How an enterprise financial-services website transformed organic visibility, indexing performance, and AI discoverability
- 128K
ACTIVE USERS
+204.1% - 29,728
GOOGLE ORGANIC USERS
+131.9% - 36,533
ORGANIC CAMPAIGN USERS
+126.0% - 94/100
CHATGPT KNOWLEDGE SCORE
WAIKAY
Executive Summary
SEI partnered with GreenBanana SEO to improve the discoverability of a large, complex, multi-region enterprise website across traditional search engines and emerging AI answer platforms. The engagement combined content creation, PR-driven authority building, display-supported audience generation, AEO/GEO writing, structured data, internal linking, and hands-on technical collaboration with SEI’s internal Drupal development team.
The result was not a single-channel lift. It was a broad improvement in organic acquisition, engaged traffic, indexability, technical health, and the degree to which leading AI systems accurately understand and cite SEI. The success also generated internal confidence: based on the results and stakeholder feedback, additional SEI divisions engaged GreenBanana for expanded work.
- +131.9%
GOOGLE ORGANIC USERS
29,728 vs. 12,818 - +136.3%
GOOGLE ORGANIC NEW USERS
28,369 vs. 12,006 - +197.5%
ORGANIC ENGAGED SESSIONS
51,486 vs. 17,306 - +77.4%
ORGANIC KEY EVENTS
1,955 vs. 1,102
The central lesson
Enterprise SEO and AEO succeed when content, crawlability, site architecture, authority, and machine-readable clarity are treated as one operating system—not as separate tactics
At a Glance
| Client | SEI (seic.com), a global financial-services and technology company |
|---|---|
| Primary challenge | Large multi-region Drupal ecosystem, indexing exclusions, fragmented internal linking, duplicate/canonical complexity, and rapidly changing AI-discovery requirements |
| GreenBanana scope | SEO strategy, AEO/GEO content, technical guidance, content prioritization, internal linking, schema, digital PR/link building, and implementation support |
| Measurement | GA4, Google Search Console/Core Web Vitals, Semrush, Ahrefs, and WAIKAY |
| Outcome | Substantial year-over-year organic growth, strong technical health, hundreds of AI-cited pages, and high cross-model knowledge accuracy |
The Challenge: Make a Complex Enterprise Site Searchable, Indexable, and AI-Readable
SEI’s website was not suffering from one isolated SEO problem. Its scale, regional structure, content inventory, governance model, and Drupal implementation created a network of interdependent issues. GreenBanana’s role was to help SEI make better decisions at page, template, business-unit, and enterprise levels—while working directly with internal developers and stakeholders.
- Indexing complexity: large sets of URLs were crawled but not indexed, unknown to Google, duplicated, or competing through unclear canonical signals.
- Enterprise content sprawl: thousands of pages, PDFs, newsroom items, insight articles, biographies, regional content, and utility pages required triage rather than blanket deletion or rewriting.
- Internal-link fragmentation: strategically important pages needed stronger contextual links and clearer topic-hub relationships.
- Multi-region governance: cloned regional Drupal nodes required deliberate canonical, hreflang, localization, and quality-assurance rules.
- AI-search transition: SEI needed content that could be extracted, understood, and cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews, and AI Mode—not merely ranked as a blue link.
Evidence of the Operational Depth
The work products show an enterprise operating model rather than a lightweight audit:
- 242-URL indexation value matrix separating high-value pages from low-risk cleanup candidates; 4 URLs carried direct backlink signals and required preservation or careful redirection.
- 250 prioritized internal-link recommendations: 82 Tier 1, 133 Tier 2, and 35 Tier 3 opportunities, plus a 497-item qualified backlog.
- Wave-based page prioritization and enterprise content-decision frameworks covering hundreds of near-term pages and a filtered backlog exceeding 2,400 records.
- A documented regional-cloning standard covering canonicals, reciprocal hreflang, valid locale codes, indexation classifications, localized value, and pre/post-launch QA.
- A practical SEO+AEO publishing standard requiring answer-first openings, substantive H2/H3 structure, natural keyword variation, FAQs, internal linking, and applicable schema.
Risk-managed SEO
The team did not treat every “not indexed” URL as equally valuable. It combined indexation status with backlinks, content type, business ownership, compliance needs, and search intent to decide what to preserve, improve, redirect, consolidate, or retire.
