How Optimum7 grew BSI’s organic search presence and AI visibility by rebuilding the digital foundation a B2B payroll compliance software company needed to compete.
The Business
BSI develops payroll tax compliance software for mid-size and enterprise organizations. Their platform helps finance and payroll teams manage federal, state, and local tax obligations automatically, reducing manual workload and keeping clients audit-ready through regulatory changes they didn’t create and can’t ignore.
The category creates a specific kind of digital complexity. BSI’s buyers, payroll managers, CFOs, and tax compliance officers at mid-to-large companies do not make fast decisions. They research carefully, compare options, involve multiple stakeholders, and rarely convert on a first visit. For a company like BSI, organic search is the primary way serious buyers find and evaluate solutions before they ever reach out.
When BSI engaged with Optimum7, they had a proven product and a solid client base. What they lacked was the digital foundation to match: low search visibility, no content strategy targeting their core buyers, service pages that weren’t optimized to compete, and a website that wasn’t built to convert the traffic a stronger SEO program would bring.
The Objective
BSI entered the engagement with a product worth finding and a website that made it nearly impossible to find. The immediate goal was to close that gap: fix the technical foundation, build a content presence that matched how BSI’s buyers actually search, and give the site the authority it needed to compete in a category where established players had a significant head start.
That meant doing the foundational work before optimizing anything. A service page cannot rank if the site architecture is directing equity away from it. A content program cannot compound if the technical structure limits what search engines can crawl and index. A single priority defined the early work: build a site that search engines could trust and buyers could use.
Key Business Challenges
1. Low Organic Visibility Where It Matters Most
At the start of the engagement, BSI was ranking for 129 keywords across all positions, with only 40 on page 1. In a category where buyers search terms like payroll tax compliance, multi-state taxation, and tax software evaluation with genuine purchase intent, sitting outside page one is effectively invisible. These are not exploratory queries; they are buyers’ searches narrowing down a shortlist. BSI had almost no presence in those conversations.
2. No Content Strategy for the Buying Journey
BSI’s target buyers research extensively before contacting a vendor. A compliance officer evaluating payroll tax software wants to understand the problem space, compare approaches, and assess credibility before reaching out. Without a content program addressing those informational and evaluation-stage queries, BSI had no way to enter the conversation early, build authority, or create the internal linking structure that pushes service pages up in rankings.
3. Service Pages Not Built to Compete or Convert
The existing service pages were not optimized to rank for high-intent queries or to convert the visitors who did land on them. Title tags and headers weren’t aligned with how buyers searched. Page copy didn’t communicate value clearly enough for a buyer comparing multiple vendors. And the site’s structure didn’t distribute authority effectively to the pages that mattered most.
4. A Website That Undercut the Product
In B2B software, where sales cycles are long and buyers are deliberate, the website has to build trust quickly. BSI’s product was strong, but the site didn’t reflect that. A visitor landing on a key page couldn’t immediately understand what BSI does, who it serves, or what to do next. That friction cost conversions before SEO had a chance to deliver them.
The Strategic Challenge
The sequencing of this engagement mattered as much as the work itself. Running an SEO program on a site that wasn’t built to convert would generate traffic that evaporated. Redesigning the site without fixing the technical foundation would limit how much of that new experience search engines could actually find and rank.
Optimum7 structured the work to address these layers in order: fix the site first, establish technical stability, then build authority and content on top of a foundation capable of holding the gains. Each phase was designed to make the next one more effective rather than operate in isolation.
The Strategy
Optimum7 started where the revenue leak was most obvious: the website, the technical structure, and the content gaps preventing BSI from being found and trusted by the right buyers. The strategy was built in layers, with each phase strengthening the next.
Website Redesign
BSI’s existing site did not clearly communicate what the company does, who it serves, or why its solution matters to payroll and finance teams. In a B2B software category where buyers compare vendors carefully, that lack of clarity created friction before SEO traffic could convert.
Optimum7 redesigned the site around buyer understanding and conversion. Messaging was tightened, page layouts were simplified, navigation was reorganized around user intent, and calls to action were placed at clearer decision points.
The result was a website that no longer functioned as a static brand presence. It became a stronger acquisition asset, built to support the qualified traffic generated by the SEO program.
Technical SEO
Optimum7 conducted a full technical audit of the site and systematically resolved the issues that were limiting BSI’s crawlability and indexability. This included:
Improving page load speed across desktop and mobile
Fixing broken links, redirect chains, and crawl errors
Optimizing site architecture so that link equity flowed properly to the most important pages
Implementing canonical tags to eliminate duplicate content issues
Ensuring structured data and schema markup were in place where relevant
These fixes removed structural limitations that prevent content and authority from translating into rankings.
Keyword Research and Content Strategy
Optimum7 conducted deep keyword research to identify the terms and topics BSI’s target buyers were actively searching for. From there, a content program was built around high-intent informational queries related to payroll tax compliance, multi-state taxation, and tax software evaluation.
Each piece was designed to do three things: establish BSI as a credible resource, create internal linking paths that reinforced core service pages, and capture buyers earlier in the research process before they had selected a vendor.
Content was optimized for ranking but written to be genuinely useful to the person reading it. That same structure, clear hierarchy, depth, and contextual formatting also positioned BSI’s content to surface inside generative AI interfaces, where buyers increasingly begin their research.
On-Page Optimization
Optimum7 optimized BSI’s existing service and product pages from top to bottom: rewriting title tags and meta descriptions to be keyword-aligned and compelling, restructuring headers to reflect how target queries are phrased, tightening page copy to clearly communicate value, and building out internal linking structures to distribute authority across the site.
Link Building
To build the domain authority needed to compete in a crowded space, Optimum7 executed a targeted outreach and link-building campaign focused on relevance over volume. Backlinks were earned from reputable sources in the finance, HR, and business software space, with authority distributed to individual service pages rather than concentrated at the homepage.
Results
Key Outcomes
Total ranking keywords grew from 129 to 2,640, a 1,947% increase
Page 1 keywords expanded from 40 to 477, nearly a 12x increase in first-page visibility
Top-3 keyword rankings grew from 9 to 36, placing BSI in front of buyers at the highest-intent moment of search
Organic traffic grew from 140 to 2,250 monthly visitors, a 1,507% increase
Business Impact
BSI’s organic channel now operates as a reliable acquisition engine. The 2,250 monthly visitors arriving through search are not random traffic; they are payroll professionals, finance leaders, and compliance managers actively researching solutions to the exact problems BSI’s software solves. That specificity is what turns organic search from a visibility channel into a predictable pipeline driver.
The page-one and top-three ranking growth reflects a search presence that is now positioned inside the conversations that matter: buyers evaluating vendors, not casual browsers. That positioning was absent at the start of the engagement.
Strategic Outcome
The combination of a redesigned site, a stable technical foundation, a content program built around real buyer intent, and tightly optimized service pages produced ranking and traffic growth that continues to build month over month.
Each improvement reinforces the next. Content strengthens topical authority, links reinforce domain signals, and higher rankings generate more qualified traffic that feeds ongoing optimization. BSI now operates on an organic foundation that becomes harder to displace over time.
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