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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
what we're first looking for is just how
quickly we can start seeing rankings.
A bunch of clients we had back
in the day when we did this.
It is a scatterplot where the blue dot is
on the X axis is months engaged with us.
And the grid marks are five, 25 months.
There's actually clients that
are beyond that, but I zoomed in
so that the graph was readable.
And then on the Y axis where
the blue dot is, the Y axis goes
25, 50, 75, a hundred and 125.
And that's the number of blog posts
we have ranking on the first page.
The best result, the ultimate result.
From your content marketing, heck,
it should be any marketing is leads.
And so you can get those
even when you're not ranking.
Today, we want to talk about how long it
takes to get content marketing results.
Um, this is something that a lot of
clients ask us and Benji and I were
talking and Benji, you said, Hey, we
should do an entire episode on this.
And there's actually a
lot to talk about there.
Help set the stage for the listeners of
like, what made you think about this?
And, and, and what do you think are
the important parts that we should
sort of guide our discussion today?
Yeah.
So typically either during the
sales process or when we first start
working with a client, one of the
top questions that we get asked is
just, well, how long is it going to
take for us to start seeing results?
And there's a lot of nuance
to answering that question
because we have to define them.
Okay, what are the results?
Like, what are you actually looking for?
And I think most people are thinking
until they start seeing leads or
conversions come from content,
but we can talk through Maybe what
are the precursors to the leads?
So what are the things that we
start to measure and start to
report on before we're able to
start driving leads for the company?
So I think that's one thing that we should
talk through And then the other kind of
nuances, it really depends on the type of
business in terms of like how many leads
that we're going to be able to drive.
Um, it also just depends on their
business, like if they're only
generating, let's say 100 or 1000
leads a month right now, content's
only going to make up a portion of
that and it's going to be a slow build.
And so I think we should
also talk through.
Well, and so, yeah, I think in this
episode, we just want to talk through
some of our actual real client data,
talk through all the different metrics
that we're measuring and one each
becomes important throughout the
life cycle of an engagement and yeah.
Yeah.
Well, what we can do is talk through
what metrics you will start to see
in order and what leads to what.
And specifically just to, to get
to it, it, what we see is rankings,
like kind of what we're looking for
from beginning to end is rankings.
First traffic, although that's almost
automatic, you can kind of disagree.
Like if you're getting rankings
and the keyword has volume and you
get traffic and then eventually
conversions and obviously the rankings.
Uh, what's nice about rankings is
you can, it's, it's not like yes or
no, you can start to see it move up.
You're like, oh, I'm in position
20s, I'm in the teens, and now
I'm in 8, 5, 2, or whatever.
And as many people in SEO know,
but if you don't, the traffic you
get from those rankings is not
linear, it's like exponential.
You get a heck of a lot more when
you're in the top few spots versus
even when you're down at eight.
But before we get into that, um, one
thing you said that I want to do a
little bit of a sidebar on is you said
that we should kind of focus on is
what does it mean until I see results?
And you said, I think
most people mean leads.
And some, what I want to add to that
is, That's because there are clients.
That's true.
And we have been projecting into the
world for seven years or whatever.
This lead based content
strategy, SEO focus.
Like we have been saying, Hey, you
should be focused on leads as your
driving metric for content and SEO.
So, of course, the clients who self
select and fill out our, our form to
work with us and talk to us and then
do work with us are lead focused.
But the vast majority of people aren't.
When they say get results from
content and SEO, I think for
most people they do what we do.
You know, I don't know, just kind of
put a bluntly call vanity metrics, which
is like traffic and maybe rankings.
And then as I'm saying this out
loud, heck, like some of our clients
say that, and they're smart enough
to be like, you guys, obviously
we hired you for the leads.
We get it.
We're bought in.
We like the bottom of funnel, but
My executive team still wants to see
traffic grow up or go up, or I am
in charge of organic and the blog.
And one of the things that I'm
responsible for is the traffic thing.
So can we do it?
So like just, Keep in mind, I mean,
these videos are sort of more generally
useful to anyone who's listening
that's like, you know, either in the
marketing space, obviously, or, you
know, kind of founder types or whatever.
That's a metric that's up to you.
Obviously, if you've read anything
we've written or even said in this
show, we think it's You should be
gauging success on leads or conversions.
Let's just make that concrete.
What do we mean for SaaS companies?
That's either a free trial for trial
based SaaS or demo request for service
companies like us or any others.
It could be a direct sales, talk to
sales like form fill for e commerce
companies, it would actually be
a sale, um, like a transaction.
So that's what we mean, like product
leads, not they read our content
and they entered their email to
read more content or download
an ebook or something like that.
