How MADX Grew Thunes' Top-3 Rankings 11x and Won #1 Cross-Border Payments Positions

Client Background

Thunes is a B2B cross-border payment network that lets businesses move money in real time or near real time across corridors and payout methods. Thunes brands its network as the Smart Superhighway for global payments, connecting banks and mobile wallets and improving interoperability across fragmented payment systems.

Despite unicorn status and strong brand recognition, Thunes' organic search performance did not reflect its market position. It was losing valuable non-branded search traffic to competitors because of deep technical blockers and an unoptimised content structure. This is a common pattern in fintech SEO, where trust and technical health decide who ranks.

The Challenges

Thunes needed to strengthen the foundations of organic visibility while improving how commercial pages capture non-branded demand in a competitive fintech category.

Indexation and crawl constraints. Our audit surfaced 111+ key pages unintentionally set to noindex, keeping them out of search. We also found crawl inefficiencies, including orphan pages, HTTP and HTTPS inconsistencies, and unoptimised image assets that weakened crawl efficiency and page quality signals.

Limited coverage of high-intent money terms. Brand messaging was strong, but key commercial themes were not consistently mapped to decision-stage intent. Core pages such as Cross-Border Payments and Money Transfer Operators needed clearer intent alignment and tighter on-page structure.

Authority gap against incumbents. Page-one competition for high-value fintech terms is dominated by incumbents with deep link equity. Several priority commercial pages lacked enough high-quality, relevant backlinks to compete.

Our Approach

MADX delivered three workstreams at once: technical remediation, commercial intent alignment, and authority building. The goal was to unlock indexation, improve relevance for buyer-led searches, and strengthen trust signals for sustained growth.

1. Technical audit and indexation remediation

We prioritised issues directly limiting organic visibility: removing unintended noindex directives on key pages, resolving crawl inefficiencies such as orphan pages and protocol inconsistencies, and improving asset hygiene through image optimisation and performance fundamentals. This is the technical SEO remediation that lets priority pages be discovered, crawled, and ranked reliably.

2. Commercial intent mapping and on-page optimisation

We rebuilt commercial pages around how buyers actually search: mapping priority money terms to specific landing pages, aligning structure to decision-stage intent, and strengthening internal linking between related commercial and supporting content. Commercial pages rank more consistently when they match intent and sit inside a coherent internal structure.

3. Authority building for competitive terms

We focused on quality-led authority building: identifying link gaps versus incumbents, targeting relevant high-authority industry publications, and building links directly to priority commercial pages rather than the blog alone.

The Results

By firing all three cylinders, Thunes saw compounding gains across rankings, traffic, and search visibility. Every figure below is pulled from Ahrefs Site Explorer (worldwide) and Google Search Console, with the window stated for each.

Ranking growth: top-3 up 11x

Top-3 rankings are keywords where a site appears in the first three organic results. Thunes grew its top-3 keyword count from 32 in January 2023 to a peak of 372 in March 2026, an 11.6x increase. Page-one keywords (top 10) grew from 120 to a peak of 820 over the same period, up 583%.

Traffic and traffic value

Monthly organic traffic grew from 6,338 to a peak of 19,002 visits, up 200% (Jan 2023 to Feb 2026). The estimated value of that traffic rose faster: from $4,800 to $29,700 per month, a 520% increase (Jan 2023 to Dec 2025), because the new rankings landed on higher-value commercial terms, not just informational ones.

Search visibility in Google Search Console

First-party Google data confirms the story. Google Search impressions climbed from 258,000 to 2.68 million per month, up 939% (Dec 2023 to Jan 2026). Average position improved from 41.8 to 7.8, moving Thunes from page 4 to page 1 for its tracked queries. Search clicks rose 148%, from 8,444 to a peak of 20,927 per month.

Commercial rankings

Ahrefs Rank Tracker shows dominant page-one visibility for priority keywords across key markets: #1 for cross-border payment (US), #1 for cross-border payment process flow (US), and #1 for cross-border payment solutions (UK), plus multiple additional page-one rankings across payments and payouts categories.

Indexation recovery and authority

We removed unintended indexation constraints across priority templates, restoring search eligibility for 100+ key URLs. To support revenue pages rather than the blog, from November 2024 to September 2025 we delivered 55 premium backlinks, 550 supporting links, and 75 brand mentions, aimed primarily at commercial URLs.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did Thunes' organic rankings grow with MADX?

Thunes grew its top-3 Google rankings from 32 to 372 keywords between January 2023 and March 2026, an 11.6x increase. Page-one keywords grew from 120 to 820 over the same window (Ahrefs Site Explorer, 2026).

What drove the biggest share of Thunes' SEO growth?

Technical remediation was the catalyst. Removing noindex from 111+ pages restored search eligibility, and commercial intent mapping plus direct links to product pages turned that eligibility into page-one rankings for money terms.

How long did it take to see results?

Indexation and early ranking gains showed within the first few months. The steepest ranking and impressions growth came from late 2024 through early 2026, as authority compounded on the newly indexed commercial pages.

Does Thunes rank #1 for cross-border payments?

Yes. Thunes holds #1 positions for cross-border payment (US), cross-border payment process flow (US), and cross-border payment solutions (UK), according to Ahrefs Rank Tracker.

Key Takeaways & Lessons

1. Technical health is the ceiling for growth

The strongest content strategy would have failed while 111 pages were non-indexed. You cannot rank content Google refuses to index. Technical resolution was the primary catalyst.

2. Commercial pages need direct backlinks

Many companies only build links to their blog. Thunes succeeded because we built links directly to product pages with commercial anchors, signalling to Google that these pages were authoritative endpoints for transaction-intent queries.

3. Freshness is a ranking factor

The content logs showed that updating old content is as valuable as writing new content. Holding rankings takes constant vigilance and updates.

Book a call to see what the same approach could do for your fintech category.