Significantly Growing the Organic Traffic of a SaaS from Scratch

Stagetimer is a SaaS that provides an incredibly valuable tool for live streamers, event managers, and conference organizers: A remote-controlled countdown timer. Through their service, users can easily keep events and presentations on track.

But as useful as Stagetimer is, it’s a relatively new service. They needed a lot of help to get their name and service offering out to potential users on the market. And the best way to do that, according to their founder, is through SEO.

Stagetimer decided to choose Embarque to help them develop an SEO strategy, with the end objective of boosting their website’s organic traffic and revenue. In this case study, we’ll show you exactly how we achieved such impressive results in just two months!

You’ll learn in this case study how we:

Helped Stagetimer create a brand new SEO strategy from scratch.
Handle keyword research that we use in turn to optimize Stagetimer’s content.
Leveraged programmatic SEO to quickly and cost-effectively rank Stagetimer’s landing pages and blogs.

The Problem — No SEO Strategy in Place

Stagetimer had no SEO strategy in place, and the company’s founder had very limited knowledge of SEO. As a result, they needed our expertise and insights to grow.

From early 2022, when Embarque stepped in and started to roll out new strategies and content, Stagetimer was only receiving 40-50 visitors to their website per month.

Because of this, as Lukas Hermann — the founder of Stagetimer — tweeted: the company needed better, more effective ideas to rank their website.

The Solution — Aid with Keyword Research & Provide SEO-Optimized Content

Since we noticed the keyword research that went into their existing content was weak, we decided to build a strategy that revolves around systems-based SEO keyword research.

Our SEO specialists systematically found and compiled what users were typing into their search engine while looking for a service similar to that of Stagetimer (queries), and made a list of the keyword permutations that could be targeted in a way that was easy to scale.

From there, we built a list of topics and keywords that we could use to catch users’ attention and get a much-needed boost from Google’s algorithm.

We focus on three major kinds of queries in particular.

Landing Page (LP) queries: Landing pages are webpages designed and written specifically to convert readers into service users. As a result, they’re an integral part of any SEO strategy. Our team focuses specifically on queries that can funnel users into LPs to boost not just organic traffic, but also Stagetimer’s revenue.

Blog post queries: Besides providing fresh content for the client’s website, blog articles are also a superb tool to improve the site’s credibility and visibility, which, in turn, will improve traffic. Using blog article queries, we can target relevant, high-performing keywords to help Stagetimer rank on SERPs. Blog articles are also useful for increasing user engagement and serve as foundations for backlinking later.

Programmatic SEO queries: Programmatic SEO is a fairly new SEO strategy that relies on automation to rapidly create and optimize content that can further help pages rank. Stagetimer handled programmatic SEO works in-house, with Embarque acting as a consultant. We advised Stagetimer to focus on timer and countdown-related queries (such as “timer”, “countdown”, etc.). These queries are what most people will search for when they’re looking for services like Stagetimer. Stagetimer used a collection of website-based timers set in different intervals (10, 15, 30 minutes, etc.) as their programmatic SEO template. Not only are they useful for the end users, but they can also be quickly programmatically generated. Once the template for the timer has been designed and set up, each page is optimized by inserting keywords into the URL and adding internal linking to increase the indexing speed of search engines (as well as improve user experience).

An extra benefit of creating a unified SEO strategy from the start is that the workload is shared between Embarque and Stagetimer. Embarque’s team handles LPs and blogs, while Stagetimer handles programmatic SEO pages themselves.

Results — 3x Organic Traffic Growth & Great Increase in Revenue

And the result was dramatic on the organic traffic growth chart.

You can see when Embarque’s strategy and content began to work. From 40-50 organic searches monthly, we saw exponential growth a few months later, in June 2022.

In September and October 2022, traffic growth hovered at 2,700 for a while before increasing significantly.

By February 2023, Stagetimer recorded over 8,838 visitors to the site per month (and it’s currently still rising!)

And as for the programmatic SEO content we put into practice, Stagetimer reported excellent results after a couple of months. Using the timer template, they could generate up to 3,000 different indexable pages. They saw a huge boost in total impressions, as their pages started to rank between July and September, 2022.

The massive increase in organic traffic was a boon to the company. Their revenue also saw a meteoric rise as new users flocked to their website and signed up with the service.

But in addition to attaining positive results for Stagetimer, as we rolled out content, we also discovered some interesting insights:

On average, it takes around 3 months for each page on Stagetimer to rank.
Blog articles focusing on how-tos, examples, and freebies work very well in attracting and converting new users.

Key Takeaways

Picking the right SEO provider goes a long way: For any business struggling with SEO, having the right SEO provider is crucial for continued growth. High-quality, professional providers won’t just produce convertible and rank-able content for you, but they’ll also help you figure out your SEO situation and get the ball rolling for you with a solid SEO strategy. Just like we did with Stagetimer!

Everyone needs a comprehensive SEO strategy: The problem with Stagetimer at the start was that it didn’t have an SEO strategy. By looking at its sluggish traffic growth, it’s easy to see why this was a problem. Before you start producing content, write down the topics, queries, and keywords that you want to target first at a minimum. Content planning will help you shape your content and improve your chance of ranking.

Targeting the right queries are the key to success: By understanding what people are searching for via their queries, we were able to target topics and create content that truly appeals to Stagetimer’s audience. After that, it’s only a matter of optimizing each article using traditional SEO techniques to get them to rank.

Programmatic SEO actually works: Although it’s a fairly new concept in SEO, programmatic SEO not only works, but it can also improve traffic and site ranking at a fraction of the time and effort compared to traditional SEO! It doesn’t mean programmatic SEO is infallible: bad execution of this strategy may hurt your ranking rather than help (Google doesn’t like AI-written content). But if you’re crafty and do it well enough, it’ll be a powerful rank-climbing tool.

Step Up Your SEO Game with Embarque!

Stagetimer isn’t just the only client we’ve helped over the years. Embarque’s talented team of content writers and SEO analysts have aided dozens of businesses with their SEO strategies, through our service packages.

Interested in what we have to offer?

Reach out to us today (julian@embarque.io), and we’ll get back to you with a plan of action!

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