Winners & losers of SEO visibility in the payroll industry

The payroll industry is undergoing significant transformation especially due to technology and stricter compliance rules. Many businesses are seeing this as essential to create a positive employee experience, which helps attract top talent to companies. Moreover, the payroll outsourcing market is expected to grow USD 6.15 billion by the end of 2025. We have already explored the SEO visibility for different markets such as Funeral Plans, and Supplements. This time, we will explore payroll companies, and how they have been performing when it comes to SEO visibility.

Winners

Sage Pay

For our first winner, we have chosen Sage Pay. Below is their visibility from the past 5 years.

The graph shows a significant increase in SEO visibility for Sage from April 2020 to January 2025. By late 2024 and early 2025, Sage.com reaches its highest visibility index, suggesting effective long-term SEO strategies and the potential success of targeted content, technical improvements, or link-earning efforts. Sage seemed to benefit from almost every algorithm update. Let’s now have a look around their website and see what they have been doing that might have helped them improve their visibility.

Why is Sage a winner?

What could have helped them improve their SEO in the past few years?

We first had a look at their blog pages to make sure best practices are in place, since the latest google algorithm updates focused heavily on content.

Blog categories are well organised, and they allow users to browse different topics to read about. However, there is no sorting option, which would be helpful for users to sort between articles they want to read.

Looking at their blogs, the first thing we notice is that there are author names, and the blog is following authorship best practices by attributing articles to specific authors. This helps build credibility and accountability, as users can trust that the content is created by knowledgeable individuals. Including author bios or links to their profiles would further help transparency and give readers more insight into the authors’ expertise.

We also had a look at their Link profile to see the websites that are linking to them:

As we can see, they have a large and very powerful link profile, with links from high authority websites such as afp global, and accounting web. There are some visible link networks in the profile, but they haven’t stopped the site from ranking well.

Now looking at the keywords they rank for, we can see that they are ranking for mostly branded terms which suggests they have strong brand recognition and customers actively seek them out by name. However, rather than deliberately focusing on branded terms for SEO, this is more likely a natural side effect of building a strong brand profile. If we were to examine their entire link profile, we’d likely find a substantial number of non-brand keywords ranking as well.

Can Sage still improve?

We have also found flaws on their website, which could further improve their visibility if they make amendments . First, the site relies heavily on JavaScript for rendering, which means even essential content disappears when JS is disabled making it harder for search engines to crawl and index the site effectively, potentially harming its organic visibility.

We also tested the page speed for the website:

Not only have they failed the Core Web Vitals assessment, but they also have scored 38/100 for its mobile performance, which is considered to be a poor score.

Finally, looking at their anchor text, we can also see that they have some unnatural terms:

Even though we can see some branded terms, there are also instances of terms like “SEO” or “links” appearing in their keyword profile. While “links” could be considered a common noise-type anchor rather than something suspicious, the presence of “SEO” is more unusual, given that it’s unrelated to their payroll services. However, without deeper analysis, it’s difficult to determine the exact reason behind its usage. While unnatural keyword patterns can sometimes indicate risky SEO practices, further investigation would be needed to assess whether this is actually the case or just an anomaly.

Papaya Global

Our second winner in visibility is Papaya Global, and below we can see their visibility in the past 5 years:

Their visibility fluctuated a lot between late 2020 and early 2024. It recently started to grow exponentially, and it has seen its highest growth in early 2025. However, it is important to mention that their visibility is low overall, and that the variations seen on the graph may not represent a significant amount of traffic driven to their website.

What made Papaya Global a winner?

Papaya Global has seen a boost in visibility lately, and we had a look around their website to make sure it they are following SEO best practices:

We can see some best SEO practices such as:

Informative Content: The article provides an overview of the topic, covering the essentials such as employment laws, compliance risks, and payroll dynamics.

Structured Layout: The use of clear headings and subheadings that improve readability, allowing readers to navigate through the content with ease.

Internal Linking: The blog includes links to related articles and resources within the Papaya Global website, which can help retain readers and improve SEO.

Author bios: We can also see information about who wrote the blog, and author pages are also in place with a brief description of the author’s expertise, and some other articles they’ve written.

Looking at keyword rank, we can also see that they rank for some branded, and generic terms which is a positive sign as it indicates a balanced strategy. However, there is still an opportunity to expand their visibility by targeting more long-tail keywords and industry-specific phrases that potential clients might search for.

We have also looked at the website’s link graph:

Compared to Sage, Papaya Global’s link graph is smaller. However, they still have some high authority domain linking to their website such as payroll.org, and Workday.com.

