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- Zapier's programatic SEO approach that puts their partners as the hero
Zapier's programatic SEO approach that puts their partners as the hero
Scaling with partner automation and content growth flywheels.
Whatās up! This is Sheldon from The Zero to One - breaking down the secret growth tactics that grow your favorite startups.
Hereās whatās in store for you today:
Growth breakdown: How Zapier generates over 6 million organic search visits with their automated SEO strategy.
Cool things I saw to take your growth to the moon.
Top tools to level up your growth.
Zapier: Automated SEO machine worth millions in organic clicks
š The one thing:
If youāre short on time, hereās the one thing to take away:
Approach your SEO strategy from multiple angles.
As generative AI is becoming a more daily part of our lives. Programmatic SEO is becoming more popular - and understandably so.
Programmatic SEO can be a great boost for early-stage startups to get the ball rolling while their blog is building traction and authority. And takes a fraction of the time.
But SEO has a lot more potential. The easier something becomes, the more it becomes commoditized. You need to blend in value-packed blog content to build off a programmatic base.
š The tactic:
A brief explanation of the tactic.
Last month Zapier brought in over 6 million organic search visits.
Thatās impressive for any business.
But when you consider that the monthly search volume for āautomation toolā (the core of Zapier) is under 10k. Itās like finding a different flavored Dorito in your packet. Itās awesome. But youāre also puzzled how it got here.
So how has Zapier done it?
By turning the focus away from them and onto their partners - the apps that Zapier integrates. Over 90% of those 6 million visits came from non-Zapier brand searches.
They have gone after their partners' use cases. Creating content on an almost infinite list of potential use cases for their Zapier.
āBest productivity appā - guess who pops up #1 organic on Google?
Zapier. Not Notion. Not ClickUp. Not Monday.
āCalendar appsā?
Zapier. Not Google Calendar. Not Fantastical. Not Hey Calendar.
āHow to send Calendly bookings to Notion databaseā?
Zapier.
And the best part?
Theyāve pretty much automated it all.
By turning the focus away from them, Zapier have created a scalable and automated SEO machine that puts their partners at the front of their marketing.
šÆ The execution:
3 actionable insights from the tactic.
šŖ 1. The helpful backdoor
Zapier had to find a solution to the problem of low search intent for its core feature.
So instead of focusing on Zapierās solutions, they focused on creating high-quality, unbiased, informational pieces that answered questions people were already searching for - ābestā lists, how-to guides, etc.
Then once they got people on the page, they delivered on the searchās promise, but also offered an alternative, better solution: Zapier. Opening a back door for user acquisition.
(three phases graphic)
Today their blog contributes over 67% of Zapierās organic traffic. A huge driver for signups.
To make this practical, letās look at a recent post: The best AI chatbots in 2024.
Zapier is not an AI chatbot. But it does provide integrations for a lot of them. And through the article, opens the back door to you becoming a Zapier user. Take this example with Claude:
A few clicks later and youāre creating an automation to write email responses.
These are often high-volume keywords that if you can rank high on Google, bring thousands of visitors per article.
The best example, Zapierās hack with the ābestā format:
Ranking in the top 3 for 2,397 keywords with this ābestā pattern in the USA alone. And becoming a go-to source for unbiased product reviews and comparisons.
š¬ 2. Intent-based landing pages
I know youāve been here before:
You find a new tool. Fall in love with it. Canāt stop using it. But it doesnāt quite fit into your current tech stack. Why? It doesnāt have the native integrations for the tools you use.
So what do you do?
Well, you Google it - or maybe you use GPT or Claude.
Either way, you get the same answer.
Zapier.
Rather than trying to convince users on integrations and automation. Zapier targeted the specific use cases already being searched for.
They redirected their SEO focus away from Zapier and onto their partners - who were often already household names with a ton of brand value, or niche tools with not many competitors for search. Either way, a win.
To do this, Zapier automatically creates 3 tiers of integrations every time a new app joins their platform.
App landing pages (like this folk page). This is the start. Itās where all the integrations for a specific app can be found. Each page is generated to fit a template structure and layout.
App to App integrations pages (like this Typeform to folk page). This is where we start to see the mass scale. Stemming off the main app page can be hundreds of integration pages.
Workflow-specific pages (like this page on how to send new entries from Typeform to create new persons in your folk CRM). This branches off from each integration pair into the specific use cases. Weāre again talking about hundreds for certain integrations.
Because of this programmatic (automated) approach, they can reach massive scale, with almost no human effort. And on top of this have created a content growth flywheel to automate sales:
More traffic and users ā More apps want to join ā More integrations ā More landing pages ā More traffic and users. And so it continues. Practically all on automation.
š 3. Links everywhere
One of the biggest things that stuck out to me about the Zapier website is just how connected everything is. They are masters of internal linking.
Letās go back to the Claude example from above.
You see, itās not just the backdoor thatās been opened. But also the door to the kitchen and lounge. Then you follow those links. And get to more suggested automations with Zapier. And you guessed it, more internal links.
Why does this work so well?
It keeps users on your site for longer. Which increases Googleās ranking of your site and increases the chance of conversion.
Provides more chances for someone to find a Zap that appeals to them.
Passes link equity between pages (Zapier uses pages that have a lot of backlinks to boost other pages)
But key to it all, is that Zapierās content is information-rich and useful. People wonāt buy from you if your content isnāt valuable.
How did you like today's deep dive? |
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Stay awesome and speak soon!
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