Client: A Fintech SaaS startup
Industry: B2B Finance/ Expense Management
Timeframe: 8 months
Results:
i) 3x growth in organic funds
ii) 1.2x increase in revenue attributed to SEO-qualified leads
Context and Objective:
The startup was keen to increase customer acquisition through Google organic search while minimizing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). The drawback was that it lacked proper SEO strategy. It faced high competition (including SAP Concur, Zoho Expense) and had low visibility for high-intent decision maker queries. It lacked a proper SEO strategy
One key mistake was that it focussed only on high intent transaction keywords and not on other content topics. In B2B unlike B2C, the buyer journey is long and involves multiple stakeholders. Hence it is even more essential to engage potential customers at every stage of the funnel right from awareness to consideration and decision and enlighten them with educational, solution oriented and trustworthy content.
In 2025, SEO doesn’t work at keyword level anymore. Google has turned out to be a semantic search engine and it needs a holistic approach of covering the entire topics to be able to start ranking for words.
Challenges:
There were multiple challenges encountered during this process. Below are the key listed ones:
- Lack of Search Market Fit and Strategic Decision making: There was a lack of understanding of the SEO landscape. For example, which keywords had higher and lower business potential or ROI and how to prioritize content accordingly. There was also a lack of a structured SEO roadmap which in turn limited organic growth.
- Not Targeting Pain-Point Driven Keywords: Inadequate targeting of actual pain point driven keywords
- Attracting only high volume generic traffic instead of decision makers: Inadequately targeting generic traffic instead of decision makers
- Wrong SEO approach taken for long- Following an incorrect SEO approach of being keyword approach and not topic focused.
SEO Strategy Overview
1. Strategic Keyword Prioritization for Traffic and Lead Velocity from Month One
- Conducted search volume validation for high intent, buying stage queries for example, ‘corporate card for startups’ and ‘automated expense management’ while also identifying relevant top-of-funnel (TOFU) informational keywords to support awareness building.
- Prioritized keywords based on intent and business fit to ensure alignment between real buyers and lead generation potential
- Balanced content strategy by targeting both bottom of funnel (BOFU) and TOFU keywords to drive qualified leads as well as top-line traffic from very first month
- Optimized publishing cadence to maximize early visibility and conversions by utilising a mix of awareness stage and purchase intent content from day 1.
Below is an example of high intent vs low intent:
‘Reimburse employee expenses quickly’ is BOFU high commercial intent vs ‘Expense tracking tips’ is TOFU, low conversion potential
2. Audience & Keyword Cluster Expansion
Based on the offerings and use cases of the startups, keyword clusters by job role and pain points are segmented below:
| Audience segment | Pain points | Content formats |
| Finance managers | Compliance, fraud prevention and spread visibility | Case studies, checklists, ROI calculators |
| Controllers | Accurate reconciliation, audit readiness | Pillar pages, webinars, infographics |
| Procurement Heads | Vendor spend tracking, employee cards | Comparison blogs, use case pages |
| Business owners | Cost effective, scalable financial ops | Playbooks, how to hudies |
| IT Heads | Integration with ERPs, data security | Technical dos, solution briefs |
| Employees (End users) | Delays, usability issues, mobile first experiences | Tutorials, explainer videos, FAO’s |
Using semantic entity based clustering content hubs were built targeting each persona + funnel stage.
3. Competitor Gap Analysis
- Understanding High traffic pages – TOFU and BOFU Content – It is important to understand what pages are driving the most traffic and what kind of content is covered in TOFU and BOFU
- Understand topical coverage of competitors to identify the breadth and depth of themes they rank for and spot gaps that can be filled.
- Topical Strength – Another factor to consider is topical strength of each competitor and analysis on ‘why’
- Understand the strengths and negatives of competitors and identify strategic competitors to outrank early, especially those with high-performing content but weaker domain authority. Simultaneously, note brands with entrenched authority that require long-term positioning strategies.
- This understanding is required to get into positions 1-3 and AI overviews.
- Use these insights to inform content strategy, prioritization, and publishing cadence across both informational and commercial queries.
4. Topical Authority & Content Architecture
Built hub-and-spoke content clusters like:
Hub:
Spokes:
“For Startups”
“For SMBs”
“For Remote Teams”
“For Procurement Heads”
“Expense Reimbursement Guide 2025”
This creates a semantic web of interconnected content, strengthening the site’s authority on the topic and improving crawlability and indexation.
5. Scalable BOFU Growth with Programmatic SEO and Calculators
- Programmatic SEO can act as a strategic pillar to scale content production without compromising on quality or intent alignment.
