Language translation platform Smartling simplifies localization so businesses can publish multilingual content and reach new global markets faster. Its AI and human translation process plus workflow automation tools enable hundreds of businesses like Lyft, Peloton, and Shopify to connect with customers worldwide.

Smartling partnered with Omniscient Digital in February 2021 to create an SEO-driven content strategy that expanded brand awareness and increased conversions. This resulted in steady growth for the Smartling blog—including a 118% boost in organic blog traffic and a 31,250% increase in blog conversions from 2022 to 2024.

A need to scale content and organic traffic

Before partnering with Omniscient Digital, Smartling relied on content to reach new customers. But organic traffic and conversions were hard to come by since the small marketing team struggled to publish content consistently. When the Smartling team lost their only in-house writer and subject matter expert, they knew they needed outside content help.

After working with a few freelance agencies, the Smartling team felt like they took one step forward and two steps back.

“Other content agencies weren’t delivering on their promises,” said Adrian Cohn, former head of marketing. “We needed a thoughtful content roadmap, a dedicated partner to provide useful insights, and a dependable group of writers. We worked with two or three other freelance content agencies. They failed to deliver on schedule or on basic quality of work.”

The small team needed an agency that took the time to not only understand the industry and audience but also develop a sustainable SEO-driven content marketing plan to achieve their organic traffic and conversion goals.

Setting the stage for sustainable growth

The Omniscient team immediately met with Smartling to align on the team’s business goals and success metrics. Omniscient also began researching and interviewing subject matter experts to better understand the translation management industry and Smartling’s target audience.

Next, Omniscient audited Smartling’s existing content using insights from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and Ahrefs. The audit revealed that some of Smartling’s blog articles ranked on pages two and three of Google search results, but they still performed below competitor content ranking on page one.

With this data and context in mind, the Omniscient Digital team created a content strategy focused on three objectives:

1. Develop a product-led SEO strategy and content roadmap
2. Capture searchers with high-conversion intent who matched Smartling’s target audience
3. Create new content, optimize existing content, and build high-value backlinks

Developing a product-focused strategy

Once aligned on Smartling’s goals and success metrics, Omniscient’s organic strategists crafted an SEO strategy and content roadmap that placed Smartling’s product front and center. This meant Omniscient’s editorial team created content for all stages of the marketing funnel—from education to conversion—with Smartling’s translation and localization tools in mind.

This strategy allowed Smartling to increase awareness of its products—even if its target audience of customer support, legal, marketing, and product teams wasn’t ready to buy at the time.

“Our team really leaned on Omniscient to help drive the direction and strategy of our organic search program,” said Katie Festa, senior manager, digital marketing at Smartling. “Their expertise, organization, and proactive approach allowed us to show value and scale up once we were able to prove results.”

Capturing and converting high-intent leads

The B2B translation and localization space is highly technical and complicated, and there’s steep competition when it comes to ranking in Google search results. During their initial SEO research, the Omniscient team discovered that several high-search-volume keywords didn’t match Smartling’s target business audience. Instead, these keywords were consumer-focused.

Instead of creating content for any and all translation-related keywords, Omniscient’s strategy focused only on keywords that matched Smartling’s business audience. This resulted in a strategy that targeted a mix of search terms with lower monthly search volume and high-conversion intent.

This curated list of target keywords allowed Omniscient and Smartling to focus on creating content with the most potential to rank in Google search results and lead to conversions. While its competitors battled over high-volume keywords, Smartling published high-ranking content that increased sales-qualified leads.

Ramping up content production

Next, the Omniscient editorial team put the strategy into play with a full-service content production pipeline. This included creating new content that expanded Smartling’s library as well as optimizing existing content to regain and maintain search rankings.

“With a lot of content partners you run into a solution where they want to start from scratch and write out new pieces, but I appreciate that the Omniscient team took the time to review our old pieces and [their success], and was able to provide recommendations to allow those to maintain top rankings,” explained Festa.

At the same time, the Omniscient team built backlinks to Smartling’s content from relevant high-authority websites with a minimum domain rating of 50. This helped build Smartling’s reputation as a trusted industry expert and increased the likelihood its content ranked on page one of Google search results.

”From an SEO perspective, the knowledge and recommendations [the Omniscient team] has been able to provide has really been invaluable to me,” said Festa. “Being able to speak to changes in keyword rankings and help me understand the backlink strategy has been super influential in our overall digital strategy.”

A product-led SEO and content strategy translates to big wins

It didn’t take long for Smartling to see positive results from its partnership with Omniscient Digital. From August 2022 to August 2023, Smartling saw a 63% increase in organic blog traffic along with 325 new keywords landing on page one of Google search results.

The focus on product-led content that targeted keywords with low search volume but high conversion intent eventually caused Smartling’s blog traffic to plateau and even decrease.

Initially, this was a concern for the Smartling team. The reality was the blog was shedding rankings and traffic for bad-fit keywords that targeted consumers looking for a translation tool. The product-led content, however, continued to rank for high conversion intent keywords.

In short, the Smartling blog became more efficient. It continued to gain more relevant traffic, leading to an increase in conversions and steady blog traffic.

The more targeted traffic resulted in more conversions—Smartling saw a 31,250% jump in blog conversions from August 2022 to January 2024.

“We’ve used the findings from Omniscient’s content strategy to drive go-to-market messaging. Apart from the clear growth metrics, we have a better understanding of the questions our prospects are actively asking and the areas where they need support.”

The increase in conversions positively impacted Smartling’s bottom line as well, with $3.7M in pipeline value created through organic search efforts. Along with a 72% boost in opportunities attributed to organic traffic, Smartling saw a 64% increase in closed deals year over year.

That pipeline converted into revenue that demonstrated a 12.8X ROI on their investment with Omniscient Digital.

Throughout the partnership, the Omniscient Digital team acted as an extension of Smartling’s marketing team rather than a third-party agency.

“What really impressed me was the overall organization and the streamlining of the process, which is something I haven’t seen with other content-related partners,” said Festa. “I’ve been impressed by the way the Omniscient team has been able to deliver the work and keep everything in an organized state.”

Along with an organized view of project statuses and comments, the Smartling team met regularly with Omniscient to ask questions and discuss projects in detail.

Partnering with Omniscient Digital allows Smartling to reach new customers—just like it helps businesses expand globally. And Omniscient’s product-led strategy solidified Smartling’s position as a leader in translation management.

“In spite of how nuanced and complicated the language translation industry can be, the Omniscient Digital team has developed a robust and researched process,” said Cohn. “Everyone working on our account is incredibly smart. This is an effortless relationship that delivers outstanding results.”