The Integrated Strategy
1. Technical SEO and Indexation Recovery
GreenBanana worked alongside SEI’s internal web-development team to diagnose crawl and indexation barriers, clarify canonical behavior, improve discoverability, and turn large URL inventories into prioritized implementation queues.
2. Content Engineered for SEO, AEO, and GEO
Content was structured for both human readers and machine extraction: direct answers near headings, comprehensive topical coverage, FAQs, clear entity naming, natural keyword variations, and schema where applicable.
3. Site Architecture and Internal Linking
A prioritized interlinking model connected relevant pages, reinforced topic hubs, reduced orphaning, and moved valuable content closer to users and crawlers.
4. Digital PR and Authority Building
PR link building strengthened external validation and authority. Backlink signals were incorporated into indexation and content-retirement decisions so valuable equity was not accidentally discarded.
5. Multi-Region Governance
GreenBanana created implementation rules for regional duplication, canonicals, hreflang, locale targeting, localized content, and Drupal QA—helping SEI scale regional content without creating avoidable search ambiguity.
6. Multi-Source AI Visibility Measurement
Because no accepted gold standard exists for AI-search reporting, GreenBanana triangulated Ahrefs, Semrush, and WAIKAY rather than presenting a single vendor’s metric as definitive.
Results: Organic Growth at Enterprise Scale
- 29,728
GOOGLE ORGANIC USERS
+131.92% YoY - 28,369
GOOGLE ORGANIC NEW USERS
+136.29% YoY - 7,581
RETURNING USERS
+111.76% YoY - 1,187
KEY EVENTS
+107.16% YoY
Google organic growth was not limited to traffic volume. Events attributed to Google organic increased 166.74%, and engaged sessions per active user rose 42.03%. Average engagement time declined, which should be monitored and segmented by page type; however, the simultaneous growth in engaged sessions and key events indicates that the campaign produced substantially more meaningful activity overall.
Bing Organic Reinforced the Pattern
Bing organic users increased 138.44%, new users increased 146.93%, returning users increased 114.88%, event volume rose 191.73%, and key events increased approximately 99.21%. The cross-engine consistency reduces the likelihood that the result was caused by a single Google-specific anomaly.
Results: Technical Health Supported the Growth
- 883
GOOD MOBILE URLS
0 poor - 892
GOOD DESKTOP URLS
0 poor - 9
MOBILE URLS NEED IMPROVEMENT
~1% of measured URLs - 0
DESKTOP URLS NEED IMPROVEMENT
at capture
The Core Web Vitals snapshot shows that nearly the entire measured URL set qualified as “good” on both mobile and desktop. This matters because the SEO/AEO program was not being asked to overcome a broadly degraded technical experience. Content and authority gains were supported by a stable performance foundation.
Indexation Became a Managed Business Process
GreenBanana converted indexation exclusions into decision-ready inventories. In the corrected 242-URL base, 238 URLs were classified as low SEO risk while 4 carried direct backlink signals and were flagged as high SEO value. The matrix categorized 67 PDFs, 62 insight/commentary pages, 51 newsroom releases, 22 leadership pages, and other business, regional, conversion, and corporate content types. This made it possible to preserve valuable equity while accelerating cleanup decisions elsewhere.
Why this matters
Large enterprises rarely win by trying to “force index” every URL. They win by making deliberate choices about which pages deserve independent visibility, which should consolidate, and which should be retired without destroying authority or user value.
Results: SEI Became More Visible and Better Understood by AI Systems
- 343
AI OVERVIEW APPEARANCES
Ahrefs, +175 - 43
CHATGPT APPEARANCES
Ahrefs, +32 - 399
CHATGPT-CITED PAGES
Semrush dataset - 94/100
CHATGPT KNOWLEDGE SCORE
WAIKAY
Cross-Model Knowledge Accuracy
WAIKAY’s site-to-model overlap testing showed that major AI systems had a strong, consistent understanding of SEI’s identity, services, audiences, and business model. Scores ranged from 88 to 94 across the tested systems.