- It can help identify repeatable high-intent patterns such as:
- i)“Corporate card limits for [company type]”
- ii)“[Industry] expense policy examples”
- iii)“Best expense tools for [job title]”
Created templated BOFU landing pages targeting these variations, allows for rapid expansion across long-tail transactional queries.
- Developed interactive calculators (e.g., ROI calculators for automation, cost-saving estimators for switching from manual reimbursements) aids to capture leads while delivering real value.
- Below are the advantages of following this approach:
- i) Fit naturally into our monthly publishing cadence
- ii) Supported faster ranking across niche queries
- iii) Enhanced user engagement and conversion rates
- iv) Strengthened the domain’s topical depth and internal linking structure
6. Multi-Modal SEO Enhancements
Google’s AI is multimodal. It functions by adding text, image, and video together with contextual relevance boosted dwell time by 38%. This includes:
- Embedded animations + YouTube explainers on each blog
- Created Alt-text-rich images with explanatory overlays (e.g., budget approval flow diagrams)
- Added schema.org structured data for articles and FAQs
7. Technical SEO & Core Web Vitals
- Achieved <200 MS average load time in GSC
- Lazy-loaded videos/images, minified JS/CSS primarily
- Used GSC and Ahrefs Site Audit weekly to monitor crawl issues, index bloat, orphan pages
8. Thematic Content Clustering for Early SERP Visibility
- Set a cadence of 40 SEO-optimized articles/month
Maintained semantic topical flow (publishing complementary pieces together). This is important to start ranking fast for desired keywords in desired topics. - For example, guides, comparison posts, and checklists around a specific topic were released as a coordinated cluster.
Why Publishing Cadence Matters in rankings
- Indexation Signals: Regularly publishing fresh content helps Googlebot recognize your domain as active and deserving of frequent crawling. This boosts indexation speed.
- Topical Authority: Consistent publishing around core themes accelerates topical authority accumulation, which is a key ranking factor in B2B.
- Freshness Layer for Ranking: Google often prioritizes recently published or updated content for queries with evolving search intent (e.g., “best corporate card for 2025”).
- Internal Linking Opportunities: Steady output allows better internal linking structures to form dynamically, helping build semantic connections between pages.
- Behavioral Metrics Boost: More content means more opportunities for engagement, which can positively affect dwell time, bounce rate, and user satisfaction metrics — all indirect SEO signals.
SERP Diversification: Publishing consistently enables occupying multiple SERP real estate (e.g., featured snippets, People Also Ask, videos, FAQs) with varied formats.
Advanced B2B SEO Strategies Used
1. Funnel-Based Keyword Segmentation: TOFU vs. BOFU
TOFU (Top of Funnel) – Awareness/Problem Education
- Keywords: “What is expense reconciliation?” “why automate expense management?”
- Goal: Topical authority and brand recall
BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) – Buying Intent H4
- Focus on:
“[Competitor] alternatives”
“[Competitor] vs [Your Brand]” - Examples:
“SAP Concur alternatives for startups”
“Happay vs Volopay”
Deliver Unique Value in Every Page (UVE Principle) H3
- Use real case studies, data points, or proprietary research
- Share experience-led content like:
“What we learned onboarding 100+ finance teams” or “How we reduced reconciliation time by 40%”
Google’s Helpful Content System values originality, depth, and proof-backed insights
2. Align Structure with Query Intent (Google NLP Matching) H3
Depending on the type of article we are doing, we ensured the right content format is implemented. For eg, for a “How” article, we ensure we gave the answer in the “introduction”.
| Query type | Intent | Content format |
| What | Definition/Clarity | Short intro + structured lists |
| How | Step-by-step solution | Numbered lists, process visuals |
| Why | Justification, deep dives | Narrative breakdowns with data |
| Generic | Broad term, intent unclear | Headers targeting personas and use cases |
3. Track and Deconstruct AI Overviews (SGE) H3
What type of content is ranked in AI overviews tells about what Google is looking as an ‘answer’ for that query. Understanding this before doing the article is key to ranking on the 1st page.
- Use Incognito Chrome with SGE enabled to analyze:
i) What content types and formats are cited
ii) What sites appear most often - Traits of AI-cited content:
i) Concise summaries
ii)Freshness (recent updates)
iii)Bullet points with linked context
Conclusion – Fast Results and Long term Impact
The campaign delivered measurable results early on, within the first 3 months, the client observed a clear and consistent uptick in qualified leads. This early success was driven by our decision to prioritize bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) keywords from Day 1, ensuring that content targeted high-intent prospects actively seeking solutions.
Over the next 8 months, the strategy compounded further:
- Organic traffic tripled (3x)
- Revenue from SEO-attributed leads grew by 1.2x
What began as a test channel quickly evolved into a core pillar of acquisition, with SEO delivering sustained visibility, pipeline growth, and long-term ROI through scalable content assets.
