As recently as January 2026, Smartsheet was driving over 1 million organic visitors a month from Google in the US alone, more than every major competitor in the project management space. Two months later, that number dropped to 875,000, and they fell from first place to third, behind Notion and Asana.
But the decline isn’t the most interesting part of this story.
Even at 875,000+ monthly visitors, Smartsheet’s traffic is worth more per visit than any competitor’s. Their traffic cost ($5.3M) is higher than Asana’s ($4.2M) despite getting fewer visits.
They built this engine with a strategy none of their competitors have replicated at scale: 2,000+ free templates. And they reinforced it with 20 years of enterprise product adoption, creating a domain trust moat that most SaaS companies can only dream of.
The problem is what’s happening on the other side of search. Ask ChatGPT which project management tool to buy, and Smartsheet ranks 7th. Ask Google’s AI Overview, and Smartsheet doesn’t even appear in the summary. Ask Perplexity about enterprise project management, and Smartsheet is not singled out as the top choice.
A company that built one of the strongest SEO engines in B2B SaaS is nearly invisible in AI-powered search, and its organic traffic is declining at the same time.
This teardown breaks down exactly how Smartsheet built that engine, why it works, and where the data reveals a gap that could accelerate the decline if buyer behavior keeps shifting toward AI-driven discovery.
Source: Smartsheet homepage
Who’s Winning the SEO Game in the Project Management Space?
The project management space is one of the most competitive in B2B SaaS. Hundreds of tools, billions in funding, and almost every major player investing heavily in organic search.
So where does Smartsheet stand?
Here is a snapshot of how Smartsheet compares to its top competitors, according to Semrush as of March 2026.
A few months ago, Smartsheet was leading this pack with over 1 million monthly organic visitors. As of March 2026, they’ve dropped to third, behind Notion (1.34M) and Asana (1.04M). That’s a significant shift in a short period.
But Smartsheet’s traffic cost ($5.3M) is higher than Asana’s ($4.2M) despite getting fewer visits. The keywords Smartsheet ranks for are more commercially valuable per visitor. They’re not just driving volume. They’re driving the right kind of traffic.
And the strategy behind that is unlike anything else in this space.
How Smartsheet Uses the “Template SEO Strategy” to Drive Organic Growth
Smartsheet is the king of templates.
In my analysis of the company’s top 500 organic pages, 336 of them are template pages. And the full template library extends well beyond this top-500 view, with over 2,000 template-related pages indexed across the site.
These aren’t thin, throwaway pages. They’re a deliberate, well-executed content engine that drives the majority of the company’s organic traffic.
When you strip out the homepage, login pages, and pricing page from that top 500 (basically, look only at the content), nearly 80% of the content traffic comes from template pages.
This isn’t a content strategy with templates sprinkled in. Templates are the content strategy. And the results extend beyond raw traffic: among Smartsheet’s top 1,000 keywords by traffic, 53.6% of the traffic is non-branded. That means roughly 330,000+ people who have never heard of Smartsheet discover the company from Google every single month. The templates are doing double duty: driving traffic and building brand awareness at scale.
The Numbers Behind the Template Machine
Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 template pages driving organic growth for Smartsheet.
The Excel Project Plan Templates page drives 57,050 monthly visitors. That’s actually down significantly from earlier months (it was pulling in nearly 187,000 visits as recently as January 2026). But even at its current level, this single template page is generating more traffic than most SaaS company blogs do in total.
This page has historically ranked #1 for “project planning templates,” a keyword with 1,000,000 monthly search volume and a CPC of $3.74. The recent traffic decline suggests something is shifting in how Google surfaces these results (more on that in a moment), but the scale of what Smartsheet built with this single page is still remarkable.
Beyond the top 10, the depth is just as impressive. 104 template pages each drive at least 1,000 organic visitors per month. Combined, those 104 pages account for over 290,000 monthly visits. That’s a portfolio of high-performing content assets that’s difficult to replicate.
