Customer story
How Proposify took the #1 spot for "proposal software"
B2B SaaS / Sales An eleven-year-old category leader defended its head terms, restored momentum on classic SEO, and built AI search into a measurable acquisition channel.
We have 68% more clicks from competitive pages from prospects comparing vendors or looking to move, and our AI search visitors are up 91%. I like the cadence and the consistency of basically saying here's the plan for the next month, here's the top priorities, here's what we're going to do, here's what we need from you. Every month we can see progress.
The challenge
Proposify is eleven years into the proposal software category. The market got significantly more competitive over those years, blog content drifted toward top-of-funnel keyword stuffing, and AI Overviews began intercepting clicks before they reached the site.
Kyle and Jen (Director of Marketing) walked in with a clear read on what was breaking:
- Diminishing returns on classic SEO. Old rankings on critical head terms had drifted. The team knew it but did not have a refined plan tied to business goals.
- Zero activity on AI search. The space felt too new and too noisy to know where to start.
- Voice vs. traffic tension. Previous demand-gen partners pushed for traffic at any cost and suggested topics too far removed from Proposify’s actual purpose. The team was not going to publish content they could not put their name on.
- Limited specialist bandwidth. The marketing team was small. Staying current on shifting SEO and AEO best practices was not realistic alongside the rest of the work.
“SEO has felt like black magic for years. We needed a partner whose legitimacy we could verify, not just take on faith.”
What we changed
We replaced the generic traffic playbook with a refined strategy tied to Proposify’s actual business goals.
| Lever | What changed |
|---|---|
| Content mix | High-intent blog articles, plus landing pages and template pages. Not just blog posts churned at volume. |
| Editorial division of labor | Kyle and Jen kept publishing thought leadership through social and newsletter, and cross-posting to the blog. Breaking B2B took the high-intent search work. |
| Monthly cadence | Every month: the plan, the top priorities, what we need from Proposify. Mix of new content with refreshes of high-performing existing pages. |
| AI search optimization | The same content rebuilt to surface in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overview citations, not just classic SERPs. |
The outcome
The defensive moment turned into a compounding position across both classic search and AI search.
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| ”Proposal software” (US, primary head term) | #1 |
| ”Quoting software” (US, adjacent head term) | #1 |
| Clicks from competitive comparison pages | +68% |
| AI search visitors | +91% |
| LLM-attributed discovery | Increasingly cited in Proposify’s “how did you hear about us” tracking |
The qualitative signals are as important as the rankings:
- AI search traffic is qualified. Visitors are not blind drop-ins. They land and convert into meaningful site engagement.
- Customer-reported LLM discovery is climbing month over month, confirmed through Proposify’s own attribution survey.
- Visible monthly progress instead of black-box agency reports. Kyle and Jen can see compounding gains without having to guess at impact.
Jen’s frame on what is actually different this time: the consistency of the planning cadence, and a partner that acts as a dedicated SEO extension of the in-house team rather than a vendor sending decks once a quarter.
