The starting point
The client is a consent management platform: software that helps websites and apps collect, store, and prove user consent for cookies and tracking, in line with privacy law.
The main site was already well established in other languages. Spanish was a different story. At the start of 2024 the Spanish section got almost no organic traffic, and organic trials from Spain were close to zero.
The goal was to turn Spanish search into a real acquisition channel, measured in trials and demo requests, not traffic.
What we did
1. Research the Spanish market, not translate the English one
Spanish buyers don’t search the way English buyers do, and the law they care about is different. So the keyword research started from scratch in Spanish:
- Local vocabulary. The terms Spanish companies actually use for cookie banners, cookie policies, and consent, rather than literal translations of the English keywords.
- Local regulation. In Spain, searches revolve around the GDPR (RGPD in Spanish), the Spanish cookie rules, and what the Spanish data protection authority expects. Content had to answer those questions specifically.
- Search intent by stage. Every keyword got a stage: learning about an obligation, evaluating how to comply, or comparing tools. That decided which page type it needed.
2. Build content in clusters
Instead of publishing one-off articles, the plan was organized in topic clusters. Every new piece had a clear job: deepen a cluster, close a gap in search intent, or move a buyer one step closer to a decision.
- Bottom-of-funnel first. The priority was evaluation-stage content: what a company needs to comply, how rollout works, the trade-offs between options, and the risks of getting it wrong. That’s what people read right before they start a trial.
- Finish a cluster before starting the next. Once a cluster’s main pages were live, we closed the remaining intent gaps, tightened internal links, and audited for cannibalization, mismatched pages, and broken paths. Only then did we move on.
3. Localize with experts, not just translators
In a compliance-heavy category, a wrong detail costs trust. So content went through subject matter experts and a compliance review before it was published, followed by a quality check.
Brand messaging, how the product differs from competitors, and market information were kept in one shared place. That way every writer and reviewer worked from the same facts, and quality didn’t depend on one person.
4. Make existing pages work harder
Pages that already had impressions got regular refreshes:
- Tighter answers to the question the page targets, near the top.
- Clearer next steps, with internal links to pricing and the free trial.
- Summaries and snippet-ready formatting, like short TL;DRs and clean lists, so the pages could win featured snippets and be picked up by AI answers.
5. Earn links from Spanish sites
A new language section starts with little authority of its own. Steady, monthly link building from relevant Spanish sites gave the new pages the strength to compete with established local players.
6. Report on pipeline, not traffic
Reporting tracked non-branded clicks alongside the numbers that matter to the business: trials and demo requests from non-branded organic search. Rankings and traffic were useful to diagnose problems, but they weren’t the goal.
Results
Comparing 2025 with 2024 for the Spanish section:
- Non-branded clicks were 4.1× higher. Per quarter, they went to 27× the level of the first quarter of 2024.
- Trials and demos from non-branded search were 8.6× higher. The last quarter of 2025 was the best yet, at 15.8× the third quarter of 2024, the first quarter with meaningful trial numbers.
- The trial rate tripled. The share of non-branded clicks that turned into a trial or demo grew 3.2× between Q3 2024 and Q4 2025, and was about twice as high across 2025 as across 2024.
Growth wasn’t a straight line. Clicks and trials both dipped in the middle of 2025. By the end of the year clicks were still below their early-2025 peak, but trials reached their best quarter yet, because a much bigger share of visitors took the next step. That’s the bottom-of-funnel focus paying off.
What made the difference
- Researching Spain as its own market, not translating English keywords.
- Bottom-of-funnel content first, so new traffic was close to a buying decision.
- Expert and compliance review on every piece, which matters in a category built on trust.
- Measuring trials and demos, not just clicks, so the work kept moving toward pipeline.