Why Does the Template Strategy Work So Well?
1. They nail the search intent every time
When someone searches “weekly project planner template,” they want a downloadable file, not a 3,000-word blog post. Smartsheet puts the template front and center. The download is the page.
2. Multiple formats, zero friction
Every template is available in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Google Sheets, and Google Docs. No signup, no account creation, no email required. Free, instant, in the format you already use. This sounds counterintuitive for a SaaS company, but the templates are the top of the funnel. Someone downloads a free Excel template today, realizes they need something more powerful next quarter, and Smartsheet is already the brand they associate with that workflow.
3. Massive keyword coverage across industries.
Smartsheet doesn’t just have project management templates. They cover virtually every business function:
- Excel and Spreadsheet templates (42 pages, 138,000+ monthly traffic)
- Project Management templates (50 pages, 101,000+ monthly traffic)
- Budget and Finance templates (28 pages, 54,000+ monthly traffic)
- HR and People templates like schedules, shift plans, and performance reviews (24 pages, 36,000+ monthly traffic)
This breadth means Smartsheet captures traffic from people who might never search for “project management software” but absolutely need a shift schedule template or an expense report spreadsheet. The templates pull them into the Smartsheet ecosystem through a side door.
Why Smartsheet’s Templates Rank #1 (Even Without Elite Domain Authority)
According to Semrush, Smartsheet has an Authority Score of 69. That’s solid, but not elite. Many of their direct competitors operate in a similar range. This isn’t a case where sky-high domain authority is single-handedly pushing pages to the top of Google.
Here is the keyword position distribution of the top 1,000 keywords for Smartsheet in March 2026:
- Positions #1-3: 934 keywords, driving 598,132 monthly traffic
- Positions #4-10: 50 keywords, driving 13,700 monthly traffic
- Positions #11-20: 9 keywords, driving 1,839 monthly traffic
- Positions #21-50: 7 keywords, driving 1,403 monthly traffic
Among Smartsheet’s top 1,000 keywords by traffic, 93.4% sit in positions 1 through 3. They don’t gradually work their way up the SERPs. When they rank, they dominate.
So if raw domain authority isn’t doing all the work, what is?
20 Years of Compound Trust
Smartsheet has been live since 2005. That’s over 20 years of crawl history, indexed pages, and accumulated trust signals in Google’s systems. While Authority Score captures a snapshot, it doesn’t fully reflect two decades of consistent presence.
More importantly, Smartsheet has become embedded in the workflows of large organizations. The backlink data from Semrush tells this story clearly.
The most-linked Smartsheet pages aren’t blog posts or templates. They’re app.smartsheet.com form URLs that organizations embed directly into their own websites. Companies use Smartsheet forms for facility requests, media inquiries, support contacts, event registrations, and dozens of other operational workflows.
Enterprises like Expedia, Deltek, Rheem, and Cushman & Wakefield link to Smartsheet not because someone did outreach, but because Smartsheet is literally baked into how these companies operate.
Government sites like Cambridge, MA, and the state of Iowa link to Smartsheet forms. Educational institutions like UC Berkeley, the University of Texas, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab do the same.
Smartsheet even has 53 backlinks from Wikipedia pages.
Semrush backlink data showing enterprise and institutional referring domains
These aren’t content marketing backlinks. They’re product adoption backlinks. And they create a foundation of trust that benefits every page on the domain, including the 2,000+ template pages.
The Template Pages Don’t Need Their Own Backlinks
Most of Smartsheet’s template pages probably don’t have hundreds of individual backlinks pointing to them. They don’t need to.
The domain’s overall trust, built over 20 years of enterprise adoption, gives every new template page a head start. When Smartsheet publishes a new template targeting “shift schedule template” or “expense report template,” it doesn’t need to run a link-building campaign. The domain’s accumulated trust, combined with the template page’s search intent match, is enough to push it to position #1.
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.
