$3M in Annual Revenue from SEO [Breakdown]

Intro 

Hello and welcome to the Mark Sourced newsletter, where we break down successful B2B marketing programs that you can leverage to hit your growth goals.

Today, we’re looking at how Typeform generated $3,000,000 in annual lifetime revenue through SEO, a case study that’s detailed on the How The Fxck podcast.

Let’s unpack the program!

Summary

Typeform is a form software provider, known for providing unique forms that show a single question at a time within the context of a unique visual layout.

To accelerate revenue growth, Typeform invested heavily in SEO and drove substantial results, acquiring tens of thousands of customers and generating millions of dollars in revenue through the channel.

Their strategy to drive those results was a very smart one in my opinion. They focused heavily on building out a gallery of form templates that potential customers could use for different use cases. Think event signup form templates, client feedback form templates, etc.

The templates that they built out were strategically chosen to maximize traffic, as well as product conversion, which helped them to drive explosive growth through SEO.

The Results

$3M a year in customer lifetime value (new customers x lifetime value) revenue
50,000 paying customers

Why This Worked

As mentioned in the summary section, I think that Typeform executed a fantastic strategy in how they used form templates to drive growth via organic search.

Here are a few things that they did within that strategy that helped to make this program so successful:

1. Their approach highlighted the product in a way that aligned with search intent

Typeform hit the absolute sweet spot when it comes to SEO - they highlighted their product in a way that answered the user’s search query. 

By creating templates targeting relevant, high buying intent search terms like “client feedback form” they were able to show their solution searchers that were ready to convert in a way that was actually helpful to them.

2. They prioritized template creation based upon search traffic, customer success feedback, and conversion potential

As far as selecting which templates to build, the folks at Typeform were very thoughtful in the way that they approached resource allocation. To prioritize their efforts, they created a scoring model that weighted search traffic, customer success feedback, and conversion potential to decide which templates to make.

Ultimately, they realized that SEO is not just about driving traffic, it’s about driving traffic that’s going to convert, so they worked with customer success and looked at the data to build templates that were most likely to result in paying customers.

3. They leveraged their templates to build backlinks at scale

Search engines view links from other websites back to your website (referred to as “backlinks”) as kind of like votes of confidence in the quality of your website. The more links that you have to your website from other sites, the more reputable search engines view you to be.

Typeform was able to grow backlinks at scale by adding “built with Typeform” to the bottom of each of their forms. So, each time somebody embedded a Typeform on their website, it included a backlink to typeform.com, which drove an explosive growth in links as the platform scaled.

Who Should Consider Running This Type of Program

Speaking to SEO more generally, SEO as a channel tends to work best for businesses that operate in a broad and established niche.

At a high level, that means two things.

The first is that your company can serve many types of businesses. Survey software, project management software, or accounting software would be other good examples.

If you are targeting a very specific persona or type of business with your solution, it’s going to be challenging to hone in on just that ideal customer with SEO.

The second, related to the established niche point, is that you can only drive traffic through search for terms that people are actually searching for.

So, if you have a solution that is entirely new and novel, then you’re unlikely to have much existing search demand to capture. In that case, you’re better served working to create demand through other channels versus operating in search, which is more of a demand capture channel.

The above said, with good keyword research, there are typically ways to find searches that are relevant to your business to go after. You just typically won’t be able to achieve the scale of someone like Typeform.

How to Run This At Your Company

While Typeform’s specific strategy and approach to SEO was fairly unique to them, speaking to how to run an SEO program more broadly, here are some of the resources that you need to pull it off effectively:

1. SEO Strategist

You need some type of experienced practitioner to guide your SEO efforts. Someone who knows how to do keyword research, recommend how to structure your site and web pages to target those keywords, ensure that your site is set up appropriately from a technical perspective, and help with link building.

The person can be a contractor, agency, or full time hire. If you’re just starting out, I would recommend starting with a contractor or agency to help you vet if SEO is even going to be a viable channel for your business.

2. Vetted Search Demand

On the point of vetting if SEO is viable for your business, the place to start is always keyword research. Up front, you need to assess if there’s sufficient search demand related to your business to make it worth investing in the channel.

Tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Moz are solutions that your team or SEO practitioner can use to help you conduct that research.

3. Content Creators

Once you’ve selected the keywords that you’ll be targeting, you need people to create website content for you. That includes writers, people that can create imagery, and those that have the skills to build the pages and post them on the site.

Conclusion

Typeform is a great example of using SEO effectively not just to drive traffic, but to drive the traffic that actually converts into business. 

At the end of the day, if you can get SEO working for your business, it still remains one of the absolute best channels for marketers. The traffic itself is free, it’s passive, and it’s high intent. It takes time, but the rewards are absolutely there if you can make it work for your business.

-Founder @ Mark Sourced

P.S.

If you’re looking to find inspiration for programs that you can run in 2025, be sure to check out our database of 25+ B2B marketing programs that drove real results (like Typeform’s).

It's sortable based upon factors like what marketing channels were used, the size of the company, and the results that were achieved so you can find the programs that would be most relevant to your business.

Don’t reinvent the wheel in 2025, leverage established templates playbooks that companies like you are using to hit their growth goals.