How we grew a B2C SaaS product with SEO [Case study]

With the consumer resume/CV builder app StandOut CV, we started from scratch.

No domain authority, no brand searches, no existing audience – and we grew the site to over 18 million total organic visitors (averaging 300,000 per month at peak times), generating more than £1m in annual subscription revenue (£30K MRR).

That growth wasn’t driven by hacks or shortcuts. It came from a boring but effective long-term SEO strategy built around three pillars: content, links, and technical foundations.

Below is a breakdown of exactly how we approached each.

Content: building pages that attract and convert

From day one, content wasn’t treated as “blogging for traffic”. Every page had a commercial purpose and a clear role in the sales funnel.

We focused on three core content types.

Sales pages

These were (and continue to be) the backbone of revenue generation.

Instead of a single generic homepage trying to rank for everything, we built dedicated sales pages targeting high-intent keywords such as CV builder, CV templates, CV examples and PDF CV template

Each page was designed to:

• Rank for high-volume, high purchase-intent keywords
• Provide an amazing user experience (even for people who don’t buy)
• Clearly explain the product’s value in simple terms
• Seamlessly guide readers to sign-up and subscription

SEO and CRO worked together, bringing in ideal customers and providing them with an immediate solution to their problem.

These pages took a while to get traction (due to the brand new domain) but they became consistent traffic and revenue drivers in the long-term.

Use-case pages

Next, we built pages for specific job titles, industries and career situations

Examples included:

• CV examples for project managers
• CV templates for people with no experience
• CV guides for career changers

These pages captured highly qualified users with a clear problem to solve. Someone searching for a “marketing manager CV example” isn’t browsing – they’re actively preparing an application.

By pairing practical industry-specific advice with product CTAs at the right moment, these pages converted exceptionally well and scaled across hundreds of variations without sacrificing quality.

Articles (top-of-funnel authority)

We also invested heavily in informational content.

This included guides on:

• CV writing best practices
• Job-search strategy
• Interview preparation
• Career progression advice

While these articles weren’t always directly commercial, they played a critical role:

• Building topical authority
• Proving expertise and building trust with users
• Attracting natural backlinks
• Feeding internal links into sales and use-case pages
• Attracting customers searching for answers at the top of the sales funnel

Over time, this content made StandOut CV synonymous with CV advice in Google’s eyes – which lifted rankings across the entire site, not just blog posts.

Link building: earning authority in stages

Link building was treated as a long-term credibility exercise, not a volume game. We built quality natural backlinks using genuine partnerships and link-worthy content.

Our strategy evolved through 3 core stages as the site grew.

Early guest posting

In the early days, we had no reputation and limited budget, so we focused on outreach to smaller but highly-relevant websites:

• Career blogs
• Job boards
• Student and graduate resources

We built long-term content partnerships and provided high-quality CV advice content for these sites, which naturally linked back to our homepage and pillar articles.

These links weren’t glamorous, but they were highly relevant and trustworthy. They helped Google understand what the site was about and gave us the initial authority needed to compete.

This activity ensured search engines clearly understood both what we specialised in and why other reputable sites were recommending us.

Authority guest posting

Once early reputation within the careers field was established (along with early signs of rankings and traffic) we leveraged that momentum to secure links from much larger publications.

We started reaching out to national and global publications, securing contributor slots on websites like

• CV Library
• Reading University 
• Total Jobs
• The Guardian
• Forbes

This boosted our domain authority and strengthened our brand – driving higher rankings and boosting conversions rates.

High-quality links at scale (linkable assets & digital PR)

To scale links without sacrificing quality, we produced linkable assets and ran ongoing digital PR campaigns .

These included:

• Original studies on job search and CV trends
• Salary and hiring research
• Job-market statistics journalists could reference

This approach earned hundreds of natural, editorial links from high-authority sites at scale. You can see a couple of link building campaign examples here.

Ultra high-quality links at this scale, drove the site’s domain authority sky-high and allowed pages to start outranking global players like Indeed, Resume.io and Prospects.

Technical SEO: strong foundations

Technical SEO was deliberately kept simple but disciplined.

Key focuses included:

• Clean, crawlable site architecture
• Fast page load times across mobile and desktop
• Logical internal linking between articles, use-cases and sales pages
• Regular content reviews – Eliminating thin, duplicate or low-value content

We avoided unnecessary complexity. The goal wasn’t to chase obscure technical tweaks, but to ensure Google could easily understand, crawl and trust the site.

This meant that when content and links improved, the site could fully capitalise on them.

Results

The growth of StandOut CV wasn’t driven by a single tactic or short-term SEO hacks. It came from aligning content, links and technical foundations around one core objective: attracting the right users and giving them every reason to convert.

The results speak for themselves:

• 18 million total organic visitors grown from zero
• Around 300,000 highly qualified users arriving every month during peak seasons
• Over £1m in annual subscription revenue generated solely from SEO

Because the strategy was built on durable assets – authoritative content, trusted links and a clean technical setup – growth was steady and long-lasting.

This is the same framework we now apply when helping other SaaS and subscription businesses turn organic search into a reliable revenue channel – not just a traffic source.

If you’d like to see how this approach could work for your business, you can book a strategy call with me to walk through your current site, identify the biggest SEO growth opportunities, and map out a clear, revenue-focused 90 day growth plan.