Tech Firm Indico Drives 95% YOY Increase in Leads and 90% Growth in Organic Website Traffic

By Paul Desmond and Charley Spektor

A strategy of data-driven search-engine optimization research to inform the creation of new content is paying off for B2B software company Indico. The company has seen a 90% year-over-year (YOY) increase in Google organic clicks in Q1 of 2021, on top of a 95% increase in sales-ready leads from organic search in 2020 overall vs. 2019 – a trend that is continuing in 2021.

The gains in Google results are all the more impressive because they come on top of a 55% year-over-year gain in Q4 2020 vs. Q4 2019 for organic clicks, or website sessions. Not coincidentally, Indico is positioned on page 1 of Google search engine results for hundreds of relevant, high-intent queries.

And the leads keep pouring in. After just the first quarter of 2021, the company has more than 60% of the lead total it had in 2020. And Indico defines a marketing qualified lead not just as a website visitor who downloads a white paper or visits certain pages, but as someone who asks for a demo or for a sales person to make contact. These are “warmer” leads and the company is converting many of them into paying customers for its software that automates document-intensive processes, contributing to a Series B investment round of some $22 million late last year.

“We’re not only getting significantly more traffic from organic search, but as our increase in leads shows, it’s coming from visitors who have intent to buy,” says Jeremy Stinson, Director of Demand Generation for Indico. “It’s been great to see how the results just keep getting better.”

Saratoga B2B’s Strategy Leads to 90% YOY Increase in Website Sessions for Indico

Indico has seen a 90% increase in organic website sessions in Q1 of 2021 vs. the same quarter last year, the result of a strategy involving deep search engine optimization research and the consistent creation of new content. Source: Google Analytics

2-pronged strategy: SEO + Content

Indico’s success in organic search is the result of a two-pronged strategy Saratoga B2B Group implemented, starting in mid-2019.

It begins with deep, competitive SEO research to identify keywords and terms that meet two criteria: they are highly relevant to Indico from a business perspective and present an opportunity for success in organic search. Saratoga then produces a mix of content, including in-depth pillar pages and complementary blog posts, into which it naturally infuses these keywords and terms. The result is content that is educational for readers while also serving to attract attention from Google.

The project started with a 1,200-word pillar page focused on Indico’s core technology, known as “intelligent process automation” (IPA). At the time, Indico’s homepage was showing on page 3 of Google search results for the term. Only a month after it launched in late June 2019, the pillar page started appearing on page 1 of Google search for the IPA term; it’s remained there since.

Since then, Saratoga has worked with Indico to produce the additional pillar pages and dozens of blog posts. As a result, Indico is ranking on page 1 for hundreds of long-tail queries where “intelligent process automation” or the related “intelligent document processing” are followed by another important qualifier, such as “intelligent document processing in insurance.”

Visitors stay longer, view more pages

The pillar page and blog post strategy has led to a big bump in user engagement metrics for the new pages, another indicator that the pages are attracting visitors with a strong desire to learn more about Indico’s solutions:

• Average time on the website when one of the new pages is part of a user’s session is nearly triple compared to sessions which don’t include one
• Average number of pages viewed in each session for the new pages is about 50% higher compared to other sessions

Indico’s “share of voice,” the relative indicator comparing Indico to competitors for a given set of keywords in Google search, is likewise on the rise. It has more than doubled, from a benchmark of less than 6% in July 2019 to 13% as of March 2021.

An iterative process

A key to Indico’s success is the attention it pays to the numerous statistics and key performance indicator (KPI) reports that Saratoga B2B produces each week. By closely analyzing metrics and trends for both Indico and its competitors, Saratoga and Indico jointly identify new content areas to tackle.

For example, a blog post that compared Indico’s IPA technology to robotic process automation (RPA) technology began to perform particularly well in Google search. Consequently, Indico recognized that a new pillar page focusing on outlining how IPA complements RPA would be of value to prospects. That pillar page is now earning a steady stream of clicks each week for Indico for Google queries such as “RPA vs. IPA.”

“I’ve dealt with firms that claim SEO alone can solve your problems. I don’t buy it,” Indico’s Stinson says. “But our experience shows when you marry SEO research and expertise with well-crafted, targeted content, you really can drive more traffic and, most importantly, qualified leads.”