We think it should be that because we
have seen time and again, and maybe we'll
do another deep dive episode like this.
On the basics of our framework and why
we believe this and the data behind it
that we believe that, that we're not, we
believe, I shouldn't say that it's like
the, it's like, I'm talking about the
tooth fairy we see with, we see with hard
data day in and day out, that traffic
does not automatically equal customers
and leads that you can get high traffic
sites and get a bunch of keywords that
have a bunch of traffic and you're
not getting any conversions from it.
I, we deal with that daily.
Um, long soap box, but I thought
it was kind of important.
That was a long soap box.
Okay.
I think let's go into expectations next
because I think that's the next thing
that someone thinks about is just.
Okay, so if we start doing content or
SEO or if we start working with you,
what should we kind of expect in terms
of when we should start seeing rankings,
when those should start getting to page
one or in those top three positions, when
we're going to start really seeing traffic
increase, and when those conversions are
really going to start to come through.
Um, so the way that we think
about it, it is in that order.
And so once we're first starting
to work with a client, we What
we're first looking for is just how
quickly we can start seeing rankings.
And I would say on average, from what we
see, we're typically, if the site has been
around for a while, uh, we're typically
starting to see rankings on the first
page within the first one to three months.
Sometimes it can be really quickly.
So sometimes right after
we publish a piece.
Already ranking on page one.
And then sometimes it
can take a lot longer.
Sometimes we publish a piece, the first
piece, and it's ranking in position
20 or 30, or sometimes it doesn't even
show up in rank tracker, which kind of
typically means there's some issue at the
site, but I would say on average, we do
see ranking show up on that first page.
In those first three months.
And that's typically what we would
want to see if they don't show up.
Then there, as we kind of touched
on in the last video on content
strategy, we might shift to.
Some of the ideas that we've gone after
that are a little bit easier from a
difficulty perspective, for example,
uh, focusing a little bit more on jobs
to be done keywords, as opposed to
really competitive category keywords.
If that's something that we
ended up going after, uh, as one
of our first pieces, hold up.
So you saying one to three months, uh,
the data, the data doesn't show that.
Well, because.
Okay, you can scroll down
and I can explain why.
So for the folks listening, so we're now
sharing a screen, I'll explain it as best
as possible as always in our episodes.
How long, this is a blog post we have,
um, written, you can Google how long
does it take to rank on the first page
of Google, we should be number one.
If we're not, you can make
fun of me in the comments.
I don't know if we're number one
for that right now, but we'll see.
Oh my god, okay, now you can
actually Google this to check.
What is this, AI stuff?
Yeah, we were.
Yeah, you can definitely make fun of me.
What?
I swear we were number one for this.
I know.
This thing's ranking for something.
We must have just got bumped off.
But, again, as in a few episodes
ago, we said, we were on page one.
Rankings fluctuate?
Yeah, we were on page one for
content marketing agencies,
then we got bumped off.
If you look today, I
think we're on first page.
We should be number one for
B2B content marketing agencies.
So again, rankings fluctuate.
That's an important thing for,
yeah, I mean, like you should be
listening to a podcast and, or working
with an agency that's confident
enough to just put this out there.
Like we don't care.
We're, we're very, we're not self
conscious about our rankings.
This thing was ranking for stuff.
It happens to not be, and we're
happy to kind of joke around about
it and make fun of ourselves.
Okay.
Uh, let me explain this.
So get back on track.
Um, I'm showing a graph of, uh, I
don't know, 20 something blue dots,
a bunch of clients we had back in the
day when we did this, uh, analysis.
Um, it is a scatter plot on the X
axis is where the blue dot is on the
X axis is months engaged with us.
And the grid marks are 25 months.
There's actually clients that
are beyond that, but I zoomed in
so that the graph was readable.
And then on the Y axis where
the blue dot is, the Y axis
goes 25, 50, 75, 100 and 125.
And that's the number of blog posts
we have ranking on the first page.
And the shape of the graph is this
kind of, I would call it exponentially.
Yeah, there's like an initial
exponential part at the bottom
and then maybe more linear.
There's a spread in the data.
In other words, it is going up into the
right, which is what you would expect.
Obviously, the more months you are engaged
with growing convert, which is the right
side of the graph, the higher your blue
dot is on the vertical axis, meaning you
have more posts ranking on first page.
What the reason I brought it up
now and was objecting to what Benji
said is he said one to three months.
I agree with you.
Anecdotally, obviously I'm seeing the
same client data that you're seeing.
In this particular study, this
was done at one point in time
with our clients at that moment.
There are one, two, three, four, five ish
blue dots within the first five months.
