Aimprosoft: enquiries from Fortune 500 companies, banks and government organisations

June 2018 – July 2019

Articles for the client’s stack and the first editorial placements, and traffic grew from ~140 to ~340

We knew the fight would be tough, and that the first job was to create, together with the client’s team, content that would convert exactly our target audience. So we wrote briefs for the client’s stack (Hybris, Liferay, Alfresco) and for the tasks of buyers who build something on those platforms, the copywriters wrote and edited the texts, and we found the first links in the platforms’ own communities. Traffic grew 2.4 times.

The name buyers use

Hybris had already been renamed SAP Commerce Cloud, but more than 90% of enquiries to the client’s sales team still used the old name. So we kept “Hybris” as the main name and used both in new articles, so the pages could be found now and also once demand moves to the new name. We didn’t rewrite older material, because the client’s copywriters were needed for new texts.

Articles built around the buyer’s task

Few people search for Hybris, Liferay or Alfresco, but those who do search for something specific (a platform migration, an integration, choosing a document management system), and someone with a query like that already has a task and, in many cases, a budget. So we took topics and briefs from the client’s stack and industries (Liferay and Hybris migration, DMS for law firms and the like). The client’s copywriters wrote the texts, and we reviewed them before publishing, re-optimised published ones and drew up content plans several months ahead. To support the topics we analysed demand by industry for each service and the potential of the Hybris, Alfresco and Liferay niches, and we set up a goal in analytics for the live chat the client had added.

Service pages modelled on the top results

For a commercial query, the first ten results already show what the page should look like (length, structure, how frequently the keyword appears), so we took our requirements from the top results. We optimised the homepage for “enterprise software development company”, and five service pages plus one more based on an analysis of the top.

Placements in platform communities

For a narrow stack, the closest sites are the platforms’ own official blogs and communities, because they’re read by people choosing a Liferay or Alfresco vendor. Outreach to editors and communities produced guest articles on the official Alfresco and Liferay blogs, and through HARO we pitched comments to DevOps.com and The Enterprisers Project.

Where buyers talk

The client wanted to be visible beyond Google too, in the places where buyers talk before they start searching for anything. At the client’s request we ran the content for a client representative’s LinkedIn profile (topics, texts, posts).

What the client did. The client’s copywriters wrote the texts from our briefs; the client added a live chat and put our callout blocks into the blog. Beyond SEO, it asked for LinkedIn and a plan for promotion to conference attendees.

Outcome. The Ahrefs estimate grew from ~140 to ~340 visits a month, 2.4 times, with a high of ~390. The first enquiries started coming in.

August 2019 – February 2020

A jump to ~630 and then a standstill, while technology pages, E-A-T and a technical tidy-up were being prepared

We kept building up content and links. Traffic jumped. We prepared technology pages, E-A-T (that was still its name back then) and a funnel-based content plan, tidied up the index and built links.

Technology pages based on demand

Some buyers search for developers by technology (“java development company”), but building pages for every technology across the board spreads the effort thin. Together with the client, after analysing its expertise, the competition and the state of the market, we chose five, including Java and Scala, which were among the company’s key technologies. For them we gathered keywords, wrote briefs and built a shared landing page template that took the target audience profiles into account.

E-A-T, or who stands behind the text

Aimprosoft writes about medical systems and sells development, which are topics with the strictest E-A-T requirements, and the blog articles back then didn’t yet show their authors. We gave E-A-T and YMYL recommendations, separately for the About page, and structured data that marks out the author, the company and the article. Since then the client’s developers have written the technical articles following a “plan → our feedback → text” process, and later all the Liferay articles came to be written this way.

A funnel-based content plan

When a plan is built from topics alone, articles live apart from the pages that sell, and when it’s built as funnels, each article leads to the next step. So we built the content plan as funnels, based on the competence map and the pages already created, and gave content recommendations with grouped queries for Hybris, Liferay and Alfresco. We filled in the competence map together with the client. For the SAP blog we wrote a brief for a guest post about Hybris and ERP.

