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Work / EXL Service

EXL ServiceOperations and analytics · SEO, analytics and Marketo

Sign-ups doubled year on year, with SEO, analytics and Marketo nurture built together

Sign-upHealthcareGeneralSOXSales-ready
+100%sign-ups, year on year
3Marketo nurture programmes live: healthcare, general and SOX
Under a weekfrom mockup request to client-approved programmes
Industry
Operations management and analytics
Services
SEO, web analytics, marketing automation
Platforms
Marketo, Google Analytics
Year
2014
The company

Who this was for.

EXL Service is a global operations management and analytics company, selling to healthcare, insurance, banking and compliance buyers.

The challenge

What stood in the way.

A site with technical gaps

Paper downloads did not work, case studies sat together on one page, URLs were inconsistent, and old domains and duplicate pages from earlier brands competed with the main site. There was no clean sitemap.

A nurture plan on paper, not in the platform

The marketing team had designed nurturing flows, but they were not running in Marketo. Healthcare, general and compliance (SOX) buyers each needed a different journey, reported separately.

Pages that did not hold visitors

Pages in the Analytics section were getting US visits but not keeping them. The marketing lead wanted specific steps to raise engagement, repeat visits and asset downloads, not general advice.

News traffic nobody could read

Press releases brought visits, but there was no way to see which organisations were reading each one.

What we did

The work, in detail.

Step 1

Technical SEO fixes

Fixed paper downloads and gave each case study its own page. Corrected URL structure and blog URLs, rewrote robots.txt and built a new XML sitemap. Redirected old domains, old URLs and the duplicate home page with 301s, sculpted internal links, added authorship markup, social sharing on blog posts, and Universal Analytics.

Step 2

Three Marketo nurture programmes

A mockup first, then healthcare, general and SOX nurturing programmes built campaign by campaign, with a performance report folder and alerts to the client team on every campaign.

Step 3

Engagement review of the Analytics section

A US traffic analysis of the main Analytics page and its four sub-pages: page views, unique page views, new versus returning visitors and time on page. Recommendations followed on visual design, navigation, content structure and responsive design.

Step 4

A monthly dashboard

Traffic by source, bounce rate, US and UK views, loyal visits, blog performance, indexing and branded versus non-branded search terms, with highlights, lowlights and recommendations each month.

Step 5

Press-release tracking in Marketo

A report of which organisations viewed each press release, with page views, location and visit times, so news content became account intelligence for sales.

Step 6

A content performance tracker

A master tracker with weekly US and UK page views for every main page of the site, and monthly tracking of each content asset: homepage panels, infosheets, videos, papers measured before and after the form, case studies, press releases, media coverage and blogs.

Step 7

Next steps planned

A content plan driven by social media, a gap analysis against competitors, and deeper web analytics with goal funnels.

The results

What it produced.

+100%sign-ups, year on year
3Marketo nurture programmes live: healthcare, general and SOX
Under a weekfrom mockup request to client-approved programmes

What the analysis showed

US page views to the Analytics section rose 17% from January to May 2014. New visitors rose 64% and returning visitors 53%, with about a minute and a half spent on each page.

Monthly reporting

Each month closes with highlights, lowlights and the next recommendations, so the client sees what moved and why.

Content in one view

Every page and asset in one tracker, so the team can see what draws US and UK visitors and what does not.

Sales visibility

Press-release reading by named organisations is visible in Marketo, ready for follow-up.

More work

Other case studies.

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Read the case study →BirlasoftIT services · Ongoing SEO programme

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Read the case study →A global heavy-duty tools makerManufacturing · Liechtenstein HQ

Organic traffic up 302% against marketplaces in India

In India, online marketplaces held the top of the search results for the company's products.

Read the case study →
Technology clients across 19 yearsBirlasoftCoforgeAlibaba CloudInnodataEXL ServiceAlgoworksHyTechProIncessant TechnologiesGS1 IndiaOrtele Health
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FAQ

Questions about this work, answered in detail.

Short answers first. Open any question for the detail.

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Why combine SEO, analytics and marketing automation in one programme?

Because each fixes the weakness of the others: SEO brings visitors, analytics shows what they do and nurture turns interest into leads. At EXL Service, sign-ups doubled year on year.

See how the three were built together in the EXL Service case study.

What does Search Value do for IT services and technology companies?

We run SEO and GEO, LinkedIn and Google advertising, inbound lead nurturing and analytics, and we report on the number that matters to your sales team: the leads they accept.

Most B2B marketing is judged on traffic or form fills. We judge it on lead-to-SAL ratio, the share of marketing leads that sales accepts as worth following up. That one number connects search, paid media, nurture and reporting into a single funnel you can manage.

How is Search Value different from a general digital marketing agency?

We are a specialist, not a generalist. We focus on the technical and analytical side of marketing for IT and technology companies, and we are not a social media, creative or content-production agency.

A generalist agency often sells a bundle: social posts, a blog, some ads, a monthly report of impressions. We narrow the scope deliberately to search, paid, nurture and measurement, because that is where we have nearly two decades of depth and where B2B technology buyers are actually found.

