SaaS SEO Case Study: From Zero Non-Branded Clicks to 445, Plus 104 AI-Assistant Visits
An Indian accounting SaaS had traffic, but almost none of it came from people who did not already know the brand. In four months, non-branded clicks went from zero to 445, and 104 visitors arrived from AI assistants. Branded search fell over the same window, and that is reported too.
The site had traffic. It was the wrong traffic.
In the quarter before the work (July to October 2025), the site pulled 3,980 clicks and 444,000 impressions from Search Console. That is not nothing.
Almost every click came from two sources: people who already knew the brand and searched for it by name, and one popular free tool, a quotation maker. Strip those out and nothing is left. There were zero non-branded organic clicks. A prospect searching for free accounting software like Tally or a GST accounting tool had no reason to land on this site.
Nobody had instrumented the signup funnel past a page click either. The business believed it had a “no sales” problem. Nothing downstream of a click was measured, so there was no way to confirm it.
Where the site started
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total clicks | 3,980 |
| Total impressions | 444,000 |
| Average CTR | 0.9% |
| Non-branded clicks | 0 |
| Non-branded impressions | 0 |
| Homepage clicks | 1,111 |
Source: Google Search Console. Every query that later became a ranking source had zero clicks and zero impressions in this window.
Six changes
Content for non-branded intent
New and re-optimized pages aimed at queries the brand had no visibility on: free accounting software, GST software and comparison searches.
Re-optimized the blog library
Several older posts sat on page two with fixable title and structure problems.
ICP-specific pages
Some sit in the Use Cases navigation (agriculture, chartered accountant, hospitality). Others, like petrol pump and student accounting, shipped as blog posts without navigation placement.
Two new free tools
A cost-price calculator and a raw-material calculator, both launched from zero.
One live comparison page
Versus Tally. A QuickBooks page is live but not ranking yet. A Zoho page is planned and not in these numbers.
Directory footprint
Live on five software directories: G2, SoftwareAdvice, Capterra, SoftwareWorld and SoftwareSuggest.
Software brand with traffic but few signups?
Send me your site on WhatsApp. I will check how much of your traffic comes from people who do not know your brand.
What moved and what did not
| Metric | Before | After | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-branded organic clicks | 0 | 445 | new |
| Non-branded impressions | 0 | 52,300 | new |
| Total organic clicks | 3,980 | 4,480 | +12.6% |
| Total impressions | 444,000 | 463,000 | +4.3% |
| Average CTR | 0.9% | 1.0% | +0.1 pt |
| AI-assistant visitors | not tracked | 104 | new |
| Registration-page clicks | not tracked | 67 | new |
| Branded clicks (top query) | 675 | 466 | -31.0% |
| Homepage clicks | 1,111 | 818 | -26.4% |
Sources: Google Search Console and Ahrefs Web Analytics. Registration-page clicks are clicks, not completed signups. Signup completion was not tracked in this window.
Where the gains showed up
| Page | Clicks before | Clicks after |
|---|---|---|
| Petrol pump accounting (blog) | 38 | 93 (+145%) |
| Housing society accounting | 31 | 59 (+90%) |
| Travel agency accounting | 18 | 38 (+111%) |
| Trusts accounting | 45 | 64 (+42%) |
| Agriculture accounting | 24 | 35 (+46%) |
| Lawyers accounting | 20 | 31 (+55%) |
| Comparison page versus Tally | 0 | 11, with 3,804 impressions |
| Cost-price calculator (new) | 0 | 56 |
| Raw-material calculator (new) | 0 | 26 |
| Chartered accountant content | 29 | 22 (-24%) |
| Nonprofit and NGO content | 52 | 42 (-19%) |
104 visitors from AI assistants
104 organic visitors arrived from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot combined. Paid traffic is filtered out. ChatGPT alone sent 62, with an average session of 2 minutes 41 seconds and a 62.9% bounce rate, better engagement than most of the site’s organic search traffic.
The directory footprint is infrastructure, not yet a trust signal. Across all five platforms there are two distinct human reviewers. One review covers three of the five listings, since Capterra sources its copy from SoftwareAdvice. G2 and SoftwareWorld show no reviews. The next job is review volume.
Want AI assistants to send you visitors?
Message me and I will show how your brand shows up in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity today.
The misses
Branded search fell. Clicks on the top branded query dropped from 675 to 466 and homepage clicks from 1,111 to 818. The two are linked: fewer brand searches means fewer homepage landings. I have no confirmed cause and will not invent one.
Signup completion was never tracked. The brief said “no sales”, but nothing past a page click was measured, so the starting problem was assumed. Fixing that is the first job in the next phase. Nobody knows the real conversion rate on those 67 registration-page clicks.
Two of eight ICP pages underperformed. They shipped and stayed live without the follow-up pass they needed. That is a backlog item.
What people ask about this project
Did the site have no SEO value before this work?
It had real branded and tool-driven traffic, 3,980 clicks in the prior quarter. What it lacked was non-branded, informational visibility.
Why did branded search decline?
Unconfirmed. It is an open item this work did not resolve.
Are the AI-assistant visits filtered for paid traffic?
Yes. The 104 visits are organic only, from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.
Does this case study report signups?
No. 67 registration-page clicks were tracked. Completed signups were not tracked in this window.
What makes this a GEO result as well as SEO?
The AI-assistant figure is a filtered, channel-level count split by assistant with engagement data, not an estimate of AI Overview visibility.
Want a result like this? Tell me what is stuck.
Send the site and the problem on WhatsApp. I will tell you straight whether SEO can fix it.
Leave a Reply