SEO Case Study: B2B DevTools achieved non-brand traffic 3.2X in 7 months
In February 2025, the in house growth team at a Seattle based B2B DevTools company partnered with Goforaeo to rebuild their organic acquisition engine around developer intent, technical clarity, and scalable content systems.
Brand name and a few product specific identifiers are anonymized in this SEO Case Study due to an NDA.
Snapshot: what changed in 7 months
This was not a one trick project. We combined technical fixes, a cleaner information architecture, and a content strategy that matched how developers actually search, evaluate, and adopt tools.
Key outcomes from February 2025 to August 2025:
- Non branded organic sessions (GA4): 12,400 to 39,800 per month (3.2X)
- Non branded clicks (GSC): 8,900 to 28,600 per month (3.2X)
- Non branded impressions (GSC): 420,000 to 1,350,000 per month (3.2X)
- Top 10 non branded keywords (rank tracker): 310 to 1,040 (3.35X)
- Top 3 non branded keywords: 34 to 112 (3.29X)
- Organic assisted trial signups: 96 to 238 per month (2.48X)
- Demo requests from organic: 18 to 41 per month (2.28X)
- Conversion rate from organic to trial (sitewide): 0.77% to 0.92%
The starting point in early 2025
Before the work began, the brand had strong product credibility with existing customers, but search growth was capped by structural problems and mismatched content.
Here is what we saw in February 2025 across the site and search console.
Symptoms in traffic and rankings
- Branded queries were doing most of the heavy lifting, while non branded demand was under captured.
- Several high intent topics were ranking on page two, with no clear pathway to page one.
- Older blog posts were generating impressions but not clicks, mainly due to weak snippets and unclear angles.
- Docs pages existed, but they were hard for Google to understand and hard for users to navigate from blog content.
Root causes we confirmed during the audit
- Information architecture was product led, not search led. Many pages lived in the wrong folders and competed with each other.
- Internal linking was inconsistent, and important pages were more than three clicks away from the blog and docs entry points.
- Index bloat from tag pages, thin integration stubs, and legacy URLs created crawl waste.
- Technical issues slowed down discovery, including redirect chains, inconsistent canonicals, and duplicate title patterns on docs.
Measurement and proof: how we isolated non branded growth
We defined non branded as queries and landing pages that did not include the brand name, product name, or close variations. This mattered because branded growth can hide the real story in DevTools SEO.
What we tracked every week
- Google Search Console: non branded clicks, impressions, average position, query groups, and page groups
- GA4: non branded organic sessions, engaged sessions, assisted conversions, and landing page cohorts
- Rank tracking: daily movement for a curated set of commercial and developer intent clusters
- Pipeline influence: trial signups and demo requests attributed to organic, plus assisted conversions
Before vs after proof points
- In February 2025, non branded clicks averaged 8.9k per month in GSC. By August 2025, they averaged 28.6k per month.
- In February 2025, GA4 showed 12.4k non branded organic sessions. By August 2025, it was 39.8k.
- In February 2025, only 34 non branded keywords were in the top 3. By August 2025, it was 112.
Strategy overview: what we did and why it worked
We organized the plan into three tracks that ran in parallel, with sequencing to avoid rework.
Track 1: Make the site easy for Google to crawl and trust
The first month focused on reducing friction. This was not glamorous, but it created compounding gains once content started shipping.
Key actions:
- Cleaned indexation by noindexing low value tag pages, parameter variants, and thin integration stubs
- Resolved canonical conflicts on docs and removed duplicate title templates
- Fixed redirect chains and consolidated outdated URLs to a single preferred version
- Improved Core Web Vitals on top landing pages by reducing script weight and optimizing images
- Added breadcrumbs and consistent schema where it helped clarity, especially on guides and docs hubs
Impact we observed within weeks:
- Faster crawling of new pages
- More stable ranking behavior for refreshed URLs
- Higher click through rate on pages where snippets stopped competing with duplicates
Track 2: Rebuild information architecture around intent, not org charts
Developers do not search for your internal product menu. They search for outcomes, integrations, errors, and comparisons. We reframed the content map accordingly.
What changed:
- Created clear hub pages for primary jobs to be done, such as monitoring, debugging, CI, security scanning, or API observability
- Built integration pathways so that “Product plus Integration” pages were discoverable and internally linked
- Split mixed intent pages into separate assets, for example one page for “what it is” and another for “how to implement”
- Introduced a glossary layer where it made sense, tied to feature pages via contextual links
Track 3: Publish content that matches developer journeys
We avoided generic thought leadership. Instead, we built a system that shipped practical pages tied to real search patterns.
Content types that performed best:
- Developer use case guides: opinionated, step by step implementation content
- Integration pages: clear, technical, and linked from both docs and commercial pages
- Comparison pages: “Tool A vs Tool B” and “Alternatives” done with fairness and specificity
- Problem and error pages: debugging oriented pages that captured long tail queries and funneled users to docs and onboarding
- Templates and examples: code snippets, config examples, and quickstarts that earned links naturally
Monthly execution timeline with real numbers
Below is the month by month progression from February 2025 through August 2025, including key actions and non branded performance shifts. Numbers are rounded to keep the story readable while staying accurate to the trend.