That means at that exact moment, those
five clients Um, that we happen to have
in months one through five of their
engagement with us did not have blog posts
on the first page, but I agree with Benji
are those are those dots actually zero?
Because my argument
would be the zero to 25.
There's a large spread there.
And so those could just be minimal.
It could.
No, I think four out of five are zero.
But like, The point is like you and
I have both seen this and we're going
to talk about an example client.
Now it, it, it does happen, especially
if you have a client with, um, great
topical authority, the domain is
like older, they've been around for a
while, they have good domain authority.
In addition to topical authority and,
and we publish a blog post we've seen
in month one, like this, it rank, but
also for some clients that are on the
opposite end, it can take a while.
Um, that's sort of natural SEO stuff.
But yeah, so I would maybe asterisk
your numbers to like one to
five months, one to six, maybe.
If it was like we weren't seeing
anything on page one six months in,
everybody is kind of freaking out.
For sure.
That's a hundred percent true.
And I think sometimes people see this
graph and they're like, so we shouldn't
expect anything for five months.
I would say that's rare.
Again, I think if we don't
see anything for five months,
you're not seeing rankings.
There's something wrong.
Let me, and I'll get, and I'll explain
this in more detail later, but let
me scroll all the way down to a
graph that I was planning on showing
later on, which is leads per month.
So it's the same graph, but
the Y axis is not number of
first page rankings is leads.
And there you see those same
four or five data points.
Do you see a little bump?
In the first five months where they were
normally on zero, you see someone in two
months have like 10 plus leads a month.
So again, what do you mean by get results?
We think the best result, the ultimate
result from your content marketing hack,
it should be any marketing is leads.
And so you can get those even when you're
not ranking, you can get traffic early.
I just wanted to have this.
Yeah.
And, and I think.
To speak a little bit more on this.
Why, how are we able to get leads
without getting a ton of first page
rankings or top one through three
rankings in those first few months?
Um, sometimes we do
those disruption stories.
I know we just did a whole episode
on this recently and those are
promoted through paid social and
those can drive initial traction while
we're waiting for leads to pick up.
Um, there's also other things
that we can do early on.
Like for example, If there was a
keyword that we wanted to go after
that the company already had a blog
post on, we might choose to update one
of those in those first few months.
And the improvement of the rankings
can happen much faster through
updates versus producing new content.
So that's why I said there there's,
we needed to go into this in depth
because there's a lot of nuance to,
to kind of answering this question,
depending on the type of business,
how much content you've produced.
If your site's new versus old,
what type of business you are.
Uh, so we kind of just want to
explain all of that on this episode.
Okay.
So if we scroll back up, uh, rankings,
you were, you were before I had a
bunch of sides and took you off track.
Number one thing we look for at the
beginning is rankings and you're
working your way onto page one.
The other important thing to say here
in terms of expectation setting is.
Well, actually the transition
then is step two traffic.
Do not expect a ton of traffic until
you're in the top half of page one
really the first three spots You
can Google, like, uh, I'm, I'm gonna
bring up a case study because I feel
like that'll help, uh, explain this
a little bit more, but you can keep
speaking while I try to find it.
Yeah, so you can Google these like graphs.
People have, I don't know what
they call it, but like click,
click percentage or click rate as a
function of like ranking position.
And that thing, as anyone would expect.
follows intuition.
There's like an exponential drop off.
You know, like I think it's something
like the first position organically
people estimate get 30 percent of
clicks and then like 18 by the time
you get to the bottom half of page
one, you're still on page one, which
by the way, Google now does this kind
of like infinite scroll type of thing.
So it's not like really a page two,
at least on certain queries and
on desktop you can scroll down.
But um, traffic can, um, It'll
take time to build, but those
first few rankings and the rankings
at the top are pretty important.
Go ahead, Benji.
Yeah, I think this graph really
does show that slow growth
of traffic in the beginning.
And so this is a pretty established site.
So they had been doing
content for a long time.
Uh, I think we named them in
the case study, Smart Look.
So, uh, they're pretty established.
A product that, uh, is, is very similar.
If you're familiar to hot jar, uh, they
have some of the same features, but
product analytics essentially, and you
can kind of just see the slow growth.
So for someone on the client side,
you're thinking, okay, one 88, 300
visitors a month, seven 20, seven 85.
This, this period right here of
this five months feels very slow.
You're like, okay, I'm growing traffic
a few hundred a month, maybe 200.
And then you really start
to see this curve take off.
And this is a very typical
for all of our clients.
Those first five to six months
typically feel very slow.
Again, what we're really focused on
is how many rankings are we getting
on that first page and then moving
those into the top three positions.