But the Flywheel is Slowing Down
Smartsheet’s organic traffic peaked at 1,280,883 in September 2024. It held above 1 million through January 2026, then dropped sharply. By March, it was down to 875,742. That’s a 22% decline in two months. And the most telling decline is in their crown jewel page: the Excel Project Plan Templates page went from 186,770 monthly visitors in February to 57,050 in March. A single page lost nearly 130,000 visitors in one month.
Meanwhile, competitors are moving in the opposite direction. Notion climbed to 1.34 million and Asana to 1.04 million in the same period.
Smartsheet is also losing backlinks faster than it’s gaining them.
In March 2026, it lost more than 3,000 backlinks while gaining about 8,000 new backlinks.
That’s a significant imbalance. It could reflect reduced content investment after the Blackstone and Vista Equity acquisition, natural link decay from aging content, or organizations migrating away from Smartsheet forms. Whatever the cause, the trend is moving in the wrong direction.
On top of that, Smartsheet has largely deprioritized paid search. Paid traffic dropped from over 520,000 monthly visits in mid-2023 to just 18,274 in March 2026. That’s a 96% decline.
Organic SEO is carrying nearly the entire weight of search acquisition. And that organic engine is now losing altitude with no paid safety net to catch the fall.
And there’s a bigger challenge on the horizon that neither templates nor domain authority can solve alone.
The Blind Spot: Smartsheet Wins Google but Disappears in AI Search
Smartsheet’s template strategy drives downloads. Downloads drive signups. Signups drive revenue. If the funnel is converting, why does it matter what ChatGPT thinks?
It’s a fair question. And for today, the template funnel is clearly working.
But the way buyers discover and evaluate software is changing fast.
According to 6sense’s 2025 Buyer Experience Report, 94% of B2B buyers now use Large Language Models (LLMs) during their buying process. And 94% typically rank their preferred vendors before they ever contact sales.
The implication is clear: whoever shapes the buyer’s understanding during that self-directed research phase has a decisive advantage. And increasingly, that research is happening through AI-generated answers, not just Google search results.
Smartsheet’s template strategy captures someone who already knows they need a “project plan template.” That’s valuable. 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. And right now, AI isn’t recommending Smartsheet.
I tested Smartsheet’s visibility across three major AI platforms: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. I ran queries that a real buyer would use when evaluating project management tools.
Test 1: “What is the best project management software?” (ChatGPT)
ChatGPT organized its response into two tiers: “Top Picks Across Teams & Needs” and “Other Common Choices.”
The top picks were ClickUp, Asana, Monday, Jira, and Wrike, all recommended with specific use cases and positioning.
Smartsheet appeared under “Other Common Choices” and was described as a “spreadsheet-style interface with automation and enterprise-ready tools.”
ChatGPT response showing Smartsheet in the “Other Common Choices” section
It’s not recommended nor highlighted. It’s just listed as one of the “other common choices”. The company with the most organic search traffic in the project management space couldn’t crack the top 5 in ChatGPT’s recommendations.
Test 2: “Best project management software” (Google AI Overview)
Google’s AI Overview was even more revealing.
The summary paragraph at the top of the page mentioned Monday.com, Asana, ClickUp, Jira, Trello, Wrike, and Microsoft Project. Smartsheet was not mentioned in the summary at all.
For most users, this summary is all they’ll read before scrolling to the organic results.
Below the summary, Google broke the category down by use case. Smartsheet finally appeared as #8 out of 10, under the label “Best for Spreadsheet Users.”
Google AI Overview showing Smartsheet absent from the summary, then 8th in the expanded list
Think about what’s happening here. Wrike got the “Best for Enterprise” label, yet that’s Smartsheet’s core market. Smartsheet has $1 billion in ARR, 85% Fortune 500 penetration, and was acquired for $8.4 billion. Google’s AI doesn’t know any of that. It categorized Smartsheet as a niche tool for people who like spreadsheets.
Test 3: “What project management tool should I use for enterprise teams?” (Perplexity)
This is the query where Smartsheet should dominate, since enterprise is their sweet spot.
