SUCCESS STORIES

How SEO Scaled QuickBooks Across APAC

QuickBooks is a household name in North America, but in APAC, brand awareness wasn’t keeping pace with its product quality. In many regions, small businesses hadn’t heard of them, let alone considered them as their accounting solution. The challenge was clear: build brand presence through organic visibility, using SEO to break into competitive markets where local players dominated search results.

What followed was a region-wide SEO strategy that elevated QuickBooks from low visibility to a leading option for small businesses and accountants across 12 countries.

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116%

Growth in non-branded traffic YoY (Philippines)

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92%

Increase in organic clicks across the /global/ directory

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450+

Translated pages rolled out across nine languages

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About QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a global accounting platform built for small businesses, sole traders, and accountants. Its core products help users manage invoices, track expenses, run payroll, and stay on top of taxes. In mature markets like the US, it’s a household name. In APAC, that wasn’t the case.

Despite high commercial potential, awareness across the region was low. People weren’t actively searching for the product, and the brand wasn’t showing up where it mattered most. The challenge was to shift from passive presence to active visibility, fast. There was an opportunity to build trust and market share by creating localised digital experiences that aligned with what real users in each country were looking for.

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The Need

QuickBooks needed to bridge the gap between global product strength and local market relevance. The product was robust, but it wasn’t discoverable where it counted. Southeast Asia, in particular, presented a visibility vacuum. Users weren’t finding QuickBooks organically, and many didn’t realise it was an option.

Internally, existing systems weren’t set up for scale. Each region had different levels of SEO maturity, some with no blog infrastructure or localised content at all. There was also a clear need for a cohesive strategy that could adapt to individual markets without having to reinvent the wheel each time. Organic growth depended on solving both visibility and scalability simultaneously.

Key challenges identified:

Fragmented SEO infrastructure across regions
Lack of localised content publishing capabilities
Minimal organic visibility in emerging markets
Limited discoverability among non-brand keywords

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The Plan

To move quickly and scale properly, we focused on a dual strategy: delivering impact quickly with high-intent commercial content, and building sustainable long-term growth through technical SEO infrastructure and content localisation.

We prioritised commercial SEO landing pages - the ones closest to driving signups or conversions. These were rewritten across 12 APAC regions and restructured around actual local search intent. In parallel, we launched new “Find an Accountant” directories, bridging the gap between small business and certified QuickBooks advisors.

To build top and mid-funnel visibility, we rolled out 100 region-specific blog articles, introduced calculators for tax and ROI estimates, and created programmatic competitor comparison pages using live scraped data.

All of this was supported by the expansion of local tax tables, glossary pages, and resource libraries, all translated across nine languages, blending automation with review by native-language editors.

What we focused on:

High-performing commercial landing pages (27+ rebuilt)
100+ new blog/resource articles targeting market-specific search intent
Interactive calculators and tools for local tax scenarios
Localised directories to connect small and medium businesses with trusted advisors
Mult-region rollout across nine languages

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The Execution

Execution began with foundational work. It started with cleaning up URL structures, implementing hreflang tagging, and standardising how content could be published across markets.

In markets with no blog capability, we developed modular templates and content hubs (Quick Resource Centres) that allowed the global team to scale consistently. We used Figma for design sign-off and Airtable to streamline content production and deployment. This new system allowed developers to preview, perform quality assurance, and publish with minimal back-and-forth.

For automated translation, we used tools like n8n, supported by native-speaking editors who ensured everything felt human and relevant. For Digital PR, we launched campaigns in the Philippines, Malaysia, and South Africa - securing regional links that drove authority and engagement.

At the same time, we built out Airtable workflows that bypassed traditional ticketing bottlenecks. This allowed the SEO team to brief and collaborate directly with QuickBooks’ developers, cutting implementation time by more than 50%.

Execution highlights:

Rebuilt technical SEO infrastructure: hreflang, URL paths, crawl logic
Introduced programmatic page templates for scale
Translated 450+ pages using hybrid automation and human review
First-ever DPR campaigns launched in PH, MY & ZA
Custom Airtable workflows enabled rapid deployment

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Overcoming Challenges

The campaign faced a mix of operational and strategic roadblocks that needed to be untangled before progress could happen. Without a content system in place in some markets, publishing was impossible. No access to internal analytics meant we had to build our own data models to estimate performance. In emerging markets, keyword data was unreliable or non-existent, forcing us to rely on behavioural patterns from other regions. To balance quality with speed, we adopted a hybrid translation model.

And internally, the dev ticketing system was a bottleneck, solved only by streamlining workflows directly into Airtable and cutting turnaround time by more than half.

Challenges we navigated:

Lack of publishing infrastructure in several regions
Limited analytics access, so proxy data models were built to guide strategy
Minimal keyword volume in smaller markets, requiring an intent-led approach
Translation balanced speed and quality via hybrid automation and native editors
Development bottlenecks resolved through direct Airtable workflows

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The Results

+63% YoY increase in organic clicks in the Philippines
+116% YoY growth in non-branded traffic in the Philippines
+54% organic click growth in Malaysia
+92% growth in /global/ directory page visibility
146,000+ impressions generated from VAT calculator pages
50,000+ impressions from new /find-an-accountant/directories

Organic visibility lifted across all targeted regions. But more importantly, QuickBooks built the infrastructure and workflows to continue growing in APAC and beyond.

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Conclusion

By combining strong technical foundations, localisation with intent, and fast-moving execution, the brand went from being overlooked in APAC to being discovered, trusted, and clicked. More than just an uplift in traffic, the campaign set a new global benchmark for how QuickBooks could approach digital strategy at scale. It empowered internal teams with repeatable systems, bridged cultural gaps with region-specific content, and opened up new opportunities in emerging markets that had been previously under-served.

The result? Sustainable growth, stronger brand positioning, and a blueprint now informing SEO efforts across other global regions.

283%

Increase in Top 3 keyword rankings

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