February 2025: audit, baseline, and fast technical wins
We started by validating tracking, isolating non branded cohorts, and shipping only the fixes that would not create downstream URL churn.
- Non branded sessions: 12,400
- Non branded clicks: 8,900
- Non branded impressions: 420,000
- Trials from organic: 96
Work shipped:
- Indexation cleanup plan and immediate noindex for thin sections
- Redirect chain fixes on high traffic legacy posts
- Updated templates for docs titles and meta descriptions to remove duplication
March 2025: restructure hubs and internal links
This month created the foundation. We built hubs, improved crawl paths, and started refreshing existing content before publishing new net new pages.
- Non branded sessions: 15,900
- Non branded clicks: 11,600
- Non branded impressions: 520,000
- Trials from organic: 112
Work shipped:
- New hub pages for the top 3 intent areas
- Internal link framework, including “next step” blocks and contextual links to docs
- First wave of snippet rewrites on posts with high impressions and low clicks
April 2025: content cluster launch and docs alignment
Once architecture and linking stabilized, we launched clusters that could win on page one quickly, then used them to pull users into deeper technical pages.
- Non branded sessions: 19,800
- Non branded clicks: 14,900
- Non branded impressions: 680,000
- Trials from organic: 136
Work shipped:
- 8 net new developer intent guides, each tied to a hub
- Refresh of 12 older posts with better search framing, code examples, and clearer CTAs
- Docs navigation improvements and consistent breadcrumb trails
May 2025: comparisons and integration pages that convert
This is where growth accelerated. Comparison pages and integration pages captured mid funnel and high intent searches, and they converted better than top of funnel content.
- Non branded sessions: 25,400
- Non branded clicks: 18,700
- Non branded impressions: 860,000
- Trials from organic: 169
- Demo requests from organic: 29
Work shipped:
- First set of “vs” pages with balanced positioning and real feature tradeoffs
- Integration pages expanded from thin stubs into complete setup flows
- Added decision oriented sections, pricing considerations, and migration notes where relevant
June 2025: scale what worked, prune what did not
We did not just publish more. We killed weak ideas fast and doubled down on patterns that earned rankings and assisted pipeline.
- Non branded sessions: 30,900
- Non branded clicks: 22,900
- Non branded impressions: 1,020,000
- Trials from organic: 198
- Demo requests from organic: 34
Work shipped:
- Consolidated overlapping posts to avoid cannibalization
- Built a content briefing system so engineers and writers could contribute without losing consistency
- Added internal link targets to key commercial pages, but only where intent matched
July 2025: long tail capture through problem pages and templates
Developers search for specific errors, configuration issues, and workflow questions. Problem pages brought in volume, while templates made the experience sticky and linkable.
- Non branded sessions: 35,700
- Non branded clicks: 26,100
- Non branded impressions: 1,190,000
- Trials from organic: 219
- Demo requests from organic: 38
Work shipped:
- 15 problem and troubleshooting pages, each linked to a relevant quickstart or integration
- Template library pages that grouped examples by language and framework
- Snippet optimization to raise CTR on high ranking posts
August 2025: stabilize rankings and improve conversion pathways
The final month in this window was about tightening. We improved conversion routes, reduced friction, and made sure new rankings translated into product usage.
- Non branded sessions: 39,800
- Non branded clicks: 28,600
- Non branded impressions: 1,350,000
- Trials from organic: 238
- Demo requests from organic: 41
Work shipped:
- Landing page experiments on high traffic guides, focusing on CTA clarity and faster paths to onboarding
- More precise internal linking from guides to “how to start” docs sections
- Content refresh wave two, focused on keeping page one placements stable
What made this feel genuine to developers
In DevTools, trust is earned through specificity. We avoided fluff and wrote like practitioners.
Content principles we followed
- Show the “why” before the “how,” then prove it with steps and examples
- Use real code snippets and configuration fragments, not pseudo code
- Address tradeoffs honestly, especially on comparison pages
- Keep introductions short and get to the implementation fast
- Link to docs as the default “next step,” not a generic demo request
Internal linking that actually helped
We used internal links as product education, not SEO decoration.
Examples of link intent mapping:
- Top of funnel guide to integration setup
- Integration setup to troubleshooting page
- Troubleshooting page to quickstart
- Quickstart to feature page and onboarding
Tools we used
We kept the tool stack practical, mostly standard for SEO plus a few workflow essentials.
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics 4
- Looker Studio dashboards for weekly reporting
- Screaming Frog for crawling, redirect checks, canonicals, and template audits
- Ahrefs for competitive research, content gaps, and link discovery
- PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse for performance validation
- Notion for content briefs, editorial workflow, and change logs
Takeaways you can reuse for your own B2B DevTools SEO
If you want similar results, focus on systems, not one off wins.
- Fix crawl and duplication issues before you scale content
- Build intent based hubs and make internal linking a product journey
- Publish developer first assets like integrations, templates, and troubleshooting pages
- Treat CTR as a growth lever, not an afterthought
- Measure non branded growth separately so you see the real progress