👋 Hey, I'm Shehu AbdulGaniy. Welcome to SaaS SEO Insights, where every week I dive deep into SEO and AEO strategies that B2B SaaS startups are using to drive signups from organic and AI search, so you can steal what works and skip what doesn't.

875,742.

That's how many organic visitors Smartsheet gets from Google every single month in the US alone. Two months ago, that number was over 1 million.

But the traffic decline isn't the most interesting part of this story. A company acquired for $8.4 billion, with 85%+ Fortune 500 penetration, built one of the strongest SEO engines in B2B SaaS. And they're nearly invisible in AI search.

Before we continue, here's a message from this week's sponsor.

This newsletter is brought to you by Your Content Mart.

Your buyers are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity questions like "best [category] tool for [use case]" and "what are the best alternatives to [x] for [y]". 

These are money prompts, the AI equivalent of high-intent keywords.

Most B2B SaaS companies have no idea if they show up in those results. Their competitors might.

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Now, back to the email.

Smartsheet is the king of templates.

When I analyzed their top 500 organic pages, 336 were template pages. One can conclude that templates are the content strategy.

Their top template page alone (Excel Project Plan Templates) was pulling in 187,000 monthly visitors as recently as January 2026. 

A single page generating more traffic than most SaaS company blogs do in total.

Across the full library, Smartsheet has over 2,000 template pages indexed. 104 of those pages each drive at least 1,000 organic visitors per month, accounting for over 290,000 monthly visits combined.

These templates work because Smartsheet nails three things:

1. They match search intent perfectly. When someone searches "weekly project planner template," they want a downloadable file. Smartsheet puts the template front and center. The download is the page.

2. Zero friction. Every template is available in Excel, Word, Google Sheets, and Google Docs. No signup. No email required. Free, instant, in the format you already use.

3. Massive keyword coverage. They don't just cover project management. They have templates for budgets, HR, shift schedules, expense reports, and more. This pulls in people who might never search for "project management software" but absolutely need a shift schedule template.

The result? 

Among Smartsheet's top 1,000 keywords by traffic, 53.6% of the traffic is non-branded. Over 330,000 people who have never heard of Smartsheet discover the company from Google every single month.

Here's the part most people miss about Smartsheet's SEO dominance.

Smartsheet has been live since 2005. That's 20 years of accumulated trust in Google's systems. But the real advantage isn't age. It's that enterprises like Expedia, UC Berkeley, and the state of Iowa link to Smartsheet, not because someone did outreach, but because Smartsheet forms are embedded in their actual workflows. 

Government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and universities all link to Smartsheet as part of their daily operations. They even have 53 backlinks from Wikipedia.

These aren't content marketing backlinks. They're product adoption backlinks. And they create a trust foundation that benefits every page on the domain, including those 2,000+ template pages.

That's the real flywheel. Enterprise adoption builds domain trust. Domain trust makes template pages rank. Template pages drive traffic and brand awareness. Brand awareness drives more enterprise adoption.

Smartsheet's organic traffic peaked at 1,280,883 in September 2024. It held above 1 million through January 2026. Then it dropped. Hard.

By March 2026, they were down to 875,742. A 22% decline in two months.

Their top-ranking template page went from 186,770 monthly visitors in February to 57,050 in March. A 70% drop in one month.

Meanwhile, competitors are moving in the opposite direction. Notion climbed to 1.34 million monthly organic visitors. Asana crossed 1.04 million. Both have overtaken Smartsheet.

And Smartsheet has largely abandoned paid search too. Paid traffic dropped from over 520,000 monthly visits in mid-2023 to just 18,274 in March 2026. A 96% decline. Organic is carrying nearly the entire weight of search acquisition, and that organic engine is losing altitude with no paid safety net.

Smartsheet's template strategy captures someone who already knows they need a "project plan template." But the buyer who asks ChatGPT, "What project management tool should I use for my enterprise team?" never sees Smartsheet's templates. They see whatever AI recommends.

I tested Smartsheet's visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. On every platform, Smartsheet was either buried, absent, or sidelined.

ChatGPT put ClickUp, Asana, Monday, Jira, and Wrike in its "Top Picks" tier. Smartsheet was relegated to "Other Common Choices." The company with the most organic traffic in the space couldn't crack ChatGPT's top 5.

Google AI Overviews didn't mention Smartsheet at all in the summary paragraph. When it appeared further down, it was labeled "Best for Spreadsheet Users." Not "Best for Enterprise." A company with $1 billion in ARR and 85% Fortune 500 penetration, reduced to a niche label.

Perplexity, on a query about enterprise project management (Smartsheet's sweet spot), mentioned Smartsheet but never singled it out as a top choice. The sources it cited? Wrike, Celoxis, and Microsoft. Not Smartsheet.

And when I checked Smartsheet's keyword data, they rank for ZERO "vs." comparison keywords and ZERO "alternative" keywords. 

When someone searches "Smartsheet vs Monday. com" or "Asana alternatives," Smartsheet has no content shaping that conversation. Third-party sites are writing the narrative, and the narrative they've written positions Smartsheet as the "harder to use" option with a "steeper learning curve."

AI platforms consistently favor educational, evaluative, and comparison content they can cite and reference. Templates don't give AI anything to recommend.

Smartsheet's template funnel clearly works. But if a company with $8.4 billion in enterprise value, 20 years of domain trust, and 2,000+ ranking pages can be nearly invisible in AI search, what does that say about your own AI visibility?

According to 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 94% of B2B buyers now use LLMs during their buying process. Your potential customers are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini for software recommendations right now. The question is: are you showing up in those answers?

Winning on Google and winning in AI search are becoming two different games. You need to play both. Here's what I'd focus on:

1. Close the comparison and alternative keyword gaps. Build "vs." pages and "[Competitor] alternatives" pages.

These are the highest commercial-intent keywords in B2B SaaS, and they give AI platforms structured, citable content to reference when buyers ask for recommendations.

2. Dominate software listicle keywords for your category. Go after use-case-specific listicles ("Best PM software for construction teams," "Best workflow tools for marketing ops"). These are the queries AI platforms pull from when building answers.

3. Earn citations where AI actually looks. AI platforms consistently cite third-party review sites, niche publications, Reddit, and Quora over first-party content. Your off-site presence matters as much as your on-site content for AI visibility.

I broke down all three opportunities with specific keyword data, traffic value estimates, and step-by-step execution plans in the full Smartsheet teardown on the Your Content Mart blog.

👉 [Read the full Smartsheet SEO teardown here]

There's a LOT more data and strategy in there that I couldn't fit into this email.

Smartsheet built one of the strongest SEO engines in B2B SaaS with a simple, brilliant strategy: 2,000+ free templates driving over 1 million monthly visitors at peak. But their organic traffic is declining, competitors are overtaking them, and they're nearly invisible in AI-powered search where buyers increasingly discover and evaluate software.

The lesson for every B2B SaaS company: winning on Google is no longer enough. If AI tools aren't recommending you, you're invisible to a growing segment of buyers who will never see your website.

Hope you found this helpful and valuable.

Hope you found this helpful.

What are your key takeaways from this teardown?

Let me know by replying to this email.

To your startup success,

Shehu AbdulGaniy
Founder, Your Content Mart

P.S. Know a SaaS Founder or Marketer who will find this teardown valuable. Send this link to them, so they can check it out.