Perplexity did mention Smartsheet. It appeared second in the opening list (after Wrike) and was included in sub-categories for cross-functional teams and complex project portfolios.
But it was never singled out. Never recommended as the top choice. Always part of a group list.
The detail that matters most: Perplexity cited Wrike as a source, along with Celoxis, Mediavalet, and Microsoft. Smartsheet was not cited as a source for any claim.
Perplexity response for enterprise PM tools showing sources
Wrike is shaping the enterprise narrative in AI by creating educational content on enterprise project management that AI can reference and cite. Smartsheet creates templates that AI can’t.
Test 4: “Smartsheet vs Monday” (Perplexity)
For this head-to-head comparison, Perplexity reviewed 10 sources. Smartsheet was cited exactly once. The other 9 sources were third-party review sites like Focuzed, TheDigitalProjectManager, and TeamHub.
Perplexity response for Smartsheet vs Monday.com showing sources
The positioning that emerged was subtle but damaging. Smartsheet was described as having a “steeper learning curve” and being best for teams that “live in Excel.” Monday was described as having “polished onboarding,” where “most users ramp up faster.”
Smartsheet doesn’t have a “Smartsheet vs Monday.com” page. So third-party sites are writing that narrative for them. And the narrative they’ve written positions Smartsheet as the powerful but harder option.
Test 5: “What are the best Smartsheet alternatives?” (ChatGPT)
When someone asks AI what to use instead of Smartsheet, they get ClickUp as the #1 “best all-in-one replacement,” followed by Airtable, Asana, Monday, and Trello.
The ClickUp description explicitly states that it’s “often rated easier to use than Smartsheet for everyday team projects.” Asana is described as making collaboration easier “without the spreadsheet feel.”
The sources? Forbes and Airtable’s own website (cited three times). A competitor is literally shaping the AI narrative about what to use instead of Smartsheet, and Smartsheet has no alternatives or comparison content to counter it.
The One Place Where Templates Win in AI
There was one bright spot in the audit.
When I searched “best free project management templates” on Google, the AI Overview mentioned Smartsheet first in the summary and gave it the #1 category position: “Best for Comprehensive Tracking.”
Google AI Overview for templates query showing Smartsheet #1
Smartsheet was cited as a source. This is the one query type where the template strategy translates into AI visibility.
But that’s the paradox. Smartsheet dominates AI recommendations for template queries. The problem is that nobody evaluating which project management software to buy is searching for templates. They’re searching for “best project management software,” “Smartsheet vs Monday,” and “Smartsheet alternatives.” And on every one of those queries, Smartsheet is either buried, absent, or being defined by competitors.
That’s exactly what the data shows. Smartsheet is known to AI. It’s not invisible. But it’s consistently ranked behind competitors who create the kind of educational, comparison, and evaluative content that AI systems prefer to cite and recommend.
The template strategy built a 1 million+ visitor SEO engine. But templates don’t give AI tools anything to recommend. They don’t explain why Smartsheet is better than Monday.com. They don’t position Smartsheet as the enterprise leader. They don’t counter the “harder to use” narrative. And they don’t show up when a buyer asks ChatGPT which tool to choose.
That’s the blind spot.
If I Were Running Search Strategy for Smartsheet, Here’s What I’d Do Differently
Smartsheet is the first company in the collaborative work management category to hit $1 billion in ARR. They have 13.5 million+ users and are trusted by more than 85% of Fortune 500 companies.
The obvious counterargument to everything that follows is: why change what’s clearly working? Smartsheet’s current strategy powered a $1 billion ARR business and an $8.4 billion exit. That’s not a broken engine.
But the case for change isn’t about what’s working today. It’s about what the trendlines show for tomorrow. Organic traffic has declined by 22% over the past two months. The top-performing template page lost 70% of its traffic in a single month. Competitors like Notion and Asana have overtaken Smartsheet in organic visibility. And the B2B buying journey is shifting toward AI-assisted research at a pace that’s hard to overstate.
