Our Work Criterion

Growing Criterion's Organic Traffic 30×, and Building Towards an Acquisition

Criterion trusted us to run organic growth as a true extension of their team: content production, SEO, AI visibility, web design, Webflow development, and link building. Over a few years, organic traffic climbed from under 1,000 to nearly 30,000 monthly visits. Then Criterion was acquired by Sage.

Client
Criterion HCM
Industry
HR Tech, SaaS
Based In
Norwalk, CT
Engagement
2022–2025
Services
SEO, AI Visibility, Web Design,
Webflow Dev, Growth Strategy
~30×
Organic traffic growth over the engagement
<1K→30K
Monthly organic visits, start to peak
~3 yrs
Leading organic growth & design
Acquired
by Sage (FTSE 100, Oct 2025)

A Capable Challenger Brand, Punching Below Its Weight Online.

Criterion is a human capital management platform: providing payroll, HR, recruiting, and talent engagement for SMBs and enterprise firms alike. As a challenger to giants like Workday, UKG, ADP, and Paycom, the product held its own. Its organic presence didn't. The site pulled fewer than 1,000 organic visits a month, and a dated visual identity made the platform look less sophisticated than the brands it was constantly compared against.

We'd first worked with Criterion briefly through a partner agency in 2020–2021 on a bare-bones content and link-building scope. Then, in August 2022, their CEO and co-founder reached out directly. He'd reviewed the site's traffic, connected the dots to the work we'd done, and asked us to take the whole thing on.

LinkedIn message Aug 18, 2022
LinkedIn message from Sunil Reddy: 'Hope you are doing well! I reviewed our site visits and we saw nice organic results when you were developing content/SEO. We are looking only for content and organic growth. Can we engage with your company Conversion Media?'

We re-engaged in the fall of 2022, this time owning everything organic: content production, link and citation building, technical SEO, sales enablement assets, plus web design and Webflow development for a phased, site-wide brand refresh.

I reviewed our site visits and we saw nice organic results when you were developing content/SEO. We are looking only for content and organic growth. Can we engage with your company Conversion Media?
Sunil Reddy
CEO & Co-Founder, Criterion HCM · via LinkedIn, Aug 2022

Every Campaign Starts With Strategy.

Before we wrote a word or built a link, we needed to map the opportunities and develop a strategy. This involved a full technical SEO audit with itemized fixes, deep competitor-based keyword research, a complete editorial calendar, and a link building strategy targeting the niche-relevant authority that moves rankings in a crowded HCM category.

Phase 01

Technical SEO Audit

A full technical audit of the existing site with itemized, prioritized recommendations. The cleanup that lets everything else rank.

  • Crawl analysis
  • Site architecture
  • Indexation
  • Itemized fixes
Phase 02

Keyword & Competitor Research

Comprehensive, competitor-based keyword research to find the terms Criterion could realistically win against larger competitors like UKG, Workday, and Paycom.

  • Competitor gaps
  • Intent mapping
  • Topic clusters
Phase 03

Editorial Calendar

A full editorial calendar sequencing the content assets (landing pages, blog posts, competitor comparisons, whitepapers) into a publishing cadence.

  • Content roadmap
  • Briefs
  • Cadence
Phase 04

Link & Citation Strategy

A link building plan to earn niche-relevant backlinks and citations that drove real authority behind every new asset we shipped.

  • Authority targets
  • Digital PR
  • Citations

From Under 1,000 Visits a Month to Nearly 30,000.

With the strategy set, we built the growth engine: cleaning up technical SEO, building niche-relevant backlinks, and producing a high volume of rigorously researched and edited content. The result was a compounding climb: from roughly 816 average weekly organic visits in September 2022 to nearly 30,000 a month by early 2025.

Organic Traffic Average organic traffic, Sep 2022 → Mar 2025
~30× growth
Ahrefs organic traffic chart for Criterion, climbing from ~816 average weekly visits in September 2022 to roughly 30,000 monthly visits by March 2025.
Avg. organic traffic Ahrefs, Sep 2022–Mar 2025

The Content & Authority Engine

Technical cleanup, niche-relevant link and citation building, and a steady stream of blog posts, landing pages, head-to-head comparisons, whitepapers, and sales assets. Each one researched, edited, and built to rank.

Showing Up in AI Search

The same depth of content and link authority that ranked in Google made Criterion citable in AI search. The team began to see more deals originating from popular LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude, directly attributable to the foundation we built.

A sample of what we produced
Industry Landing Pages Construction, Nonprofits, etc. Solutions / Product Pages HR, Payroll, Talent Partner Hub & Integration Pages Per-partner Head-to-Head Comparison Pages UKG & more
Blog Posts & Whitepapers Ranked organically PDF Customer Case Studies + PDFs Interview-led PDF Sales Enablement Assets Decks & collateral PDF
We just closed a nice size deal and the lead came in from ChatGPT. The customer asked ChatGPT to suggest an HRIS solution that works with Procore and their issues and it suggested Criterion. I am sure the content is what drove it. Thank you!
Sunil Reddy
Executive Director, Sage HCM (formerly CEO & Co-Founder, Criterion HCM)

A Phased Brand Refresh, Designed and Built in Webflow.

Content can't carry a dated brand. Criterion's identity still looked a generation behind UKG, Paylocity, and Paycom, so we led web design for every new page and served as their Webflow development team to build it. Over a couple of years we leveled up the entire site, one page layout at a time, until the brand finally matched the product.

criterionhcm.com/solutions/construction-engineering
Criterion construction industry landing page.
Criterion HR solutions product page
Solutions Page (HR) /solutions
Criterion partner hub showcasing integration and implementation partners
Partner Hub /partners
Criterion + Acumatica integration partner page
Integration (Acumatica)
Criterion BAPKO customer case study page
Case Study (BAPKO)
Criterion vs. UKG head-to-head comparison page
Comparison (vs. UKG)
Page types we designed & built in Webflow
Industry Landing Pages Construction, Nonprofits, etc. Solutions / Product Pages HR, Payroll & Talent Engagement Partner Hub with individual pages for each integration
Integration Detail Pages Procore, Quickbooks & More Competitor Comparison Pages vs. UKG, Paycom & More Customer Case Studies with PDFs for each

From 30× Growth to an Acquisition by Sage.

By the time organic traffic reached ~30,000 monthly visits, Criterion had our team pivot to focus on producing more sales enablement assets to convert the demand. The brand had come a long way too. The dated identity was gone, replaced by a site that finally looked the part next to the enterprise platforms it competed with.

All of it made Criterion an attractive acquisition target. On October 6, 2025, they were acquired by Sage (a FTSE 100 multinational enterprise software company) and rebranded as Sage HCM. We stayed involved to re-skin the entire website in the Sage brand and re-brand key assets ahead of the migration to hcm.sage.com.

Acquired · Oct 6, 2025
Criterion Sage HCM

Criterion is now Sage HCM.

We re-skinned the full site in the Sage brand and re-branded key assets before the move to hcm.sage.com.

Read the acquisition announcement

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