CASE STUDYHow Leapsome grew organic pipeline 48% while search clicks fell
Leapsome is the people platform that brings HRIS, performance, engagement and learning into one system. Its content team pointed SEO at sales-accepted opportunities, and pipeline from search grew in a year when clicks from Google dropped.
By Maeva Cifuentes, Founder and CEO · Published [Date] · 5-minute read+48%organic and AI-sourced sales-accepted opportunitiesFirst half to second half of 2025
2.3xlikelihood that a non-branded click becomes an SAOSame period
5xmentions of Leapsome in Google AI OverviewsMarch to August 2025
Leapsome · +48% organic and AI-sourced SAOs · 2.3x SAOs per non-branded clickGet a proposal
CLIENTLeapsome
MARKETHR and people platforms
SERVICESSEO strategy, content, link building, GEO and AEO
TIMELINE2022 to today
"[Maeva] stays on top of the latest SEO and AEO updates and trends and feeds them directly into clear, effective strategy."
Content Marketing Lead, Leapsome
"Maeva has a deep understanding of both the technical side of search and the importance of high-quality, thoughtful content."
Content Marketing Lead, Leapsome
"The thing that really stands out is the taking of feedback in a very clear, transparent way. We share feedback, it's digested, it's understood, and then the result immediately changes."
Content Marketing Lead, Leapsome
THE CHALLENGE
Search clicks fell just as pipeline became the goal.
01
Pipeline became the metric
In August 2024, Leapsome's marketing department made sales-accepted opportunities its main metric.02
A new category to win
Leapsome had launched its HRIS and needed search visibility in a new category.03
AI answered the easy questions
AI Overviews and AI assistants answered top-of-funnel questions before a searcher reached a website.04
A core update hit the site
The March 2025 Google core update exposed long-standing technical issues, and non-branded clicks fell by roughly half within a few weeks.WHAT WE DID
The calls Leapsome's team made, and how we supported them.
Each move links to the service behind it, so you can see what a program like this includes.
01
They measured pipeline by page
Willow's team pulled first-touch attribution data to show which pages had sourced SAOs and customers since 2023, then shared it with us as the basis for planning.ANALYTICS AND REPORTING →02
They protected the pages that source pipeline
Templates, playbooks and software comparison pages led the list, so the 2025 plan centered on defending and growing those pages.SEO STRATEGY →03
They moved away from content AI can replace
Willow asked us to swap generic top-of-funnel topics for buying guides, implementation guides, checklists and templates.CONTENT CREATION →04
They fixed the foundations
Leapsome's web team worked through the technical fixes after the March update, and the following Google updates lifted the site.TECHNICAL SEO →05
They narrowed the focus again
In May 2025, Willow and Maeva reviewed HockeyStack together and chose four pages for a 90-day sprint, based on their conversion rate from MQL to SAO.SEO STRATEGY →06
They traded volume for authority
The team moved part of its content production budget into link building for those priority pages.LINK BUILDING →HOW FLYING CAT SUPPORTED THE PLAN
Every plan came from a quarterly review.
- We ran a quarterly business review with a content audit, technical audit, competitor analysis, content gap analysis and backlink audit, and we turned each one into a 90-day plan.
- We reoptimized the pages that source SAOs and built supporting clusters around them.
- We built around 50 targeted links to the priority pages.
- We set up tracking for traffic and demo requests from AI assistants, so the team could see AI search in its pipeline numbers.
- We built out comparison and alternatives pages for buyers close to a decision.
RESULTS
Pipeline grew while clicks fell.
LIKELIHOOD THAT A NON-BRANDED CLICK BECOMES AN SAO
1xH1 2025Starting point
2.3xH2 2025After the sprint
JUNE TO AUGUST 2025+93%content-sourced SAOs.That was the first full quarter after the 90-day sprint began.
+47%SEO-sourced non-branded SAOs, while non-branded clicks fell 36%
15%of all Leapsome SAOs came from organic and AI search, November 2024 to June 2025
4pages with the highest SAO counts since 2023, and each went on to source closed customers
13xAI mentions year over year, with Leapsome third for performance management topics
2x+conversion rate from AI assistant visits to demo requests in Q3 2025
5xreferral visits from AI assistants, January 2024 to May 2025
18AI Overviews for the career progression framework pages, now in positions 3 to 5
56AI Overviews for the employee engagement survey content
~30%growth in referring domains in twelve months
+10%organic traffic in Q3 2025, while its two closest competitors fell 16% and 33%
+19%average monthly SAOs, January to September 2026, above the 2025 monthly average
WHAT OTHER TEAMS CAN TAKE FROM THIS
Leapsome's playbook works for any team measured on pipeline.
01Leapsome's team chose sales-accepted opportunities as the goal and let traffic become a supporting metric.
02They used attribution data to find the small set of pages that source pipeline, then gave those pages the budget.
03They treated AI Overviews and AI assistants as channels to measure, with demo requests as the yardstick.
SEO STRATEGY
Turn organic search into pipeline.
Tell us your goals, and we send a proposal built around them.Turn organic search into pipeline.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
1. A 30-minute call about your markets and goals.
2. We show you the gap and what we would do about it.
3. You get a 5-page proposal with timeline, terms and team.
Tell us about your markets and goals.We show you the gap and what we would do about it.Get a proposal