Smartsheet’s template strategy captures buyers who already know what they need. It doesn’t reach the growing segment of buyers who ask AI to tell them what they need. And as former CEO Mark Mader pointed out back in 2012, only an estimated 10% of the world’s organizations run a work management platform. So what happens to the other 90% who haven’t adopted one yet? Many of them are searching Google and asking AI for answers right now. And Smartsheet’s template strategy, as effective as it is, isn’t reaching them where it matters most.
Here are three things I’d do differently.
Opportunity #1: Dominate the SERPs for Software Listicle Keywords
This is the biggest gap in Smartsheet’s organic search strategy, and the data makes it hard to ignore.
According to Semrush, there are over 1,145 keywords that Smartsheet doesn’t rank for at all that their competitors do, with a combined monthly search volume of over 233,000. And the gap is growing.
Among these, there are hundreds of keywords related to software and tools. These aren’t obscure long-tail terms. These are the exact keywords buyers type into Google when they’re actively evaluating which project management tool to purchase.
Here is a snapshot of some software listicle keywords that Smartsheet isn’t ranking for.
“Remote project management tools” has a CPC of $44.31, which means businesses are paying nearly $45 per click for that keyword in Google Ads. “Free workflow software” is $13.76 per click. “Task management tools” is $17.19.
Smartsheet doesn’t rank for any of them. Not in the top 10. Nor the top 50. And not even in the top 100.
Meanwhile, Asana ranks in the top 10 for “task management tools” and “task manager software.” Monday.com ranks in the top 10 for “free project management tools” and “free workflow software.” Wrike ranks in the top 10 for “project management planning tools” and “project management software for startups.” These competitors are capturing high-intent, high-value buyer traffic that Smartsheet is completely invisible to.
The total opportunity across all 1,145 gap keywords is significant. At an estimated 30% click-through rate for a #1 ranking, the combined traffic value would be roughly $444,000 per month. Annualized, that’s over $5.3 million in traffic value that Smartsheet is currently leaving on the table.
These aren’t vanity metrics. Every visitor from “workflow management software” or “best task management software” is a potential buyer. That’s what makes this gap so costly.
What I’d do: Run a two-track listicle strategy. Publish and pursue placements at the same time.
Track 1: Owned listicles, product-led, and use-case specific. Instead of publishing generic “software listicles” targeting high-volume keywords, I’ll build out listicles around specific use cases and verticals where Smartsheet has clear strength. Some examples include:
- “Best Project Management Software for Construction Teams”
- “Best PM Tools for Marketing Operations”
- “Best Project Management Software for Enterprise PMOs”
- “Best Workflow Management Tools for Cross-Functional Teams.”
Each of these listicles will be product-led rather than promotional. We’ll walk through the pros, cons, pricing, and real use cases for every tool we cover (including competitors). It’ll also show actual screenshots of Smartsheet handling that specific workflow. We’ll also link to the relevant templates from the existing library so readers can immediately try the workflow themselves. This is the move competitors can’t easily replicate. Asana doesn’t have 2,000+ templates to anchor a “construction project management” listicle. Smartsheet does. That asymmetry is the moat.
Track 2: Third-party placements on existing listicles that already rank. Owned content alone won’t fix the AI visibility problem. AI platforms typically cite G2, Capterra, Forbes Advisor, PCMag, TechRadar, and dozens of niche industry publications. Smartsheet needs to be prominently featured on those listicles, not just listed at the bottom. This means active outreach to the reviewers and editors who write these pieces, providing them with current product positioning, customer case studies, and unique data points they can use.
The two tracks reinforce each other. When AI builds an answer about “best project management software for construction,” it draws on both third-party listicles (where Smartsheet now appears prominently) and Smartsheet’s own use-case-specific listicle (which provides structured, citation-ready content). That’s how you go from invisible to recommended.
Opportunity #2: Own the Comparison and Alternative Conversation
Here’s a stat that surprised me.
