PandaDoc Notary

How we helped PandaDoc Notary 20X their traffic in an emerging market.

20X

Increase in organic traffic

25%

Increase in organic visibility

2X

Keywords ranked in pos 1-3

26%

Increase in CTR

Company Profile

Zenpost: “How does PandaDoc Notary define success in SEO over the next 6 months?”

PandaDoc Notary: “Bottom line? We need to see it working, and we need to see it working fast.”

Online notarization is one of many dark horse solutions to come out of the pandemic era. Reduced in-person services created an overnight need, and just like that, a new market rapidly took form in the ever-expanding SaaS industry.

This brings us to LiveNotary, a nascent online notarization software company acquired by leading software solutions provider PandaDoc.

PandaDoc is an established and successful SaaS brand. But acquisitions tend to put a team back into a kind of “start-up mode,” complete with aggressive targets and shrewd budgeting. Striking quickly to seize opportunity in a rising market requires precision, proven strategies, and creative execution.

Post-acquisition, LiveNotary was re-branded as PandaDoc Notary and added to the parent company’s suite of document modification services.

But as a brand new property, it had virtually no digital footprint and a very short runway to start competing in search.

The Challenge

PandaDoc was a growing company attempting to scale multiple new solutions at once. This pressured the PandaDoc Notary team to pick the right strategy and prove it was working fast (in no more than 6 months!), all with limited resources.

The PandaDoc Notary team was handed two broad goals: expand the parent company into the fast-growing remote notarization market, and catch up to competitors in search, quickly.

To do this, they knew they needed to grow their reach regionally with location-specific pages in key markets (e.g., find an online notary in Miami, FL). They had created some of these pages already, but there was just one problem – they weren’t ranking.

At this point, PandaDoc Notary turned to Zenpost. We diagnosed the situation and came up with a holistic SEO approach that combined content creation and optimization with link building efforts to ramp up the brand’s market viability in SERPs.

Key Problems

To recap, here are the core challenges the PandaDoc Notary team asked for Zenpost’s help with:

They need to get from 0 to 100 in SERPs with a new domain in 6 months
Quick wins were needed to alleviate internal pressure to show immediate ROI.
Content wasn’t ranking, and production needed to scale quickly to overtake competitors

Our Approach

Zenpost takes a Sprint Model approach to SEO, much like SaaS companies do with their own products.

In Sprint 1, we perform foundational keyword research and detailed analytical review to produce a Sprint 2 plan that combines content creation, link building, and ongoing monitoring (just in case Google surprises us with a pesky update).

Since PandaDoc Notary is a new brand focused on fast user growth, Zenpost also implemented Sprint 3 strategies to optimize CTR rates on key strategic pages.

Execution

Sprint 1: A deep dive into the site, a 6-month strategy

Zenpost performed technical optimization and a content audit on existing pages. We compiled a competitor analysis to set benchmarks and to determine our keyword strategy. Along the way, we tweaked existing pages to get the team some much-needed quick wins. All of this culminated in the presentation of a 6-month SEO strategy to meet stated goals.

Sprint 2: Bulking up traffic

Zenpost supported an ambitious ramp-up in content creation to drive clicks to specific pages at the site’s Knowledge Center. SEO-optimized content briefs and topic selection were provided using the keyword strategy each month.

Sprint 2: Link Building

Link building strategy focused on a mix of high-DA sites, including .gov links. These resource links are often difficult to attain, so many SEOs don’t bother. Still, .gov links are the gold standard for domain authority and a natural fit for this unique product, so we had to give it a shot.

It paid off. The combination of .gov links and links from high-quality SaaS marketing blogs pushed several key pages over the line into the top 3 of SERPs. Our team averaged 8-10 high-quality links per month.

.gov links:

High authority backlinks:

Sprint 2: Catching up to competitors in search

Zenpost advised on the build out of location-specific notarization, or Remote Online Notary (RON) pages. Dominating all location-specific keywords with a scale content plan brought the brand to the first page of Google results with over 500 competitive keywords in positions 1-3 within the initial 6 month period.

Sprint 2: Technical & content optimization to CTR

Zenpost’s team fine-tuned and tested content each month, applying optimizations to capture featured snippets, resulting in a CTR increase of 26%. Ongoing monitoring helped maintain gains from other legs of the strategy and enabled quick pivots where problems arose.

Sprint 2: Technical & content optimization to CTR (cont.)

RON pages focused on strategic locations saw 340% growth in users within the first 6 months, a direct result of ongoing SEO content optimizations and meticulous testing.

Featured snippet content reformatting also led certain knowledge center posts to improve to over 700%.

Outcome

“We need to see it working, and we need to see it working fast.”

That’s what the PandaDoc Notary team expected of a successful strategy, and that’s what Zenpost delivered. To answer each of its unique challenges and internal mandates, our services:

Resulted in 500+ keywords ranking in positions 1-3, bringing visibility among competitors from 0 to match 25% of their top keywords.
Facilitated a 20-fold organic traffic increase within the first 6 months of Sprint 2, and maintained an average growth of 50% each month. The domain grew from virtually non-existent to number 2 in their industry in the first year.
Boosted CTR on strategic pages by 26% thanks to technical optimizations and ongoing expert recommendations from our SEO techs.

Sprint 2 was designed in Q2 2022 and was meant to last 6 months, but the PandaDoc Notary team continued to rely on our services through the end of 2022.

“Zenpost has been a key driver in our early success at PandaDoc Notary! Within 4 months of partnering, Zenpost helped us 10x our organic traffic and user signups. Their SEO strategy and technical optimizations have led to a 26% increase in our site’s CTR. Additionally, their team’s professionalism, campaign management, and communication has made for a very seamless partnership. I highly recommend!”

– Nuno Brito @ PandaDoc Notary

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