We analyzed the organic traffic growth of 1,600 SaaS companies to discover the SEO strategies that work best in 2024.
In this article, we’re focusing on bootstrapped software companies—those who have never raised external funding. All SEO data featured here comes piping hot from the Ahrefs API.
This is a list of bootstrapped SaaS companies ordered by estimated monthly organic traffic growth from August 2023 to August 2024. Did you make the cut?
Rank
Company
Traffic 2023
Traffic 2024
Traffic Growth
Change
Estimated Revenue
1
Smallpdf
41,145,810
55,455,141
14,309,331
35%
$17.5M
2
BuiltWith
526,880
3,149,986
2,623,106
498%
$31.0M
3
Ahrefs
2,171,168
4,271,413
2,100,245
97%
$100.0M
4
Surfshark
992,020
1,510,739
518,719
52%
$20.0M
5
IPQS
1,194,124
1,660,482
466,358
39%
$32.0M
6
ExpressVPN
1,620,815
1,927,577
306,762
19%
$14.9M
7
OpenWeather
203,917
470,687
266,770
131%
$5.5M
8
Clockify
600,071
859,005
258,934
43%
$5.5M
9
BambooHR
652,833
808,660
155,827
24%
$237.8M
10
Surfer
45,197
189,261
144,064
319%
$37.5M
11
Doofinder
55,317
184,746
129,429
234%
$75.0M
12
Oxylabs.io
92,671
207,640
114,969
124%
$375.0M
13
Todoist
545,900
639,398
93,498
17%
$20.3M
14
Toggl
295,570
388,062
92,492
31%
$14.7M
15
JetBrains
2,712,320
2,796,818
84,498
3%
$252.1M
16
Zadarma
130,940
214,538
83,598
64%
$175.0M
17
MXToolbox
738,595
802,633
64,038
9%
$9.0M
18
TeamGantt
120,783
176,899
56,116
46%
$5.0M
19
Mailtrap
103,564
156,873
53,309
51%
$5.5M
20
GetResponse
192,850
243,514
50,664
26%
$129.2M
21
DeviceAtlas
59,267
109,341
50,074
84%
$19.0M
22
Elfsight
65,359
104,938
39,579
61%
$8.0M
23
Vector Magic
169,389
199,343
29,954
18%
$10.0M
24
Referral Factory
943
27,591
26,648
2826%
$5.5M
25
Crowdin
17,602
43,155
25,553
145%
$17.5M
26
Kaspr
10,476
33,515
23,039
220%
$5.5M
27
Wisepops
13,698
36,295
22,597
165%
$3.0M
28
SavyCal
11,926
33,984
22,058
185%
$5.5M
29
Voucherify
37,111
58,832
21,721
59%
$5.5M
30
Buzzsprout
97,961
118,040
20,079
21%
$617K
31
Meeting Room 365
5,738
25,637
19,899
347%
$500K
32
vFairs
18,175
37,812
19,637
108%
$75.0M
33
Helpjuice
73,249
92,177
18,928
26%
$6.0M
34
Yardi
64,177
81,896
17,719
28%
$5.5B
35
SpyFu
62,410
79,361
16,951
27%
$2.0M
36
Wappalyzer
61,561
78,303
16,742
27%
$500K
37
Filemail
142,226
158,133
15,907
11%
$1.0M
38
Float.com
29,088
44,737
15,649
54%
$5.5M
39
Free online HTML editor
29,523
44,269
14,746
50%
–
40
BrightLocal 🇺🇦
52,853
66,876
14,023
27%
$10.3M
41
ShortPixel
6,192
20,006
13,814
223%
$10.0M
42
GetMyInvoices
10,880
23,767
12,887
118%
$5.5M
43
Mangools
67,615
80,324
12,709
19%
$5.5M
44
La Growth Machine
13,668
26,321
12,653
93%
$5.5M
45
Aha!
135,156
147,570
12,414
9%
$100.0M
46
GTranslate Inc.
7,739
20,125
12,386
160%
$5.3M
47
Slickplan
13,270
24,857
11,587
87%
$1.0M
48
Uptime.com
28,164
39,394
11,230
40%
$5.5M
49
Homerun
23,049
33,883
10,834
47%
$38.4M
50
Glassnode
13,321
24,111
10,790
81%
$5.5M
For each of the top five companies, I ran a five-minute analysis using Ahrefs Site Explorer to understand the SEO strategies driving their growth.
In a nutshell: free tools, programmatic content, and content localization feature heavily.
Smallpdf offers free tools for editing and converting PDF files. They have an estimated annual revenue of $17,500,000.