And then once we've moved the rankings
into those top three positions, That's
when you really start to see this graph
take off and I can show another client.
This is on the B2C side.
So search volumes are much higher
than for some of the B2B clients.
Uh, let me share this one.
And again, you can kind of see
those really small numbers.
So month one here, month two,
12 visitors, 56 visitors.
245, 635.
Now we start to get into the thousands and
you see this number really take off here.
And I think, then this is like a
few years into our engagement, then
we're at hundreds of thousands.
And so, again, I just think, from
an expectation setting perspective,
It takes a while to start generating
those rankings and then for
that to translate into traffic.
And then finally you should start seeing
that traffic translate into conversions.
And I think once we get around
that thousand visitors per month,
traffic is when you start to kind
of see the conversions come in.
And it's the same kind of trend
on the conversion side where the
conversions feel really slow.
Like there's a month where you might
get one and then like three and then
it might go down to one again and then
it jumps to 10 and then And then all
of a sudden it starts growing from
there and you start to see consistent
conversions coming in over time.
And I would say the rankings and the
traffic comes in that first one to five
months and then the conversions, you'll
start to see the trickle also come in
through those first five or six months.
And then it's really that six to nine
months that we kind of see as the
sweet spot for conversions to start to
show that kind of exponential trend.
Yeah, I just, while you were looking
at that, I looked at, um, Smart looks
conversion data, but we were getting
a few conversions in the first few
months, even when that traffic was low.
And just like I showed that conversion
data for earlier, where the leads
data had non zero values in the first
five months when the rankings didn't,
there's multiple reasons for that one
disruption story, although I'm not
sure we did that for them, but to The
conversion rate is really important.
So since we're moving from traffic to
conversions, I wanted to share this study
and some of these to, to kind of set
expectations, type in SEO conversions
into Google, and we should be number one.
And I don't think you can, I just went
because I embarrassed myself earlier.
I just went straight to the post,
which was like, maybe I'll be, maybe
I'll be embarrassed on this one.
SEO conversions.
Yoast is number one.
Oh.
Did we just fall?
Oh no, we went to like number eight.
Wow, this is great.
This whole episode is us just Googling
things that we think we're ranking
number one for and we're not at all.
Oh man, we just got bummed.
Oh, if you type in SEO conversion
rate, we're now number two.
Under Moz.
Man, Moz just beat us out to it.
Hey, I got the featured snippet, but I
am on my regular browser, not incognito.
That's so funny.
Um, whatever.
We still have the best article
again, with, we have, we have no
self consciousness on our rankings.
We think they're great
and things fluctuate.
So we don't mind joking around about it.
Okay.
Um, what we did here, the reason
I say we have the best article,
this is our actual client data.
I have not seen other people
publish this all due respect to Moz.
I bet you like their thing is titled.
What is conversion rate optimization?
How to calculate it.
Give me a break.
So this is an actual data piece.
We looked at specifically, um,
me and Meg Riley, the strategist
that wrote this article for us,
95 articles that are attacking
or going after at least 95 unique
keywords across a variety of clients.
I think over six or maybe even a dozen in
some, those articles we're talking about
over a hundred thousand page views from
organic only, and over 4, 000 conversions.
And we, the reason why those two important
is because what this article, this
data study is doing is looking at the
conversion rate of different keywords.
And the bar graph I'm showing shows
conversion rates anywhere, like in
the single digit percentages overall
for these different types of keywords.
Category keywords like direct category
keywords versus side category keywords
versus category keywords with a layer of
specificity, comparison and alternative
keywords versus jobs to be done.
You can scroll through this article, but
what I will summarize for you is when
we dig into like inside each of those
subcategories and get even more specific
and you see many instances of articles, a.
k.
a keywords that's going after
because for us we go one
article to attack one keyword.
With double digit conversion rates.
I'm showing one now of this particular
example, um, that has 15 percent
conversion rate for a particular
article that we see that routinely.
Um, I was just doing this analysis for
one of our clients where we're doing
updates, uh, pieces and we see that.
So that means even in those early
stages where you're kind of working
your way up to positions one, two, and
three, which is always our goal with
our clients get in the top three spots.
A 15 percent conversion rate, 10
percent conversion rate, even if you
have a hundred page views in month
two, can often get a conversion.
Um, and that's great.
And that's the benefit of doing bottom
of the funnel content marketing.
If you're doing top of the funnel
content marketing and the pieces you're
doing are, I don't know, what is,
analytics or something and no one who's
googling that is going to be buying
analytics software, then it's, it's,
it's, it's more, you really got to wait
a long time and do all kinds of hand
waving of how it's doing a benefit,
how it's like benefiting the business.
