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Services: SEO, Content, International SEO, Link Building, Digital PR, GEO
How Our International SEO Engine Took Aithor to 1M+ Monthly Organic Visits
B2С SAAS Case STUDY
by Dennis Lazard · July 05, 2026
+805K
6 markets
International language versions built
1M+
Monthly organic visits
Year-on-year organic traffic growth
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About The Brand
Aithor is an AI writing platform built for students – an AI essay writer and assistant that helps with drafting, rewriting, paraphrasing, outlining and citation generation across academic work. It operates in one of the most competitive corners of consumer SaaS, where dozens of AI writing tools fight for the same student search demand and where Google’s stance on the category makes both paid and organic acquisition genuinely difficult.
We began working with Aithor in September 2024. The brief was broad and foundational: build the organic search engine for a young, fast-moving product across multiple international markets, take it from a single-language footprint to a properly structured multi-market site, and create the content, technical and authority foundation needed to compete in the AI writing category.
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The Challenges
Aithor came to ESA Digital as a young product with real traffic but an underdeveloped SEO foundation. A few specific challenges shaped the engagement:- The category is extremely competitive. AI writing tools for students is a saturated, fast-moving niche where a large number of well-funded competitors target the same high-intent keywords – meaning a thin or generic SEO approach would never break through.
- The product page layer was underbuilt. Aithor’s core tool pages (essay writer, paraphraser, citation generators, outline generator and more) weren’t optimised – titles and H1s weren’t matched to top keywords, on-page content was thin at roughly 700 words per page, and many pages weren’t structured to rank.
- The site had significant technical issues. Page titles were being overwritten by JavaScript on render (damaging rankings), the site was continuously generating erroneous URLs that became 404s and wasted crawl budget, and there were hreflang and canonical problems across the international versions.
- International markets were untapped. Aithor had demand across English, Spanish/LATAM, Portuguese/Brazil, MENA, Indonesian and Turkish-speaking markets – but the site wasn’t properly structured, localised or optimised to capture it.
- The brand had a thin authority profile. To compete in a category this crowded, Aithor needed a stronger backlink profile, a credible third-party presence and the kind of brand signals that both Google and AI search systems reward.
Strategic Approach
We built a multi-track strategy designed to establish Aithor across its priority markets and create a foundation that would keep compounding:
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Step 1: Technical SEO foundation
We ran a full technical audit and worked through the issues systematically – fixing the JavaScript title-overwrite problem, resolving mass 404 errors and crawl-budget waste, cleaning up hreflang and canonical implementation across language versions, and setting up crawl-monitoring dashboards so problems on production could be caught quickly. -
Step 2: Product page optimisation
We rebuilt the on-page foundation of Aithor’s core tool pages – matching titles and H1s to top-priority keywords, designing new content blocks to take pages from ~700 words to a richer 1,500–2,000 words, and adding structured FAQ and supporting content built to rank and to be quoted by AI systems. -
Step 3: International SEO and localisation
We took Aithor from a single-language footprint to a properly structured multi-market site – researching keyword demand market by market across English, Spanish/LATAM, Portuguese/Brazil, MENA, Indonesian and Turkish, localising titles and H1s with region-appropriate high-frequency keywords, and building out the language-version architecture so each market could rank on its own terms. -
Step 4: Content programme
We ran a continuous content programme – publishing blog content targeting informational and category keywords, building topic research pipelines for each market, and creating the content layer that would capture top-of-funnel student search demand and route it toward the product pages. -
Step 5: Link building and digital PR
We built Aithor’s authority profile through a structured link building and digital PR programme – competitor backlink analysis to set targets, monthly placement of guest posts and links, PR research and outreach, and a dedicated effort to build credible third-party presence in the category. -
Step 6: GEO – building presence in AI search
We built Aithor’s content and technical foundation with AI search visibility in mind – structuring pages to be citation-friendly for AI systems, pushing the site into IndexNow so content could surface in AI answers faster, and laying the groundwork that would later see Aithor cited across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot.