Smallpdf
2023
2024
Absolute change
Percent change
Organic traffic
41,145,810
55,455,141
14,309,331
34.78%
Organic pages
3,367
3,506
139
4.13%
Organic keywords
466,048
416,115
-49,933
-10.71%
Keywords in top 3
54,933
69,359
14,426
26.26%
Smallpdf’s traffic growth comes entirely from—you guessed it—free PDF tools. Conversion tools (converting from PDF to Word Doc, from JPG to PDF, and so on) drive the majority of the site’s traffic:
These free tools target extremely high volume keywords, like pdf to word with an estimated 3.9M searches in Indonesia alone. Here’s the actual page that ranks so well:
These tools have also been localized to different languages, with the Spanish-, Indonesian- and Portuguese-targeted subfolders generating a large portion of the website’s traffic growth:
BuiltWith is a tool for discovering the technologies companies use to use to build their websites. BuiltWith has an estimated annual revenue of $31,000,000.
BuiltWith
2023
2024
Absolute change
Percent change
Organic traffic
526,880
3,149,986
2,623,106
497.86%
Organic pages
81,615
93,716
12,101
14.83%
Organic keywords
126,541
111,371
-15,170
-11.99%
Keywords in top 3
4,538
4,307
-231
-5.09%
The biggest single driver of BuiltWith’s growth is the addition of a Korean language subfolder, builtwith.com/ko, housing localized versions of 191 website pages:
Other language subfolders (particularly /de, /es, and /fr) also generate a decent amount of traffic:
Oh hey, that’s us! Ahrefs is a powerful all-in-one SEO toolset, and the source of all the SEO data in this article.
Ahrefs
2023
2024
Absolute change
Percent change
Organic traffic
2,171,168
4,271,413
2,100,245
96.73%
Organic pages
4,522
18,982
14,460
319.77%
Organic keywords
225,855
231,761
5,906
2.61%
Keywords in top 3
14,291
20,618
6,327
44.27%
We don’t need conjecture here. Our free AI writing tools are responsible for a big part of our organic traffic growth:
Our paragraph rewriter (113k visits per month), paraphrasing tool (99k), and instagram caption generator (73k) are particularly popular:
Try them out for yourselves here: https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools.
We also launched a programmatic SEO campaign, using Ahrefs data to rank the world’s most popular websites:
The localized versions of these pages—particularly Swedish and French—account for the majority of the traffic:
Surfshark is a VPN tool with an estimated annual revenue of $20,000,000.
Surfshark
2023
2024
Absolute change
Percent change
Organic traffic
992,020
1,510,739
518,719
52.29%
Organic pages
2,610
3,964
1,354
51.88%
Organic keywords
205,194
248,267
43,073
20.99%
Keywords in top 3
5,359
9,390
4,031
75.22%
One of Surfshark’s fastest-growing pages is a free IP address checking tool:
But interestingly, most of the company’s organic growth has come from branded keywords, like surfshark discount code, surfshark deals, and surfshark login:
This is a good indication that the company has been investing heavily in brand marketing, increasing branded search queries as a byproduct.
Looking at the Paid search reports in Ahrefs, we can see that the company launched a substantial advertising campaign in the last couple of months (we’ve logged 876 separate ads):
Big, expensive brand advertising campaigns are not common for bootstrapped companies.
Although the fundraising data suggests that Surfshark has never raised outside capital, their website shares that “In 2022, Surfshark and Nord Security merged under one holding company to form a cybersecurity powerhouse while still operating independently.”
This suggests that Surfshark may not be bootstrapped in the truest sense (but I’ve left it in because it showcases an interesting—and expensive—way to grow organic traffic).
IPQS is a fraud, bot detection, and IP validation tool with an estimated annual revenue of $32,000,000.
IPQS
2023
2024
Absolute change
Percent change
Organic traffic
1,194,124
1,660,482
466,358
39.05%
Organic pages
22,378
31,350
8,972
40.09%
Organic keywords
72,181
75,390
3,209
4.45%
Keywords in top 3
5,092
7,065
1,973
38.75%
All of IPQS’ traffic growth (and in fact, 57% of their total estimated organic traffic) comes from a single page, a free tool for looking up phone numbers:
This page manages to rank in first place for keywords like phone number lookup (353K monthly searches in the US), phone lookup (48K), and check this phone (35K):
This, despite just 84 referring domains and a design that probably looked good circa 2005:
We’ll share more of these analyses in the coming weeks. Want us to include your company in the next round? Just fill out this short Google Form.
