Enterprise SEO Case Study: Helium 10
How a ground-up organic search program grew a leading Amazon-seller SaaS from roughly 2,400 to a peak of 6,800+ ranking keywords, counting only the non-branded, commercial-intent terms that drive trials, with the strongest gains landing on the high-intent tool pages that sit one click from a signup.
2,395 → 6,224 (peak 6,814)
117 → 905 sitewide
286 → 1,361, highest intent
22 → 114 sitewide
All figures are non-branded keywords with commercial or transactional intent, per Ahrefs, measured Dec 1, 2021 to Mar 25, 2024.
Big Demand, a Dated Site Holding It Back
Helium 10, a leading software suite for Amazon sellers, had real category authority but a web presence stuck in the past. Much of the site read like an early-2000s build thrown together in a basic page builder: dated design, thin architecture on the highest-intent pages, and a sprawling blog ranking well below its potential, with SEO handled piecemeal across outside agencies and no single owner of strategy. The work was a ground-up modernization, rebuilding the money pages on current SEO, CRO, and UX principles to bring the experience into the 21st century and convert far more of the traffic it earned.
On December 1, 2021 the domain ranked for 2,395 non-branded, commercial-intent keywords, with just 117 on page one and 22 in the top three. The mandate: build a real program and turn non-branded organic into product trials.
The Strategy: Five Pillars, Foundations First
Working hand in hand with the design, development, content, video, product, and sales teams, I treated SEO as the data layer that pointed the whole org at the same intent research, sequencing foundational fixes before content scale and aiming everything at the pages closest to revenue.
Re-Architect the High-Intent Tool Pages
Keyword-mapped the money pages and restructured their URLs into a siloed parent/child folder structure for cleaner topical authority, paired with SEO, CRO, and UX-driven redesigns and fresh content.
Scale and Modernize the Blog
Keyword-targeted title and H1 optimization, FAQ sections with schema, table-of-contents markup, and content refreshes across 200+ posts, backed by competitive gap analysis and a clustered content roadmap.
Build Free Tools as Linkable Assets
Scoped top-of-funnel free tools, such as the Amazon Sales Estimator and FBA Calculator pages, to double as lead-gen and as linkable assets for off-site SEO: a product-led motion to earn links content alone could not.
Layer In Video, Forum, and User Signals
Added video schema across key tool and blog pages and helped scope the Seller Connect community forum to compete for video boxes and the new "discussions and forums" results, the same engagement signals top competitors were using to out-rank us.
Clean Up the Technical Foundation
Running point with the dev team on Core Web Vitals and site speed, broken-image remediation, schema consistency, sitemap hygiene, and a keyword-cannibalization cleanup: the unglamorous work that lets everything else compound.
How the Program Unfolded
The strategy played out over roughly 28 months in four phases: lay the foundations, scale content and conversion, expand the footprint, then diagnose and correct when the algorithm shifted.
The site had authority but no owned strategy, so the first job was a foundation the rest of the program could compound on.
- Built a content roadmap from a competitive keyword-gap analysis and topic clustering (Keyword Insights), so every brief targeted a real, winnable query.
- Mapped keywords to the highest-intent tool pages, then restructured their URLs into a siloed parent/child folder system for cleaner topical authority.
- Cleared technical debt that was bleeding equity: remediated roughly 90 broken images from deactivated author accounts and began untangling keyword cannibalization.
With the architecture in place, the focus shifted to scaling output and converting the traffic it earned.
- Rolled out SEO, CRO, and UX-driven redesigns of the tool pages and their category pages, with fresh content and FAQ schema, wrapping the project across the year.
- Modernized the blog at scale: keyword-targeted titles and H1s, FAQ sections with schema, and refreshes across 200+ posts. FAQ rich results were a real ranking lever at the time, which matters later.
- Shipped a home-page redesign and a blog signup pop-up so the new organic traffic actually converted.
Next came widening the surface area: more linkable assets, more high-intent pages, and a better-organized content library.
- Launched free, top-of-funnel tools as linkable assets: the Amazon Sales Estimator in January and the FBA Calculator in September.
- Built high-intent landing pages, including conversion-focused Solutions pages and four Chrome Extension feature pages.
