How many CMOs still write articles for their company website? According to Tim Soulo of Ahrefs, the answer should be all of them.
Because when it comes to SEO, tricks can only take your content so far. The rest of the journey to the top is fueled by new ideas, real insights, and the kind of credibility only your senior team members can offer.
Even if you leverage best practices and great content, you’ll still need a little patience. Like Rome, a number one rank can’t be built in a day.
Marketing to Marketers
Tim Soulo has demanding criteria for his company’s content writers.
Why? Because Ahrefs’ marketing is geared towards marketers—an audience with an eye for quality.
To attract his discerning audience, Tim encourages his writers to challenge the content status quo with hands-on product experimentation and unconventional marketing ideas.
“I am a huge fan of sharing my ideas about marketing and sharing things that we learned while doing marketing at Ahrefs with other people and often challenging the status quo. We don’t necessarily believe this stuff that other marketers say or other folks leaders in the space say, so we like to challenge it. We like to test it. And we like to share our own experience with people so that they would get a different view of some of the conventional marketing wisdom,” said Tim.
Creating a Content Playground
Tim’s content strategy is aimed at getting into the reader’s head—or imagination, to be more precise.
“I’m not sure where I’ve heard this quote first, but it was something along the lines of, ‘The first time people use your product is in their heads.’ So what we were trying to do with our content marketing is we’re trying to create content that would incentivize people to imagine themselves using Ahrefs for solving the problem that they had when they opened an article on a certain topic,” Tim explained.
To do that, Ahrefs’ content features interface screenshots, step-by-step instructions, and enough guidance for new users to hit the ground running.
Choose Authenticity Over Hype
No one wants to sound like a salesman. But in Tim’s view, integrity shines through your sales pitch.
“If your product genuinely helps people with their problems, helps them achieve their goals, you’re doing them a disservice by not trying to sell this product to them. So it’s all about integrity. It’s all about knowing that your product is actually helpful. Of course, if you’re selling something that people don’t need, you should feel bad about it,” said Tim.
Ahrefs’ SEO tools provide a tangible benefit to users, so promotion isn’t an ethical dilemma. In fact, Tim thrives on the business-changing feedback he gets from happy customers.
Do you want to maximize visibility?
If you’re looking to maximize content visibility, you need to be both discoverable and bookmarkable.
- Provide problem-solving articles that rank high on Google searches.
- Produce consistent quality content so that you don’t need to rely on Google—users will come to your site directly for answers.
“If you search in Google or YouTube for something like, how do I do link building, how to do an SEO audit, how to do proper email outreach, blah, blah, blah – we want to be there for you. We want to be ranking at the top, so you will be able to find us. And we also want to build the brand and credibility where people wouldn’t even go to YouTube to search for those things, but they will actually search on our YouTube channel or on our blog for those things,” said Tim.
The 90/10 Content Strategy
Tim has a simple rule for Ahrefs’ content strategy: 90% keywords, 10% innovation.
To create most of your traffic-driving content, focus on the basics of SEO and ask smart questions like:
- What’s the popularity of the search query?
- What’s the difficulty of ranking, who are the competitors?
- What’s the ease or difficulty level to rank there?
- What’s the business potential for us to showcase how awesome and effective our product is?
While discoverability is key, don’t discount the value of creativity to take your content that last mile.
“10% is trying to build our authority and credibility as thought leaders in the space. Which means that we want to talk about topics that no one is necessarily searching for, but should we write about them? And should we give people some unique perspective, unique insights?” explained Tim.
How to Build a Content Team
When it comes to hiring a content team, choose product experts with a knack for words. And then let them experiment, write, and publish topics about the product features they know best.
“Whenever I read some of the content that my fellow colleagues publish on our blog, sometimes they come up with tactics and strategies that I wouldn’t think of. So it’s not that we have a group of people who are responsible for coming up with use cases and then we have a group of people who are responsible for writing articles and supporting those use cases. No, it happens quite naturally. Our team members pick their own topics,” said Tim.
This way, Ahrefs’ content stays fresh and relevant—and rings true with an insider perspective.
Ideas > Word Count
It can be tempting to turn to cheap writers for content churning, but great ideas can’t be outsourced.
Not surprisingly, the best content will come from your most knowledgeable product & marketing team members.
“I know I have lots of unique perspectives to share. So why would I try to outsource this to some, I don’t know, Fiverr writer who would write 100 words for like $10 or something? Why would I do this if I can create content much better than this quote-unquote ‘writer’ because I have actual ideas? It’s not the words that you put on the page. It’s the actual ideas,” Tim said.
Your senior team members might be busy, but squeezing in the time to put pen to paper can lead to skyrocketing content.
Train with Your Tools
Your SEO tools are only helpful as your know-how.
The most expensive mistake users can—and do—make? Misinterpreting the data and insights that their SEO tools give them.
“Lots of people misinterpret the data that they see, or they don’t even know where to look. So it is very important to actually study the software you’re using well and understand what you’re seeing, understand the exact numbers,” Tim said.
SEO platforms present data without comment, leaving it up to users to understand key metrics. Getting a handle on your software will ensure you get your money’s worth.
Expertise Always Wins
No matter how many SEO tricks you know, ranking high requires time and dedication.
“Ranking in Google is not just about logging into tools, looking at some metrics, and figuring out how to rank number one by being smarter than the other person. It’s actually about being worthy of ranking number one, and this doesn’t necessarily happen in a day. Sometimes you have to spend years becoming worthy of ranking for a certain phrase,” said Tim.
Ultimately, content that is produced by credible industry leaders with an existing loyal audience will outperform purely SEO-driven articles.
“For example, if we’re talking about SEO, who would get more links—me writing an article about SEO with over 10 years experience in the industry and credibility and all the following that I have? Or some newbie SEO who just started their website? There’s no chance for them to outrank me because of all the body of work that I have created to this date to get to where I am,” Tim said.
So how can you leverage content to start climbing the SEO ladder?
When in doubt, write about the topics that genuinely interest and inspire you—or your content won’t stand up to the competition.