Also, we had a look at the website when JavaScript is turned off and core functionalities remain in place which is important for SEO because it ensures that search engine crawlers can access and index essential content without relying on JavaScript rendering. This improves the site’s crawlability, ensures better visibility in search results, and provides good user experience for visitors who may have limited browser capabilities or JavaScript disabled.

Also looking at their anchor text, we have found some words that seem natural on an anchor text profile, such as branded terms, and generic terms, such as “click here” or “read more”.

Can Papaya Global still improve?

We also had a look at things they could improve when it comes to SEO best practices, first, we have tested the website’s mobile speed:

The website has also failed the Core Web Vitals assessment and has had a poor performance score. Scoring 49/100 for its mobile performance, which is still considered to be quite low.

Losers

PayPlus

Featuring our first loser is PayPlus, and below we can see how their visibility behaved in the past 5 years.

Their visibility was at their highest in early 2020 and declined significantly until early 2022. The visibility remained relatively stable with slight fluctuations until late 2021, where it began a gradual improvement through 2022. However, the index experienced a series of dips from late 2022 onwards.

Why is PayPlus experiencing a decline?

We had a look around their website to try to analyse what could have happened to them lately, and why they could have reacted negatively to Google’s latest core updates.

First of all, we had a look at their blog pages, and we found out it has not been updated for a while, which could be a significant contributor to their declining and fluctuating SEO visibility. Regularly updating a website with fresh, relevant, and high-quality content is a crucial aspect of maintaining SEO performance.

We also found that their blog pages are not following some of the best practices, such as not having proper headings and subheadings, which are essential for structuring content. Proper use of headings (H1, H2, H3) helps search engines understand the hierarchy and context of the content, making it easier to index and rank.

Additionally, the content is not very well organised. Well-organised headings improve readability, allowing users to quickly scan the page and locate relevant information. Addressing this issue would enhance both user experience and SEO performance.

We have also tested the page for its mobile speed, and they have also failed the core web vitals assessment and scored 58/100 for its mobile speed.

This indicates that the page has some performance issues on mobile devices. These factors not only impact the user experience but also negatively affect search engine rankings, as mobile performance is a ranking factor for Google.

Data Plan Payroll

Our second loser is Data Plan Payroll, and below we can see their visibility over the past 5 years.

Their visibility was high a few years ago, and we can see they made good progress, especially between mid-2021 until early 2023. After that, their visibility has started to decline, and it is now at their lowest, similar to early 2020 levels.

Why is Data Plan Payroll a loser?

As we could see, Data Plan Payroll has lost lots of visibility lately. But again, it is important to mention that their visibility is very low. Let’s have a look around their website to see if we can come up with some ideas on why their visibility has been so low recently.

First, we had a look at their blog pages as usual, as the most recent Google’s updates were heavily focused on content. First thing we noticed is that their blogs are not very up to date. The last blog they published was in November 2023.

When reading their blogs, we have also found some flaws that could be affecting their visibility, such as blogs that are too surface level, lacking in-depth insights or actionable information.

Additionally, the absence of author bios can impact credibility and trustworthiness, as search engines and readers value content attributed to knowledgeable and authoritative individuals. Furthermore, the lack of proper headings and subheadings not only hampers readability but also makes it difficult for search engines to understand the structure and context of the content, potentially affecting rankings.

Addressing these issues by creating detailed, well-researched content, adding author bios, and using structured headings could significantly improve their blog’s visibility.

We have also crawled the website using Screaming Frog found some tech issues that needed to be addressed in order for them to see their visibility grow even further, these include:

• Meta descriptions too short or too long: Affects CTR; short ones lack detail, long ones get truncated.
• Meta titles too long: Risk being cut off in search results, reducing clarity and CTR.
• Oversized Images: Slows page load times, hurting user experience and SEO rankings.
• Lots of 404 errors: Broken links harm user experience and crawl efficiency.
• Lots of 302 redirects: Temporary redirects don’t pass SEO value effectively.
• Lots of 301 redirects: Too many redirects slow down performance and can create complexity.

Conclusion

As we have seen, all of the websites have areas that need improving, including the winners. While they may be performing well overall, there are still some aspects such as improving site speed, which directly impacts user experience, bounce rates, and conversion rates.

Addressing the mentioned areas will allow these brands to improve their visibility, usability, and overall performance, clearing the way for better results. By focusing on areas like site speed, JavaScript optimisation, content quality, and mobile performance, they can strengthen their position and ensure sustained growth.

Moreover, regular website audits are important in identifying these opportunities and addressing any weaknesses. Audits help ensure the website remains aligned with current SEO best practices, meets user expectations, and adapts to search engine algorithms.