- 94
CHATGPT
knowledge score - 93
GEMINI GROUNDED
knowledge score - 91
GEMINI
knowledge score - 88
CLAUDE
knowledge score
These scores do not prove that every commercial query will surface SEI, nor are they directly interchangeable with rankings or conversions. They do show that the company’s owned content and public signals provide AI systems with a coherent, accurate representation of the organization—a prerequisite for reliable citation and recommendation.
Business Impact Beyond the Dashboard
1. Organic acquisition more than doubled
The campaign generated major year-over-year gains in users, new users, sessions, engaged sessions, events, and key events. This is the clearest evidence that technical and content improvements translated into measurable audience growth.
2. SEI built an enterprise search operating model
The engagement produced reusable standards, prioritization systems, QA controls, and ownership frameworks. Those systems can be applied across divisions, regions, page templates, and future site releases.
3. AI visibility became measurable—not anecdotal
SEI can now see its footprint across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude using multiple independent measurement systems. This creates a baseline for future optimization and guards against overreliance on any single vendor methodology.
4. Internal confidence expanded the relationship
The strongest proof of success was organizational: positive results and feedback led additional SEI divisions to engage GreenBanana. The campaign moved from a marketing initiative toward a broader enterprise capability.
What GreenBanana delivered
Not simply more traffic: a repeatable framework for deciding what to publish, what to fix, how to connect it, how to localize it, how to mark it up, and how to measure whether both search engines and AI systems understand it.
Representative Deliverables
- AEO/GEO content and service-page optimization
- SEO+AEO editorial standards and answer-first writing guidance
- Schema recommendations and machine-readable content structure
- 242-URL indexation value prioritization matrix
- 250-item internal-link implementation plan plus qualified backlog
- Enterprise and business-unit content decision queues
- Regional cloning, canonical, and hreflang operating standard
- Direct implementation collaboration with SEI’s Drupal development team
- PR link building and authority preservation recommendations
- Multi-platform AI visibility reporting and knowledge-score baselines
Measurement Notes and Responsible Interpretation
This case study uses the screenshots and work products supplied for the engagement. Unless noted otherwise, GA4 comparisons cover May 7-August 4, 2026 versus May 7-August 4, 2025.
Why three AI reporting systems were used
AI visibility measurement is still an emerging discipline. Query sets, retrieval methods, location, personalization, model versions, citation definitions, and sampling frequency vary by vendor. GreenBanana therefore used Ahrefs, Semrush, and WAIKAY to triangulate performance. The platforms should be read as complementary indicators, not as three perfectly comparable scorecards.
Attribution limitations
The engagement combined content, technical changes, PR authority, internal linking, schema, display-supported traffic, and developer collaboration. The supplied reporting does not isolate the incremental contribution of each tactic.
- Year-over-year growth can also be affected by brand demand, market conditions, campaigns, site releases, analytics configuration, and changes in user behavior.
- Average engagement time declined in several organic-source comparisons even while engaged sessions, events, and key events increased. Page-level and audience-level analysis should continue.
- AI knowledge scores measure overlap and understanding; they are not equivalent to revenue, share of voice for every query, or guaranteed inclusion in an AI answer.
Conclusion
SEI’s results demonstrate what modern enterprise search optimization looks like in practice. Traditional SEO, technical governance, content strategy, structured data, authority building, and AI answer optimization were managed as a single system. That system produced substantial organic growth, excellent technical health, hundreds of AI citations, and a coherent representation of SEI across leading models.
Source Materials Reviewed
- GA4 Reports Snapshot and acquisition comparisons supplied August 5, 2026.
- Google Search Console Core Web Vitals screenshot supplied August 5, 2026.
- Ahrefs AI Responses overview supplied August 5, 2026.
- Semrush AI Visibility and Distribution by LLM screenshots supplied August 5, 2026.
- WAIKAY model-knowledge reports for ChatGPT, Gemini, Gemini-grounded, and Claude supplied August 5, 2026.
- SEIC CNI SEO Value Prioritization – Corrected 242-URL Base.
- SEI Enterprise Interlinking Prioritization workbook.
- SEIC Wave 1 – 250 Priority Pages workbook.
- SEIC Content Decisions Enterprise workbook.
- SEO + AEO Blog Post Cheat Sheet, July 2026.
- Regional Page Cloning and Google Search best-practice brief, July 23, 2026.
- Custody for Financial Advisors optimized page example.