Oh, it's getting brand awareness.
But if you're actually doing bottom
of the funnel content marketing, the
benefit is the conversion rate is so
high that even at early stages, you
can start to see conversions coming in.
And I will say that emotionally,
that's kind of a good thing to
think about expectation setting.
If you have your CEO, your boss, your
CMO, whatever, getting a little bit
antsy and you're implementing something
like this, Um, to me, it's good to keep
everyone focused on the keywords and
how valuable they are and the intent and
start to show this whole thing working.
And we talked about that in
a recent episode as well.
Like start to show examples
of it working start to finish.
Look, this keyword makes sense for us.
Look at how great this is.
We're on position 14 and we
already saw a conversion from it.
Just wait till we're at position two.
Another question that people often
ask is just how many conversions do
you think I can drive from content?
And that is a much harder question to
answer before we start working with
someone because there, again, there's
so many variables that play into this.
There's how easy is it
going to be to rank?
What's the conversion rate of
your site overall right now?
How many conversions are you driving
as a business without content?
And it's really, really, really tough to
figure out what those numbers will be.
And so typically the way that we
think about it is just in those
first five, six, nine months.
We're trying to get rankings, we're
trying to get conversions and then we're
just kind of plotting the conversions.
And I think once you get into it, you
can kind of then see, okay, this is how
much growth there is to be had over time.
Like you can, based on what, what the
keyword opportunities are, how much
volume is there in the space that you're
going after, what is the conversion
rate of some of those blog posts?
What does that trend look like?
And then.
And then I feel like we can kind of
give a better idea of what the growth
potential is after we get into it.
But I think it's really, really hard to
predict at like you're, you can drive 200
leads from content per month before we
start basically testing things before we
start generating rankings and conversions.
I don't know if you
have a different answer.
I know for some clients we do
models at the beginning, but
again, I feel like the models.
At the end of the day are
still just guesstimates.
I mean, we can, we can kind of take
whatever data is available for us
and make a model, but the chances
of that tracking to exactly what
the model says is pretty slim.
Yeah, I, uh, several comments.
One, let me just illustrate visually
what Benji is saying for people watching.
So let's contrast this.
This is the graph I showed at the
beginning of just, um, um, this kind of
like real, like easy to follow with the
eye up into the right trend of more first
page rankings as a function of how long
you've been engaged with grow and convert.
Each blue dot is a client
at that exact time.
The reality is each of these blue
dots, each client, I'm going to get
a little bit mathy, so I apologize.
The reality is they have their own curve.
This was just a study done at one point
in time, but like you can see it's like
nice and tight There's like a clear
growth now I'm flipping to a different
data point where I've had to obviously
for privacy not include who the clients
are but these are the curves not of
rankings, but conversions For each
client as a function of months with us
and for those of you that aren't looking
at the screen on YouTube This is just
a noisy, messy graph with a bunch of
curves that kind of span the gamut of,
you know, slow, flat looking curves with
not as much growth with just these steep
exponential curves where at five months
we have, you know, 75 conversions and at
a year in we have over 100 conversions
a month directly attributable to our
blog posts and everything in between.
So this is the visual illustration
of what Benji is saying.
And I don't think I'm going to
say anything new that you didn't
already say, but just to emphasize
it, I'll say, here are all of the
different factors that go into your
leads per month curve from content.
So you covered, well, yeah, I
guess I'm just repeating you.
There's there's how easy is it to rank?
How fast do you rank?
What's the volume of those keywords.
And then I guess to summarize something
else, you said, you said like, what is
the conversion rate of everything ranking?
It's just like the, your conversion rate,
but also what is your conversion metric?
In that variety of curves I showed with
different colors just now, some of those
curves are self serve SaaS and like,
what's your price point also, right?
Goes into that conversion rate metric.
If you're selling, you know, 9 a
month, SaaS product in a category where
everyone kind of like knows that product
category and your customers need it.
I don't know.
It's like marketers being sold.
Some analytics software or
like entrepreneurs being sold,
like an invoicing software
to invoice your clients.
It's like.
Everybody uses that software.
You know, you need it.
You're just competing
on features or whatever.
So it's just like an easier conversion.
Then you're going to get more versus
what versus some of those flatter
graphs are enterprise long sales cycle.
It's maybe a more complex product.
That's like creating a new space.
Or whatever.
And, and, and the customer needs to be
sold the idea and the concept of even
needing it, everybody knows about those
SaaS companies, they exist or, or service
companies that's going to take longer.
And just your raw conversions is lower.
So you saw on some of those graphs,
flatter looking graphs, but clients
working with us past 20 months.
