your audience, but importantly, focus on an area or service that you provide.

For example:

If you’re a photographer, you likely specialise in different types of photography (i.e. wedding photography, passport photos etc.).

You can then create clusters of blog posts that are related to each specialism and then form a web of content (i.e. content hubs) that points to the wedding photography service pag.

Check out our guide on internal linking strategies for more information.

Results

Here’s the key takeaway.

To recap, we did this by using three simple strategies:

These tactics can be applied anywhere. Any industry. Any niche.

The results: The client’s monthly organic traffic on the blog increased by 391%, from 649 to 3,191 monthly sessions<.

The engagement also increased with the number of events increasing from 2.5k to 12.9k per month.

The number of keywords that the client’s blog is ranking for in the top 10 positions of the search results has increased by 160% from 842 to 2,193 keywords.

The moral of the story? By focusing on user intent and optimising for both search engines and conversions you can unleash your blog’s full potential.

👉 Want to turn your own blog into a traffic and lead generator?

Here are 4 ways that we can help you:

And if you have any questions…

… please feel free to leave a comment below!