The client is presented anonymously in accordance with the publication permissions supplied. No client logo is used, and all figures are taken from the submitted project record for December 2023 to July 2026.
Engagement at a glance
Client
Anonymised enterprise secure file transfer SaaS company
Solution category
Secure file sharing and managed file transfer
Market
United States, B2B enterprise
Audience
Enterprise, government, healthcare, manufacturing, international
Platform
HubSpot Content Hub / CMS
Engagement
Ongoing retainer, started October 2023
Delivery team
Project and SEO lead plus web developer
Disciplines
Technical SEO, content SEO, AEO, GEO, performance
Executive summary
The client arrived with a technically capable website and an underperforming organic acquisition engine. Important product and solution pages were not consistently discoverable.
Metadata and heading structures were uneven, internal linking was weak, and schema coverage did not sufficiently explain a secure file sharing and managed file transfer offering. There was no answer engine or generative engine strategy at all, and the mobile experience was constrained by image, CSS, JavaScript and font loading inefficiencies.
Inboundsys designed a phased, ongoing programme connecting four disciplines: technical SEO, on page and content SEO, Answer Engine Optimisation, and Generative Engine Optimisation, supported by performance engineering and measurement. The sequence mattered. Search engines and AI systems first needed reliable access to the right pages. Those pages then needed clear topical relevance, concise answer structures, strong entity signals, and a faster, more stable experience.
The business challenge
The core problem was not simply more traffic. Low visibility was the combined effect of discoverability gaps, incomplete on page optimisation, insufficient keyword targeting, weak authority signals, and an experience slower than it needed to be. Key landing pages therefore had fewer opportunities to rank for commercially relevant searches, attract qualified prospects, or become reliable sources for AI generated answers.
Search foundation
- Indexing inefficiencies and crawl errors
- Poor metadata and heading consistency
- Broken links, redirect chains, weak internal linking
- Incomplete schema and international SEO gaps
Answer and AI visibility
- No formal AEO or GEO strategy
- Weak FAQ, PAA and snippet visibility
- Weak entity, brand and citation signals
- Low visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot
Experience and measurement
- Slow mobile and desktop delivery
- Render blocking CSS and JavaScript
- Oversized images and excessive font weights
- Core Web Vitals and attribution gaps
Definition of success
At kickoff the practical target was a 5 to 10 percent lift in organic traffic once critical technical issues were resolved. Success also meant recovering visibility, building international and AI search presence, passing Core Web Vitals, and leaving behind scalable reporting processes.
Discovery: an evidence based baseline
The team began with a business discovery workshop and a broad audit programme spanning search, content, authority, performance, accessibility, analytics, AI search readiness, CMS architecture and third party scripts. This kept individual fixes from being treated in isolation, and produced one backlog ordered by impact and dependency.
Search and content
Technical SEO, content, keywords, competitors, backlinks, local and international SEO
Data and indexing
Search Console, GA4, GTM, Bing Webmaster Tools, sitemaps and crawl behaviour
Performance
PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, DevTools, GTmetrix, WebPageTest, Core Web Vitals
AI readiness
AEO audit, GEO visibility audit, entity clarity, answer formats, citation potential
Platform
HubSpot CMS and theme, third party scripts, accessibility and rendering behaviour
The most important finding was foundational: important pages first needed better discovery and indexation. The audit also surfaced missing or weak titles and descriptions, uneven heading hierarchy, broken links and redirect chains, thin internal linking, incomplete schema, and international SEO gaps.
The integrated programme
Work was organised as reinforcing layers rather than parallel projects, which avoided the common mistake of publishing more content on a foundation that could not carry it.
Make priority pages reliably discoverable
Crawl and indexation fixes first: sitemaps, robots rules, canonicals, redirect chains and broken links, so search engines and AI systems could reach the pages that mattered commercially.
Rebuild on page relevance where intent lives
Titles, descriptions, heading hierarchy, internal linking and keyword targeting reworked across product, solution and compliance pages rather than across the whole site at once.
Structure content for answer engines
Concise answer formats, FAQ and People Also Ask coverage, and schema that explains the secure file transfer category clearly enough to be quoted.
Strengthen entity and citation signals for AI search
Brand, product and topic entities made consistent across the site and off it, so generative systems could attribute answers to the company with confidence.
Engineer the experience underneath
Image, CSS, JavaScript and font loading addressed without breaking business critical HubSpot functionality, then held against Core Web Vitals as content shipped.
Verified results
Figures below are as submitted in the project record for the December 2023 to July 2026 measurement window, comparing the opening month with the closing month.
What the engagement left behind
A repeatable operating model: one prioritised backlog, ordered by impact and dependency, that survives team changes.
Reduced technical debt across templates, scripts and image handling, so new pages inherit a healthy baseline.
Dependable measurement through GA4, Search Console, GTM and Bing, with dashboards the marketing lead reads unaided.
A documented AEO and GEO practice where none existed at kickoff, now producing citations in four AI assistants.
The retainer continues. Current priorities are deeper entity coverage for compliance related queries, expanding answer formats on solution pages, and holding Core Web Vitals as new content ships.