- Re-templated the blog (main, post, category, and author pages), added table-of-contents markup, and ran a featured-snippet optimization pass.
In the back half of 2023, blog rankings softened. Rather than guess, I ran a content-quality evaluation, traced the decline, and rebuilt the playbook around quality and intent.
- Diagnosed the drivers: Google's September 2023 Helpful Content Update and the removal of FAQ rich results, compounded by a volume-first, AI-assisted Q3 content push and the URL and date changes from the 2022 refreshes. Full breakdown in the honest section below.
- Reset the north-star metric to non-branded weekly clicks and rebuilt the refresh process: competitor-anchored SurferSEO outlines targeting low-difficulty, high-traffic-potential keywords, with genuinely original angles.
- Layered in video schema across the tool pages plus community and forum signals. Targeted pages moved from 400 to 600 up to 900 to 1,100 non-branded clicks per day, and the tool pages finished at their all-time peak.
Explore the Results
Every figure is from Ahrefs organic keyword position history, segmented by URL path and filtered to non-branded keywords with commercial or transactional intent, measured across the engagement (Dec 1, 2021 to Mar 25, 2024). Switch segments and metrics to explore the full picture.
Before and After, by Position Band
Baseline (Dec 2021), handoff (Mar 2024), and peak over the engagement, per Ahrefs.
| Metric | Baseline | Handoff | Peak | Change |
|---|
Keyword Gains
Featured non-branded, commercial-intent keywords and their movement over the engagement. Volume and Keyword Difficulty (KD) are per Ahrefs; "Previous" and "Current" are SERP positions; "Change" is in ranking spots, and "New" means the page entered the rankings during the engagement. Click any column to sort.
Rankings Were the Leading Indicator; Revenue Was the Point
The SEO, CRO, and UX rebuild of the high-intent tool pages moved revenue metrics, not just rankings: +167% conversions, +121% users, and +135% new users on those pages. To sustain output, I also built a new SEO-copy system (Ahrefs, Keyword Insights, SurferSEO, and AI drafting) that cut copywriting hours roughly in half while improving quality. Dashboard exports available on request.
Diagnosing the 2023 Turbulence
A portfolio that only shows the line going up is not a real case study. From a mid-2023 peak, blog rankings softened in the back half of the year. I traced it to a few factors and documented each. Switch the chart to Blog Posts and Top 3 to see the mid-2023 peak, the late-2023 decline, and the early-2024 recovery.
Algorithm and SERP Shifts
Google's September 2023 Helpful Content Update, plus the removal of FAQ rich results from most SERPs, retired the FAQ-schema lever that had driven a lot of early blog gains.
An AI-Assisted Content Push
A Q3 2023 volume-first push leaned on AI-assisted drafting. Even with human editing, an "AI fingerprint" likely remained and read as over-optimization under the new quality bar.
Earlier Refresh Tactics
The 2022 blog refreshes changed URLs and dates at scale, useful for short-term lift, but plausibly flagged later as gaming freshness signals.
Rather than paper over it, I rebuilt the approach around quality and intent: a refresh framework targeting low-difficulty, high-traffic-potential keywords, competitor-anchored outlines with genuinely original angles, and a heavier emphasis on video, community, and E-E-A-T signals. That corrected playbook moved targeted pages from 400 to 600 up to 900 to 1,100 non-branded clicks per day within a few months, and the tool pages finished at their all-time peak.
What I'd Tell the Next SEO
Prioritize the Highest-Intent Pages
The tool pages sit closest to a trial, so they earned priority. They finished at their all-time peak, with wins clustered in commercial-intent terms.
Quality Is the Real Lever
Treat content quality and originality as the actual ranking driver, not schema tricks. The 2023 turbulence was the cost of forgetting that.
Build Links to Pages on the Cusp
Concentrate off-site effort on pages already in striking distance of page one, where a few quality links convert position 11 to 20 into real traffic.
Measure Relentlessly
Use non-branded clicks as the cascading metric that ladders up to revenue, and report against it every week.
What a Colleague Said
"Mark is the definition of dependable. His wealth of SEO knowledge, content best practices, and brand positioning was absolutely invaluable. Due to his incredibly deep SEO expertise, our content was able to dramatically climb in rank and capture new users in a short period of time. He's a stone-cold ace at weaponizing content to convert."
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