According to Semrush, Smartsheet ranks for zero “vs.” comparison keywords and zero “alternative” keywords.
This means when someone Googles “Smartsheet vs Monday.com,” “Smartsheet vs Asana,” “Monday.com alternatives,” or “Asana alternatives,” Smartsheet has no content influencing what that person reads.
The keyword gap data backs this up. There are dozens of comparison and alternative keywords that competitors rank for, and Smartsheet doesn’t.
Comparison Keywords Smartsheet is Missing
Alternative Keywords Smartsheet is Missing
Look at the CPCs. “Asana Alternatives” is $17.23 per click. “Wrike Alternatives” is $20.32. “Pipedrive Alternatives” is $27.92. “Pipedrive vs Monday” is $60.34 per click. These are the most commercially valuable keywords in the entire B2B SaaS comparison landscape. Buyers searching these terms aren’t browsing. They’re days or weeks away from a purchase decision and are actively considering switching tools or choosing between two finalists.
And every single one of these keywords goes to a competitor, whereas Smartsheet doesn’t show up.
If Smartsheet doesn’t create this content, third-party reviewers and competitors will shape the narrative for them. And as we saw, that narrative positions Smartsheet as the “harder to use” option with a “steeper learning curve.”
What I’d do: Run three plays in parallel.
Play 1: Dedicated head-to-head comparison pages. Build out Smartsheet vs [Competitor] pages for every major matchup: Smartsheet vs Monday.com, Smartsheet vs Asana, Smartsheet vs Jira, Smartsheet vs Airtable, Smartsheet vs ClickUp, Smartsheet vs Microsoft Project, Smartsheet vs Excel.
![Google Build out Smartsheet vs [Competitor] pages for every major matchup:](https://yourcontentmart.co/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/smartsheet-seo-teardown-28-1024x737.png)
These directly target keywords that buyers are already searching for, give Smartsheet full control of the narrative, and provide AI platforms with structured, citable comparison content. Each page should walk through pricing, features, real use cases, and the type of team each tool serves best. No fluff. The buyer is at the bottom of the funnel and needs decision-grade content.
Play 2: Competitor-vs-competitor pages where Smartsheet inserts itself into the conversation.
This is the play most companies ignore. Keywords like “Asana vs Monday” (1,900 volume, $10.76 CPC), “ClickUp vs Asana” (1,000 volume, $11.27 CPC), and “Trello vs Asana” (1,000 volume, $7.96 CPC) drive significant search traffic, but they’re not head-to-head matchups involving Smartsheet.
The play is to create thorough comparison pages for these competitor matchups, provide an honest breakdown of both tools, and then introduce Smartsheet as a third option with a clear positioning angle. (“If you’re comparing Asana and Monday because you need stronger reporting and enterprise governance, here’s why Smartsheet is worth a look.”) This is how Smartsheet enters consideration sets they’re currently locked out of.
Play 3: Dedicated alternative pages for every relevant competitor. Build out pages targeting “Asana Alternatives,” “Monday.com Alternatives,” “Jira Alternatives,” “ClickUp Alternatives,” “Trello Alternatives,” “Airtable Alternatives,” “Wrike Alternatives,” and others.
These are some of the highest commercial-intent keywords in the entire B2B SaaS landscape. Anyone searching for “Asana Alternatives” has most likely decided to leave Asana and is looking for another tool.
Smartsheet should be positioned as the obvious answer for buyers whose reasons for leaving align with Smartsheet’s strengths (enterprise scale, spreadsheet familiarity, governance, reporting depth). Each alternative page should list 5-7 genuine alternatives with honest pros and cons, with Smartsheet positioned prominently and contextually.
Together, these three plays target over 18,000 monthly searches across some of the highest-CPC keywords in the project management space. And they give AI platforms exactly the type of structured, evaluative content they need to start recommending Smartsheet in comparison and alternative queries.