Why, why are they still working with us?
Cause that's really valuable for them.
I mean, it's like our,
it's like our business.
I think we, we said on the last call
that we got nine leads last month.
Okay, nine leads on one of those
graphs doesn't look that great.
But when the leads are, when they close,
they pay you 10, 000 plus a month.
I mean, they're, they're great leads.
And so nine, nine is
very meaningful for us.
And so even, even some of those,
um, Numbers, even though that says
like five or 10 a month, it's,
it's that kind of deal size or even
higher for some of those businesses.
And those are very valuable.
And I'll give you an, even another
nuance with us, that's nine leads.
And on our work with us
page, we say the price.
We say 10, 000 a month.
Most agencies or service
businesses don't do that.
Why?
Because they want more leads.
It's another little soapbox.
The marketer in charge of the website is
usually also kind of being responsible
for the lead gen numbers and in a
larger organization, like in us, it's
like we're in charge of the website.
So, so we're not, we're
not BSing anyone, right?
Um, but in those it's, they're
incentivized to make the lead
numbers look as high as possible.
So they're not going to mention the
price or anything like that because
they want the highest conversion rate.
Whereas we know if we don't
mention the price, we have to
sort through a bunch of looky lose
leads that can't afford us anyways.
And so we mentioned the price
before the form and that's going
to get the number to go down.
But it means the quality of the
lead is higher, meaning even for
a single business, our business.
There is no absolute number of
leads that's good versus bad.
So you don't need to think like that.
It's just relative.
That's why the way Benji was answering
this question at the beginning
before I showed this was we test it.
We look at it.
When we get the first things, first
things ranking, then we start to
see what is that number and you
credit go grow it from there.
There is no absolute, and I'm actually
passionate about this because I see
this on the e commerce You know,
the CRO side, um, is there are
some people that have been like,
well, I talked to blah, blah, blah.
And the industry average of our conversion
rate in consumer electronics is 4%.
Why is ours 2%?
You're like, dude, these
things, there is no average.
I mean, yeah, sure.
You can create an average.
You can do an average.
That's a metric, but
like, it's not meaningful.
Your business is unique.
If we didn't put, if we put a quick,
if our work with us page changed
and we didn't put the price on there
and we just said, work with grow and
convert, fill out this form and there
was barely anything in there, we
might get a hell of a lot more leads.
I don't want to sort through them.
That could be your job.
Yeah.
That's also a good point just in
terms of the data too, because yeah,
there's different definitions of leads.
So for some of our clients, I know.
There's like a total lead number, but we
only report on, let's say sales qualified
leads or marketing qualified leads.
And so those graphs can vary because
some of them are free trials.
Some of them are sales qualified leads.
Some of them are
marketing qualified leads.
Some of them are demos.
And so that number will vary based
on what your conversion metric is.
Yeah.
I hesitate to whether
we want to include this.
And, and, um, I'm going to say what like
people on like famous podcast guests say,
like you, you can edit this out, at least
on like NBA podcasts, they say that,
like when they're going to say something
controversial, but I did this analysis
that I cannot show for a particular
client and it was kind of an advanced
analysis, but I will try to summarize
it after I started looking at leads as
a function of multiple different things,
I ended up seeing that that leads for
that client was tracking really nicely to
number of top page rankings, not traffic.
It like looked like a more obvious
dependency graph when I looked
at as a number of rankings.
I cannot promise to anyone listening
that that will always hold true.
I have not done that analysis
for all of our clients.
All I'm saying is that was interesting
and I can qualitatively explain it and say
the keywords we pick and our whole content
strategy based on conversion intent
are keywords with high buying intent.
And as we have said many times, um,
throughout the years, um, Even lower
traffic or volume keywords, we pick them
if we think the conversion intent is high.
So that could explain how the number
of leads tracks to Your position, but
even if you, if you're ranking in a high
position for a high buying intent keyword,
that's going to generate leads for you,
even if the traffic is low, because
probably the only reason we went after
a lower traffic keyword is because the
conversion rate is likely to be higher and
that could have balanced themselves out.
So that's why I'm saying like, for me,
I think if you are doing this with a lot
of other stakeholders that you need to
sort of like keep happy, whether that
be as an internal employee or external.
Keep everyone focused on the end result.
I think don't obsess over traffic is
at least how I approach it is keep them
focused on this keyword is valuable.
We are now at eight.
That's a big deal.
It's got a couple of conversions.
Wait till we're at two,
wait till we're at one.
And I think that's really important.
The last thing that I wanted to cover
was just how much domain rating plays
into how quickly you can get results.
I know that you have.