We also report differently. Instead of a deck of vanity metrics, you get a funnel view that ends with leads your sales team accepted, so marketing and sales argue about the same number.

How soon will we see results?

Paid campaigns produce leads first. SEO and nurture compound over months. In our top-5 IT company case, organic rankings moved within six months and the full effect showed at twelve.

As a rule of thumb for a B2B technology company: paid search and LinkedIn can generate leads within weeks once tracking is in place, nurture improves lead quality over one to three months as workflows and scoring settle, and SEO and GEO typically show meaningful movement from around month four to six, with the full effect building through the first year.

Timelines depend on your starting point, such as domain history, site health and competition. That is why we agree early indicators with you, like indexing, ranking movement and lead-to-SAL, rather than waiting a year to find out whether the programme works. See how a top-5 IT company went from 0.22% to 4.12% lead-to-SAL.

What is lead-to-SAL ratio?

It is the share of marketing leads that sales accepts as worth following up: sales-accepted leads divided by marketing leads for the same period and source. It is the number we report.

A lead is a form fill or similar capture by marketing. A sales-accepted lead (SAL) is one that sales agrees is worth pursuing. The ratio shows quality, not volume: a small number of well-qualified leads can beat a large number of poor ones.

Tracking it by source, such as SEO, LinkedIn, Google Ads or events, tells you which channels deserve more budget. Our guide to the lead-to-SAL ratio explains how to calculate and improve it.

How much does B2B SEO and digital marketing for an IT company cost?

We price as a monthly retainer, a project fee or an embedded pod, and we scope it after a pipeline review once we have seen your funnel. We do not publish a flat price because the right scope depends on your market and goals.

Three factors drive the cost: how competitive your target terms and audiences are, how much work the site needs before it can rank or convert, and how many channels you want us to run. A technical audit and migration plan is a project. Ongoing SEO, paid media and nurture is usually a retainer. If you want a named team that works as part of your marketing group, that is an embedded pod.

Beware of any agency that quotes a fixed price before it has looked at your site and funnel. A short pipeline review gives you a scoped proposal rather than a guess.

What happens in a pipeline review, and what do you need from us?

A pipeline review is a short conversation and a look at your funnel, from first visit to sales-accepted lead. We need access to your analytics, your CRM or marketing automation reporting and a few minutes with whoever owns sales follow-up.

We ask about your target accounts and markets, your current lead sources, how sales qualifies leads, and what has and has not worked. We then review your site, search visibility and tracking, and come back with what we would fix first and why.

You do not need a finished brief or a large budget to begin. The review ends with a clear view of the opportunity and, if it makes sense, a scoped proposal. You can book one here.

Which companies do you work with?

IT services and technology companies, mostly in the US, UK, Europe and India. Clients over the years include Coforge, Birlasoft, Alibaba Cloud, Innodata, EXL Service, GS1 India and Incessant Technologies.

Our sweet spot is the IT services and technology company with a long, considered sales cycle and a sales team that needs better leads rather than more of them. That includes global system integrators, mid-sized services firms, SaaS and platform companies, and specialist consultancies.

Some of our longest relationships are covered by confidentiality agreements, so we cannot show every programme. The ones we can are on our case studies page, with the challenge, the work and the results for each.

What is B2B SEO for IT services companies, and how is it different from consumer SEO?

B2B SEO for IT services is search optimisation aimed at a small number of high-value buyers who research for weeks, so it targets specific problems, services and industries rather than high-volume consumer keywords.

Consumer SEO chases volume. B2B IT services SEO chases relevance and intent: a CTO searching for an SAP migration partner, a head of operations comparing integration approaches, or a procurement lead shortlisting vendors. The searches are few, the deals are large, and one good page can be worth more than a thousand generic visits.

That changes the work. We prioritise service and industry pages, comparison and problem-led content, proof such as case studies, and technical health. We measure success by qualified leads, not sessions. Our guide to SEO for IT services companies goes deeper.

How long does SEO take for a B2B technology company?

Expect early signals such as indexing and ranking movement in two to four months, and meaningful lead growth from around six months, with the full effect over twelve. Competition and your starting site health change this.

SEO is cumulative. Month one is usually an audit and fixes: crawl and index problems, page speed, structure and tracking. Months two to four are content and page improvements and the first ranking movements for lower-competition terms. Months four to eight are where competitive terms start to move and organic leads become visible in your CRM.

A new domain or a site with a history of penalties takes longer. A site with good authority and weak structure can move faster. Anyone who promises page one in 30 days for a competitive B2B term is guessing or cutting corners.

What is GEO (generative engine optimisation), and how is it different from SEO?

GEO is the practice of making your content clear, credible and easy to cite so AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity describe your company accurately. It builds on SEO rather than replacing it.

Search engines rank pages. AI assistants synthesise answers and cite or paraphrase sources. To be included, your pages need a direct answer near the top, clear entity information (who you are, what you do, where, for whom), consistent facts across your site and the wider web, and structured data that machines can read.

We cannot guarantee a mention, because assistants choose their own sources. What we can do is make your pages the clearest answer available and measure how you are described each month. See our guide to GEO for technology companies.

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