DirectSMS & MessageMedia — 3× Traffic Growth & #1 for Business SMS

DirectSMS and MessageMedia operate in the competitive business SMS and communications SaaS space. DirectSMS started with just one keyword in the top 10, while MessageMedia needed to expand its already decent foundation of four top-5 keywords. This campaign was managed by SEO Melbourne, Melbourne's specialist SEO agency.

Both brands needed to capture more of the business SMS search market to drive qualified leads through organic channels.

Business SMS is a category where the buyer is evaluating software, not reading about it for pleasure. A marketing or operations lead comparing platforms searches for use cases, integrations and head-to-head comparisons, and they do it in a market where two brands under one roof, DirectSMS and MessageMedia, were both trying to be found.

That structure is the interesting part of this engagement. Two brands in the same category can easily end up competing with each other for the same searches, so the strategy had to give each brand its own territory in the business SMS market rather than one plan applied twice.

At the start DirectSMS had one keyword in the top 10 and MessageMedia had four in the top 5. Organic lead generation was limited for both because the sites were visible for only a handful of terms, and the risk of expanding both at once was cannibalisation: the same content ranking for the same queries under two brands, splitting authority rather than adding it.

The baseline for DirectSMS was 1,653 organic sessions in the comparison period.

Keyword expansion was systematic rather than opportunistic: we mapped the business communication terms, use cases and comparison searches that B2B buyers use during evaluation and grew coverage from a handful of rankings towards comprehensive visibility. Strategic content was written against that map so that each brand had pages matching the evaluation-stage queries.

The dual-brand strategy governed everything else. Each brand was given a distinct plan targeting a different segment of the business SMS market, so that DirectSMS and MessageMedia grew alongside each other instead of trading rankings back and forth. Paid search was run in the same programme, with paid data informing which organic terms to prioritise.

DirectSMS organic traffic sessions grew 200% (from 1,653 to 4,954 sessions) with 12 keywords now ranking in the top 10. MessageMedia achieved #1 for "business SMS" and expanded from 4 to 10 keywords in the top 5.

Both brands saw significant increases in lead conversions and website enquiries as the expanded organic visibility captured more of the business SMS search market.

DirectSMS organic sessions grew 200%, from 1,653 to 4,954, and its organic traffic tripled overall; it now has 12 keywords in the top 10 where it started with one. MessageMedia reached #1 for "business SMS" and grew from 4 to 10 keywords in the top 5, with 12 in the top 10. Both brands saw significant increases in lead conversions and website enquiries as the expanded visibility captured more of the market.

The fact that both brands grew is the result. In a two-brand category, one brand growing at the other's expense would have been a failure dressed as a success.

For a SaaS company running more than one brand in a category, the DirectSMS and MessageMedia work is the template: decide which brand owns which segment of search demand before writing a word, then build each brand's coverage against its own map so they add rather than divide.

The next step for a business like this is to keep the segment boundaries under review as products change, and to keep feeding paid-search data into the organic priorities so the two channels continue to inform each other.