A graph in that article that we
produced and then I wanted to kind
of show just what we see for a
newer client that we were working
with that started with a dr of 0.
5.
Again, starting level setting
with this graph, right?
We have this data of whatever
number of clients this is.
You can count the dots.
Um, and, and how many blog posts
are ranking on the first page.
And I said, Hmm, I'm going to
do a little bit of math here.
It looks like nice and monotonic, meaning
it's like increasing and up into the
right when I plot it as a function of
months engaged with us, what does it look
like as a function of domain authority?
And I plotted that down here and
there's no trend and the people
looking on YouTube can see it.
Now there are some
asterisks to this graph.
Obviously, the ones that have been
ranking that have been working with
for a long time have a lot more pieces.
So of course they're going to
have more first page rankings.
So it's not necessarily a
totally fair comparison.
Um, but you would have expected to
maybe see some level of trend where
higher domain authority is a higher
number of, um, first page rankings.
You don't see that at all.
It almost looks like the inverse trend.
So it's just kind of like a wash.
So what I end up concluding, and you
can read this article, I think what
is a big deal here is People think
people really index, I think over
index domain authority, which is
really just a metric for like number
of backlinks that your domain has
and the strength of those backlinks.
Domain authority being Ahrefs is, Oh,
we were using Ahrefs as domain rating
metric, which is, you know, one of many.
So, and I think people say
like, that's really important.
It is.
But Google's algorithm is not just
like you can see on any SERP, it's
not just sorting by domain authority.
There is this more ephemeral concept
that people throw around an SEO called
topical authority that a lot of people
have said they've seen secondhand
evidence, and we've seen that as well.
And I think that can help explain
this specifically the keywords we're
going after, we call bottom of funnel.
That means they're about products.
So for the concussion clinic
client, cognitive effects that you
showed, it would be keywords around
concussion, concussion treatment,
concussion clinics, or whatever.
Those products related keywords, naturally
you have higher topical authority on that
because that's what your site is about.
That's what your product is about.
So if you sell CRM software and all
links pointing so far, like, you know,
most of them are about CRM software
because that's what your site is about.
If you're doing some top of funnel
marketing strategy where your content
and your content team are trying to go
after some general purpose sales topic,
because CRMs are for salespeople, it
may take time to get topical authority.
That's why.
A lot of content agencies and
gurus for lack of a better term,
talk about this hub and spoke and
there's other terms for it as well.
Pillar content type methods.
What they're saying in this hub and spoke
technique and pillar content technique
is in order for us to rank for this topic
area or this head keyword, we need to
build a bunch of articles around that
topic so that Google and their algorithm.
Sees us as authoritative on that topic.
They give us more topical authority.
My argument is if you're doing bottom of
funnel type content, like our strategy,
you should have a headstart on topical
authority because all the content on
your site, your marketing site, your
homepage, your features, pages, whatever.
Your help pages, even your knowledge
base are about that product category.
In my CRM examples are all about
CRMs and probably the existing
people linking to you are about CRMs.
If you just launched your site,
you probably did some product hunt
launch or like whatever, whatever.
And like you launched it on some places
and people are talking about you as a CRM.
So going after CRM keywords should give
you a headstart and topical authority.
So your domain authority, AKA
the number of backlinks to
your site should matter less.
Then if you were going after a general
purpose sales term, you could really
call it a case study, but we're going
to show some real client data here.
Um, so we, we've talked about this client
on a number of these episodes, uh, in the
last few months, uh, they're Mirascope.
I think we talked about them
when we were about to produce
their disruption story from them
before we really had any rankings.
That was the first piece that we did.
Uh, but then we started going
after, uh, Some of these keywords.
And we had mentioned that we were
doing the disruption story because
their site had a domain rating of 0.
5, which was the lowest that I've ever
seen of any site that I've ever worked on.
Um, and you could probably buy a brand
new GoDaddy domain and they would have
it still, yeah, I would still have
like a one or something like that.
So they're truly just
getting started with SEO.
And so I think it's a good case study
just to show how quickly you can drive
rankings with the right process despite
having a really low domain rating.
And so.
They started with us in February.
In month one we only published the
first piece, and that first piece
was a disruption story, so really
the SEO side started in March.
Uh, here we are at the end of June.
It's June 28th today when we're recording.
And you can see that we've already
started to generate not only first page
rankings, but rankings in the top three
positions, including Their own, uh,
company name, which they historically
were getting beaten out by a bunch of
product listings, but you can see here,
people are not going to understand that
they're going to be like, well, why is it
hard to rank for your own product name?
Uh, their name is Mirascope that happens
to be an existing children's toy category.
