I cut my teeth in marketing at CXL.
It’s where I ran my first proper A/B test (that eventually propelled me into a career in experimentation leadership). It’s also where I developed a sense of taste and quality standards when it came to editorial content.
Our content mission statement was simple (if not outlandish): everything we published had to be the best thing ever written on the topic.
We wanted to be the first and last resource someone needed on a given topic.
This backed up into the broader goal: to be the absolute center of gravity in the conversion optimization universe (which is also why the company ran epic conferences and generally invested in community and education).
Our traffic allocation looked like many others, though: most of it came from organic search. It’s been a while since I’ve had access to their analytics, but I think it was upwards of 80% SEO traffic.
Of course, it’s easy to apply basic SEO principles when you’re creating content that people bookmark and navigate to directly (and link to organically). The wind is at your back. It’s smooth sailing.
It’s been many years since I worked at CXL, but to this day, their guest post guidelines still reference this ethos:
I’m always humbled and surprised when people who hire us tell me that they had been reading my content since the CXL days.
Can SEO work without a strong mission? Yeah, of course. But it’s cargo cult science – reverse engineering surface level factors that successful brands do, but missing the underlying ingredients for success.
“Solve for the Customer” Is a Safe Bet
CXL’s editorial mission doesn’t have to be (and probably shouldn’t be) yours.
Here are three other examples:
1. Mutiny and customer-centric content playbooks
I recently spoke with Ryan Narod (previously chief growth officer at Mutiny) at a meetup in NYC, and he shared how Mutiny had constructed their content marketing efforts.
Their marketing team didn’t start with SEO in mind.
Instead, they asked a key question: “How can we create the most helpful content for our users?”
From there, they built a highly-respected newsletter and invested heavily in customer stories and playbooks, offering both social proof and actionable strategies for using Mutiny.
(Shouts out to Stewart)
I’m a reader of their newsletter, and I’ve read through several of their playbooks.
SEO, I can tell you from working in a similar space, is pretty saturated for the queries they care about. It’s a tough game to start from scratch. Not that it couldn’t drive some value, but how much marginal value (or reader utility) could they drive by writing another “best personalization software” listicle?
So their SEO? I still don’t think they invest in it. Ryan told me they didn’t consider it. And I was curious, so I looked at their Ahrefs:
Clearly still not a huge priority for them.
They started by solving customer problems and picked content programs and channels that sprung from that first principle.
With these strong foundations, I’m fairly confident if you gave me a few months, I could get that SEO engine humming (call me!). Again, smooth sailing with a strong tailwind.
2. Zapier and utility-based programmatic pages
Every SEO has, at one point, either read or written a take about Zapier’s programmatic SEO strategy. But most people take away the wrong lessons.
They didn’t start by looking at a competitor or keyword research and say, “we could scale organic traffic if we just create 1000 pages.”
No, they identified a pain point / job-to-be-done. People wanted to connect product A (HubSpot) with product B (Google Sheets) – which is what their product helps you do.
When you hear Wade Foster talk about the idea, it sounds plain, simple, and logical:
“We knew that people already wanted integrations, right? Integrations was the thing when Zapier started. I remember going to basecamp.com and you could go to their ‘extras’ page and see cool little ways that you could find little add-ons for Basecamp that made Basecamp extra good.
The fact that people were already searching for integrations and proactively seeking out solutions for us, the marketing piece didn’t have to be as novel. It was like people are already looking for this stuff. It’s just not provided very well.”
Now, you have tons of people putting the cart before the horse, asking “how can we replicate what Zapier did,” instead of thinking from the bottom-up, “how can we solve customer problems through content and leverage SEO to get in front of these people?”
Eli Schwartz coined this term, Product-Led SEO, and spoke about the Zapier work in Lenny’s podcast recently. The summary:
“The goal is to position your product in a way that fits the user’s self-discovery journey. Trying to shoehorn your product into search rankings won’t lead to long-term success.”
3. Gable AI and educating an existing market on a new paradigm
Gable AI is an amazing client who is building in the data quality and governance space. They enable data contracts, which is an upstream data quality method that allows for visibility and collaboration between data consumers and data producers.
It’s okay if you don’t understand much of that, because the job of their content program is to elucidate those concepts.
First off, they spearhead a lot of this education through thought leadership – tons of followers and engagement on Linkedin, speaking at conferences, going on podcasts, writing a book(!)
And when it comes to SEO, we treat pages like “landing pads” – they “catch” people who have seen thought leadership content and want to learn more about Gable’s specific paradigm on data quality and data lineage.
And they also capture problem aware searchers who are already familiar with the broader concepts, and then we drive them deeper into the funnel and into Gable’s worldview (and product that solves these problems).
SEO simply wouldn’t work if we just looked at a bunch of data products and did a content gap, sorting by high volume keywords, and writing slightly longer or more optimized content.
It works because we’re operating in the center of the holy four dimension: audience, brand, SEO, and conversion / customer journey.
Why exist? On content mission statements
I know this newsletter may sound overly white hat and a bit naive. I know there are exceptions that slip through the cracks and hacks that work…for a while.
But personally, when I talk to prospects, my eyes light up when I hear them speak of a vision bigger than “our traffic dropped, we want to recover it.”
I talked to JH Scherck recently (who loves his constant references in this newsletter) and he said essentially the same thing.
It’s a really simple, yet deeply uncomfortable difficult, question for brands to ask: why should people pay attention to our content (or product, for that matter)?
Is it better? Is it different? Does it solve a new problem in a unique way? Is it more entertaining or engaging?
If there’s no fundamental reason to choose you over the abundance of other options, people simply won’t, and algorithms, over time, won’t either (even if you build a whole bunch of links and create “topical authority” as measured by some random SEO tool).
Google’s own guidelines align with this. They’ve shifted their focus to “people-first content,” rewarding sites that create valuable, helpful resources for users. In their Search Essentials guide, they ask:
“Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?”
Again, I’m not naive enough to believe this is always the end result. But for mature brands, or those who want to build a lasting channel or even a moat, it’s the bet I would be making. Then you can do all the crazy tactical stuff you want, like title tag testing, programmatic content creation, link building, etc.
But that underlying mission creates resiliency, something I believe to be increasingly important as algorithms have been shown to be capricious, and channel growth is not guaranteed (in SEO, social, or anywhere else).
I’ve always loved Andy Crestodina’s idea of the “content marketing mission statement.”
I apply this more broadly than blogging or “information” – to the website and visitor “utility” more holistically.
For example, think of a heavily horizontal platform like Glide, where you can build essentially any app with their no code app builder. Big problem there is “what do I build” and “where do I start?”
Templates! YouTube! UGC! Obvious opportunities to show people how cool the platform is and how easy it is to use.
At the end of the day, SEO is a distribution channel. It’s incredibly powerful, but it only amplifies what’s already there. If your content / website has a clear mission—one that’s focused on solving real problems for your audience—SEO will work harder for you.
But if the only goal is to rank, your strategy is likely to fall short in the long run. So, before you dive headfirst into SEO, take a moment to ask: What’s the purpose?
Substance has to be there.
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