Opportunity #3: Earn Citations Where AI Actually Looks
This is the opportunity that goes beyond traditional SEO. And it’s the one that most companies in this space haven’t started thinking about correctly.
Here’s where most AEO advice gets it wrong. The conventional SEO wisdom is to publish more content on your own website and trust that AI will cite you because you’re the authority.
The problem is that AI systematically prefers third-party sources over first-party ones, and the preference holds across nearly every query type that matters for buyers.
AI doesn’t pick a single winner; it synthesizes a consensus from the sources it already trusts. And the sources it trusts most are not always the companies, even if the website is highly authoritative.
AI platforms consistently pull from third-party review sites, niche industry publications, competitor blogs, and editorial publications.
So, the opportunity isn’t to publish more content on smartsheet.com’s website. It’s to earn presence on the specific external properties that AI systems actually cite.
What I’d do: Build an off-site AEO strategy focused on the top citation channels AI platforms consistently pull from.
Channel 1: Third-party listicle placements on the sites AI actually cites. The AEO audit revealed the specific publications feeding AI responses: Forbes Advisor, PMWorld 360, TheDigitalProjectManager, TeamHub, Focuzed, GoodDay (blog), and SenseCentral. These aren’t the sites Smartsheet would pick for a traditional PR campaign, but they’re the sites AI is pulling from. The play is active outreach to every publication that influences AI tools, and provides them with current product data, customer case studies, and positioning angles. Getting featured prominently on five of these sites matters more for AEO than publishing ten educational guides on the website.
Channel 2: Community presence. Reddit and Quora are heavily represented in LLM training data, and when ChatGPT describes Smartsheet, some of that description almost certainly comes from threads in r/projectmanagement, r/PMP, r/sysadmin, and similar communities. Smartsheet needs authentic product expert accounts answering questions in these communities, not marketing posts. This is a long-game play, but it compounds.
Put these together, and you have a complete off-site AEO strategy. It’s fundamentally different from Opportunities #1 and #2, which both focus on owned content. This one focuses on earning presence in the places AI actually looks when building answers.
AEO in 2026 isn’t just about what you publish on your own website. It’s about being present in the sources AI systems already trust and cite. Review platforms, third-party publications, community forums, and Wikipedia are the infrastructure behind AI-generated recommendations. If competitors dominate those channels, no amount of owned content will make AI recommend you.
Smartsheet Has the Foundation. The Next Chapter Is About Visibility.
Smartsheet built one of the most effective organic growth engines in B2B SaaS. 2,000+ free templates, over 1 million monthly visitors from Google at its peak, and nearly 80% of content traffic driven by a single content type. Their highest-traffic keywords overwhelmingly sit in positions 1 through 3. And a 20-year foundation of domain trust earned through genuine enterprise product adoption.
That’s an incredible foundation that most SaaS companies would kill for.
But the landscape is shifting. Organic traffic has declined 22% from its January 2026 peak. Their crown jewel template page lost 70% of its traffic in a single month. Competitors like Notion and Asana have overtaken them in organic visibility. And AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity are becoming primary channels for how buyers discover and evaluate software, and Smartsheet has limited visibility into the queries and prompts that drive purchasing decisions.
The template strategy built the engine. The next chapter is about ensuring the engine is visible everywhere buyers look, not just on page one of Google.
Mark Mader said it over a decade ago: “Millions of teams have not yet heard of Smartsheet.”
That’s still true today. And the teams that haven’t heard of Smartsheet are now asking AI for recommendations. The question is whether Smartsheet will be the answer.
Every company’s SEO engine has a story the surface metrics don’t tell. Smartsheet’s story is a template moat built on 20 years of enterprise trust, with a blind spot in the fastest-growing B2B discovery channel. What’s yours?
I run teardowns like this for B2B SaaS companies at Your Content Mart, combining competitive SEO analysis with AI search visibility audits to find the strategic gaps that keyword reports miss. If you want to know what your competitors see when they analyze your content strategy (and what you’re leaving on the table), let’s talk.
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