The Results:
Result 1: Organic traffic grew to 1M+ monthly visits +805K year-on-year
The SEO foundation built during the engagement kept compounding well after the active engagement closed. By 2026, Aithor had reached approximately 1M monthly organic visits – a year-on-year increase of +805K. The growth came from the multi-market structure, content system and technical foundation built during the engagement, executed forward by Aithor’s in-house team.
Result 2: 27,000+ new organic keywords and 5,600+ new top-3 rankings
Aithor’s organic keyword footprint grew by more than 27,000 keywords year-on-year, reaching 59.5K total. Of those, the number ranking in the top 3 of Google grew by +5,600 to reach 9.3K – meaning the platform wasn’t just ranking for more terms, it was ranking for them in the positions that actually drive traffic.
Result 3: International markets became major traffic drivers
The multi-market SEO work turned international expansion into Aithor’s biggest growth engine. By 2026, Indonesia had become the single largest market at 464.9K monthly organic visits (+462K year-on-year), with strong growth also coming from the US (+62.9K), Mexico (+30.3K) and India (+47.2K). A single Indonesian-language blog post – a guide to ChatGPT – grew to over 451K monthly organic visits on its own, evidence of how effectively the localised content strategy captured demand in underserved markets.
Result 4: A strong AI search footprint across every major platform
The GEO-aware foundation built during the engagement positioned Aithor to win in AI search as the category shifted. By 2026, Aithor was cited in roughly 3,700 Google AI Overviews pages (+1,600), 430 ChatGPT responses, 394 Gemini answers (+191), 356 Perplexity references (+66) and 44 Copilot citations – a presence across all five major AI search surfaces in a category where AI-driven discovery is increasingly how students find tools.
Result 5: Domain authority and backlink profile strengthened
The link building and digital PR programme lifted Aithor’s authority profile in a measurable way – Domain Rating climbed +8 points, and the referring domain base grew steadily through the engagement and beyond. That authority foundation was a key part of why the content layer was able to rank and compound the way it did.
Working with ESA Digital has been fantastic! They bring deep industry knowledge and used it to build a strategy that delivered exceptional outcomes for our mobile app and our wider expansion. Their data-driven approach and excellent client service mean they consistently go above and beyond to meet our specific requirements. We've accomplished so much together and couldn't be happier with the results!
Andrew Bondarenko
CPO & Co-founder, Noji (Exit to DelightRoom)
CPO & Co-founder, Noji (Exit to DelightRoom)
“I met Dennis and his Google team, when they pitched their startup Smartsub. We accepted them to our accelerator program in 2017, Batch 9 and they successfully passed through it. Within a short period of time they managed to develop MVP of their product, design and implement go-to-market strategy launching the product on the US market. Their broad digital business experience and data-driven approach allowed them to make things done.”
Cristobal Alonso (www.startupwiseguys.com)
CEO at SWG (funded Smartsub in 2017)
CEO at SWG (funded Smartsub in 2017)
“ESA team with their Google Ads skills, growth mindset and natural ability to mentoring are able to bring a lot of value to startup ecosystem with so many tech companies in their growth stage and businesses struggling with Google online advertising.”
Monika Synoradzka (www.hugething.vc)
CEO at HugeThing (funded Smartsub, 2019)
CEO at HugeThing (funded Smartsub, 2019)
ESA team had outperformed my expectations working with one of our main SEO clients. They delivered X2-times organic traffic growth for 12 client’s websites, working with technical, content and link-building SEO optimisation in Google, website structure, navigation, technical code and conversion rate optimisation.”
Maria Kristalinskaya (www.bbdo.com)
Head of Retail Media at eBay (GE), Techstars Startup Mentor, ex-BBDO
Head of Retail Media at eBay (GE), Techstars Startup Mentor, ex-BBDO