Tidying up the index

Search engines see the whole site, including pages nobody meant to show, and git demos in the index, broken links and stray URLs in the sitemap dilute the site’s signals. After an index audit we went through the excluded pages in Search Console, fixed the breadcrumb markup and the XML sitemap, and handed over internal linking briefs in batches.

Wikipedia as a later goal

Wikipedia accepts articles about companies once significant independent sources already write about them. So together with the client we chose PR and media work for the brand as a whole as the nearer goal, with a Wikipedia page coming as a side effect.

What the client did. Chose the technologies for the service pages, and its developers started writing technical articles themselves. Implemented every E-A-T point and the technical fixes from our audit.

Outcome. The Ahrefs estimate jumped from ~340 to ~630 visits a month.

March – September 2020

The pandemic and a Google update, markets chosen from data over hype, and traffic on a plateau without a collapse

COVID was beginning its triumphant march across the world. As lockdown began, we advised writing about markets that analysts’ data showed growing, and after the Google update we and the client decided not to wait for the new design and kept traffic steady.

Markets from analysts’ data

When lockdown started, there was an idea to rush out articles on the “hype” topics every IT company had started writing about. But an article on a topic where the company has no expertise won’t lead to sales (exceptions exist, but only during a real boom in a particular niche). So of the “lockdown” topics we kept the one where the company had solutions it had already built. Every month, using the competence map and IDC forecasts, we worked out what would grow despite the crisis and handed the list to the client with a question about its expertise in each particular niche, because not all of its case studies were on the site, and data on its expertise could only come from the client.

No waiting for the new design

After the update, articles slid 1–5 positions, each new high and low lower than the last, and a new design takes months. So we advised implementing E-A-T and speeding up pages on the current site straight away (Search Console was showing speed problems). In parallel we cleared unwanted pages out of the index (a 301 from sitemap.xml to the homepage, subdomains, unneeded tag pages and the like), wrote a structured data brief and analysed the update’s effects every month.

Editorial links with a rationale

We looked for new sites where buyers read, meaning industry publications and media that take expert comments; a comment like that also helps E-A-T. For an article about the SAP module and for industry publications (electrical equipment manufacturing, healthcare) we found sites, wrote pitches and negotiated. The Enterprisers Project and a few other sites ran pieces with a comment from the company’s CEO.

What the client did. Kept writing content following our recommendations, updated articles and the site, and worked on a new design in the background. Implemented E-A-T. Prepared the second version of its own module for one of the systems it worked with regularly.

Outcome. Re-optimisation after the index update improved positions. Meanwhile, enquiries were coming in from our target topics and markets. We heard from the army of an EU country, a microfinance company from Peru, an Indian airline, and a British consulting firm that was running a project for a large bank. We also managed to convert an international medical non-profit into an enquiry.

October 2020 – January 2022

While the new site’s pages waited for release, bottom-of-funnel articles with paid placements lifted traffic to ~1,190

The decision was made to build a new site with a new structure, and we designed that structure around the company’s expertise. While the pages waited for release, bottom-of-funnel articles (the ones with the best odds of converting) lifted traffic.

A new structure built on expertise

We wanted to sell more, so the new site had to give its own page to each industry, technology and service buyers arrive with. We assessed the page potential by industry, the client picked the ones where it had expertise, and we wrote briefs for the industry pages. Then we put together the keywords and structure for the whole site (home → industries → technologies → services → portfolio → blog) and wrote briefs for 12 technology and service pages, the homepage, and re-optimisation of the pages for the leading technologies.

Categories over tags

Blog tags were spawning unnecessary utility pages; the upside and the downside of blog tags is that you can assign several of them. We suggested dropping tags in favour of categories. And that’s what was done.