So it's not like just making up, you
know, contently or some, that's, I think
that's actual business apologies, but
like not making up some startup name
and you're obviously it's easy to rank
for it in this case, like this was
just like an existing toy category.
So it was actually non, not
that easy to rank for it.
But now we're already ranking number one.
I wanted to give that context.
Yeah.
So what were March, April, May, June.
So four months of doing SEO.
Content now and you can start to see
we have multiple different types of
posts ranking on page one already.
So we have a couple comparison
pieces already in position one.
Again, you could see the volume and
say, okay, that doesn't really matter.
It's not really competitive, but now we
have some higher volume keywords here that
we're already ranking on page one for.
So playing chain alternatives,
400 volume, prompt versioning, 30.
LinkChain Prompt Template 700 and so you
can kind of just see even four months in
again a testament to That data that I was
talking about earlier where we often see
Companies start to rank on page one even
in those that first One to five month
period and I do think a lot of these
rankings took hold in the last month or so
So yeah, maybe in the first three months.
It's rare to see Uh A bunch of first page
rankings, but just wanted to show this
because the site right as of now So four
months in when we started from point five
has a dr of 10 and Almost every piece
that we've produced for them so far on the
seo side is on page one So it is possible
to get rankings this quickly And domain
rating isn't always a factor that we I
guess look at when we, when we're trying
to drive results from content marketing,
I think the key thing is the strategy.
I think the strategy can again,
like Devesh was saying, if, if
we're only going after top of the
funnel keywords and they're highly
competitive, it's probably rare that
we would see these kind of results.
But because we're going after
these high intent keywords
that most other competitors.
Just don't even think to go after, uh,
we can start to see these really good
rankings for them show up quickly.
Yeah.
And then, yeah, again, like, just
like you said, if people are saying,
oh, there's a low volume, I also saw
the keyword difficulty column on the
right side, they had really no numbers.
Yeah.
Like, don't get us wrong.
Uh, there's a reason why
this one's ranking, right?
This is like a burgeoning space.
LLM apps and development.
Yes.
Those are lower key or difficulty things.
We're not making an outlandish
claim that somehow magically with
our method, a domain rating of 0.
5, you can rank for best
car insurance in two months.
That's ridiculous.
So like, yeah, that's like a particular
example, but the point remains.
Domain authority or domain rating
is not the be all end all that a lot
of people in SEO make it out to be.
And there are instances in particular,
if you can find less competitive
keywords that are still bottom of
funnel that are specific to your product
and what it does, you can rank fast.
Don't shy away from that.
Yeah.
The last thing that I want to
touch on that now that you talked
about it too is keyword difficulty.
Because there's people that'll shy
away from various keywords because the
keyword difficulty is high so I Don't
I don't really tend to pay attention to
keyword difficulty as a metric in Terms
of deciding whether it makes sense to go
after the keyword or not If the keyword
difficulty is low Sometimes it can
still take a little bit to rank for, and
sometimes if the keyword difficulty is
high, it can, you can rank for it quickly.
Again, it kind of just
depends on the site.
I don't think you should really
look at the keyword difficulty as
just a metric to decide whether
to go after the keyword or not.
I think you should produce the piece
of content, put it out there, and
then continue to build links to it and
see how difficult it is to move up.
So, yeah, we could maybe even do an
entire episode on a deep dive of like
examples of difficulty and because
I've just seen such a spread there.
I've seen keywords that are seemingly easy
to go after that it takes a while to rank
or there is decent competition for them.
And then I've also seen keywords that
are really hard to rank for that.
We have been able to rank
for, but it does take time.
And I think the better way to think
about keyword difficulty is not
whether or not you should go after it.
It's just, you should think generally
that higher keyword difficulties
are going to take more time to rank.
So if you're going after a really
competitive category keyword term where
there's a bunch of big sites, let's say
like HubSpot, like, I don't know, like
Contently, since you mentioned them.
Um, I didn't mean to, I was just trying
to make up a random startup sounding name.
I know, but yeah, I, I do think if
you're going up against sites like
that, you're going after a really
competitive keyword, it's going to just
take more time, like expect, expect
the rankings to take a year to rank
for that keyword with a lot of links.
Um, and so, yeah, I just wanted
to touch on that as well.
Yeah, I think we can explore whether
we want to do a, uh, another episode
and just kind of dive into that.
Just remember that keyword difficulty
is really just a metric of these SEO
softwares like Ahrefs, just saying
what the relative amount of links and,
you know, Domain authority is for the
other things ranking on page one, but
that does not factor topical authority.
It does not factor how well those
pieces of content have like gone
after that particular keyword.
Those things are still in your control.
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