How Novalab Helped a Prop Trading Firm Turn Organic Search Into a Real Challenge Starts
Client: PropFunding
Industry: Fintech / Proprietary Trading
Website: propfunding.com
Audience: Traders looking for funded accounts with no upfront payment
Goal:
Increase qualified organic visibility and turn search demand into challenge starts.
The objective was not only to improve rankings but to attract traders with clear commercial intent and guide them toward starting a funded challenge. This required aligning search visibility with user expectations, improving how the offer is presented, and reducing friction across key landing pages.
For PropFunding, organic growth needed to support real business outcomes by bringing in users who are ready to take action. This meant focusing on traffic quality, not just volume, and building a stronger connection between search demand and conversions.
The Situation
PropFunding had a strong offer. Traders could start the evaluation for free and only pay after passing. Despite this, the brand was rarely visible when traders searched for prop firms or funded accounts.
Competitors with weaker offers were capturing attention simply because they appeared first.
The Problems We Found
Before working with Novalab, growth was limited by:
Low visibility for high-intent searches. Commercial and trust pages are not earning steady discovery. Content that did not fully support trader decision-making. Weak internal linking that left key pages isolated. Technical inconsistencies affecting crawl clarity. A weak backlink profile in a competitive finance category.
More content alone would not solve this. The site needed structure, clarity, and stronger trust signals.
Our Approach
We treated SEO as a growth system with one clear focus: make PropFunding easy to find, easy to trust, and easy to act on.
1. Fixing the Technical Foundation
We started with the basics that allow SEO to work properly.
Aligned robots and sitemap signals. Enforced a single HTTPS version. Standardize www and non-www usage. Resolved crawl errors and reduced wasted crawl activity. Improved page loading, with a focus on mobile users. Strengthened canonical signals and improved linking between trust pages.
What changed: Search engines could crawl the site cleanly and understand its structure without mixed signals.
2. Making Commercial Pages Clear and Useful
With the foundation stable, we focused on pages that drive sign-ups.
Reworked the homepage and funding program pages for clarity. Improved headings and structure so traders could understand the offer quickly. Updated titles and descriptions to improve relevance and remove duplication.
The goal was clarity, not keyword stuffing. This improvement helped users understand the offer faster and navigate the site with less friction. Commercial pages became more effective at capturing demand from users who were already comparing prop firms.
3. Connecting the Site With an Authority Guide
Important pages existed, but they were not connected. To fix this, we built a single evergreen guide that explains the full PropFunding model in one place.
The guide covers:
How the free evaluation and activation model works. Challenge steps and rules. Pricing, payouts, and platform stats. Leaderboard performance and community context. Privacy, security, and compliance basics. Clear next steps to start a challenge.
The guide links directly to the homepage, rules, stats, leaderboard, and privacy pages, removing isolation across the site.
What changed:
Trust content began supporting conversions instead of sitting on its own.
4. Consolidating Subdomains
Authority was being split across subdomains.
Migrated blog.propfunding.com to propfunding.com/blog. Recommended moving documentation under the main domain.
What changed:
All content contributed to the strength of one domain, improving crawl clarity and ranking potential.
5. Authority Growth and Backlink Progress
Once the site structure and content were solid, we focused on rebuilding authority. Instead of chasing volume, we focused on relevant finance and trading placements and removed low-trust signals.
| Metric | Before | After |
| Domain Rating | 0.2 | 34 (+25) |
| URL Rating | 0 | 4.5 |
| Backlinks | 45 | 82 (+37) |
| Referring Domains | 44 | 81 (+18) |
What changed:
The backlink strategy focused on relevance and trust rather than volume alone. By improving the overall quality of referring domains and reducing noise in the link profile, the site gained stronger credibility, which supported more stable rankings and better performance across competitive search terms.
Backlink profile improvement
Before SEO work
- Domain Rating: 0.2
- URL Rating: 0
- Backlinks: 45
- Referring domains: 44
After implementation
- Domain Rating: 34 (+25)
- URL Rating: 4.5 (4.5)
- Backlinks: 82 (+37)
- Referring domains: 81 (+18)
What changed:
The backlink strategy focused on relevance and trust rather than volume alone. In a finance-related niche, authority signals need to be clean, consistent, and contextually aligned to have a meaningful impact.
By improving the overall quality of referring domains and reducing noise in the link profile, the site gained stronger credibility, which supported more stable rankings and better performance across competitive search terms.
SEO Growth & Technical Performance
Through a focused SEO and technical optimization strategy, PropFunding achieved a strong overall website health score of 100, alongside measurable authority growth reflected in a Domain Rating increase to 34 and a rise in referring domains to 81. The site maintained clean technical performance with zero broken pages, minimal redirects, and controlled blocked resources, ensuring efficient crawlability across 185 indexed URLs.
6. Tracking What Actually Matters
We expanded tracking to focus on outcomes rather than assumptions.
Monitored rankings, crawl health, and user paths. Watched how visibility expanded across new queries. Connected SEO work to challenge starts and lead quality.
Results Snapshot
Organic Visibility — Last 3 Months
3.43K impressions. 276 clicks. 8% CTR. Average position: 30.9.
Organic Visibility — Last 28 Days
1.77K impressions. 52 clicks. Average position in the low 30s.
The increase in impressions shows the site started appearing across a broader range of relevant search queries, while the growth in clicks confirms that visibility translated into actual user engagement. Technical improvements, content alignment, and internal linking worked together to strengthen the site’s presence in search results.
High-intent performance
44 clicks from 108 impressions. 40.7% CTR. Average position: 3.4.
When PropFunding ranks near the top, traders click and start challenges. This type of performance highlights the importance of targeting decision-stage queries where users are ready to take action. Ranking for high-intent keywords creates a stronger commercial impact compared to broader informational traffic.
By focusing on these queries, the campaign attracted more qualified users, improved conversion potential, and supported consistent growth in leads from organic search.
Expanding Visibility Into AI and LLM Search
Novalab helped PropFunding extend its presence beyond traditional search rankings by optimizing the website for discovery within large language models and AI-driven answer engines, combining structured technical SEO, clear entity positioning, and intent-focused content architecture to ensure the brand could surface directly in AI responses.
This work produced measurable citation signals in Microsoft Bing’s AI Performance reporting, with consistent AI citations and cited-page activity confirming real recognition inside AI ecosystems rather than visibility limited only to classic search results.
As PropFunding appeared more frequently across AI discovery layers, the traffic profile shifted toward higher-intent users already evaluating funded trading solutions, improving engagement quality, strengthening trust, and supporting more efficient conversion behavior.
Client Feedback
“Novalab didn’t just fix our SEO. They changed how we bring in traders. The technical cleanup alone shifted our direction, and watching visibility and signups grow week after week showed the impact clearly. They are now a core part of our growth.”
– PropFunding
Why This Worked
Technical issues were addressed first, creating a clean foundation before any content or authority work began. Content focused on real trader questions, not keyword volume. Internal links connected trust and conversion pages, eliminating the isolation that was limiting page authority distribution. Authority growth stayed relevant and controlled, prioritizing quality over quantity. Measurement kept progress steady and made it possible to catch issues before they compounded.
Final Takeaway
PropFunding grew by fixing the foundation, bringing structure to content, consolidating authority, and guiding traders from search to action.
For fintech platforms, SaaS products, and prop firms competing in trust-heavy markets, this case study shows what happens when SEO supports real business outcomes.
Ready to transform your SEO performance? Contact Novalab SEO Agency today to discuss how we can deliver similar results for your business.