Paid placements for the bottom of the funnel

Free guest posts demanded extremely complex technical or business articles, so we moved to paid guest posts on third-party sites. Links went to bottom-of-funnel articles, because they’re read by people who are already planning a project. Free placements (datafloq, Industrial Distribution, The Enterprisers Project) and exchanges did continue, though, wherever they didn’t take developers’ time away from projects.

Changes to the briefs

We always insisted that it’s specific expertise, and showing it in the content, that brings clients. The briefs gave an even bigger share to experience and marked which sections had to stay. Every brief got rules for spreading CTAs evenly through the text. Articles that were worth re-optimising, we re-optimised.

What the client did. The biggest event was the decision to build a new site. The client chose the industries where it had expertise, its copywriters wrote the service page texts, and it approved the templates for those pages. Approved paid placements (7–12 a month), added CTAs and Calendly, and implemented almost all the technical fixes. Core Web Vitals and merging the portfolio with case studies were scheduled for the redesign.

Outcome. After LSI re-optimisation the marketplace article gained 8 more queries in the top results, and the new site’s service pages hadn’t launched yet, so the stage’s traffic rested on articles and the links to them. The Ahrefs estimate grew from ~540 to a peak of ~1,190 visits a month, 2.2 times. This stage’s enquiries included ones from an international payment system on the Fortune 500 list and a US payments fintech company. Others who got in touch were the British division of a large international distributor, a large Italian IT group, a British IT company with more than 10,000 people, a Kenyan insurance group and an Australian fintech group.

February – July 2022

The switch to outstaffing and the war, so links went to pages that sell at the cost of some traffic

The full-scale war began. It was very important to hold on to what we had, because enterprise clients are particularly sensitive to security and uninterrupted operations.

Links to pages that sell

The decision was made to strengthen the outstaffing line. We drew up a priority list of pages to push, expecting overall traffic to the site to drop because of the change in priorities.

A smaller first step to a contract

A large contract with an unfamiliar company doesn’t happen every time, while a small entry service (a discovery phase or a project estimate) lowers the buyer’s risk. So we proposed a small entry service on the pages, one clear CTA, engagement models and indicative pricing.

What the client did. Launched the outstaffing pages; kept publishing articles even as the full-scale war began. Started rolling out the new site.

Outcome. Enquiries kept coming, but during this stage they came from smaller companies. The Ahrefs estimate grew from ~1,120 to ~1,780, 1.6 times.

August – December 2022

The new site and peak traffic

We took the site through the launch of the new version, turned the sales team’s personas into working personas for writers and drew up a plan for the next year. Traffic hit its peak for the whole project.

Site launch and error scans

A new site changes templates and URLs on every page at once, and errors multiply the same way (pagination, canonical tags, the sitemap, internal redirects, 404s). So we crawled the new site before and after release and handed the developers a prioritised list of errors.

Push-pull personas for writers

A buyer document that sales writes for cold outreach and a persona for an article’s writer are often two different things. The client’s document described four personas together, and a writer needs to know each reader separately (what pushes them away from the current state, push, and what pulls them towards a decision, pull). So we expanded the document into four working personas with instructions for copywriters on using them in subheadings, calls to action and body text. Briefs for outstaffing articles followed, taking the sales funnel into account.

A plan for the next year

We built the annual plan from outstaffing articles and bottom-of-funnel service pages, because we wanted to sell more. We also added a review of the year and lead generation recommendations.

What the client did. The biggest event was the new site, which the client rolled out, fixed and handed to us for checking after release. Shared the persona document from sales. At the end of the stage the client put the project on pause.

Outcome. Enquiries came from an international agricultural trader (a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned corporation on the Fortune Global 500 list) and a plant of a Swiss electronics manufacturing group. The Ahrefs estimate reached its peak for the whole project at ~2,040, dipped temporarily after the move to the new site, as is normal for a migration, and ended the stage at ~1,420. Over the whole period traffic grew from ~150 to ~1,400 visits a month.