In some cases, they’re not sure why they’re not ranking. In others, they attribute the issue to factors such as having a lower domain rating than their competitors, or not having enough budget to build sufficient backlinks to their content. 

In our experience, while domain rating and backlinks are important (i.e. you can’t have a DR of zero to rank and you usually need to do some link building), it is still possible to compete and outrank your competitors in Google even if you have a “low” DR (it’s relative) or minimal link building — even for high value, buying-intent keywords. 

In this post, we’re going to discuss the main reasons why companies often have difficulty outranking their competition (or even getting to the first page of search results). Then, we’ll share the 3-step process we use to help our clients outrank their competitors in organic search, even when they have less domain authority than their competitors.

Table of Contents

Why companies often have difficulty outranking their competition on Google

• Reason #1: They don’t create content that thoroughly satisfies search intent for their target keywords
  
  
• Reason #2: They just “sprinkle” keywords into their content, thinking that will get them to rank
  
  
• Reason #3: They try to rank for many different target keywords with individual posts
  
  
• Reason #4: They aren’t strategic enough when choosing target keywords

Our 3-step process for outranking competitors in organic search

1. Base every piece of content on an in-depth SERP analysis for a specific target keyword
   
   
2. Create dedicated blog posts or web pages that deeply satisfy search intent for each target keyword
   
   
3. Target a strategic mix of keywords with varying levels of competition

Note: If you’d like help outranking your competitors on Google using the process below, you can learn more about our agency here and reach out about working with us here.

Why Companies Often Have Difficulty Outranking Their Competition on Google

Reason #1: They Don’t Create Content That Thoroughly Satisfies Search Intent for Their Target Keywords

One of the most important ranking factors of Google’s algorithm is fulfilling the search intent of the specific query someone has typed in. In other words, in order to rank highly for a keyword, you need to provide searchers with the most relevant answer or information to the question or topic they’ve searched for.

In our experience, doing this successfully requires two equally important parts:

• Doing an in-depth “SERP analysis.” This is the process of analyzing the search engine results page for your target keyword to see what topics are being discussed and what page types (e.g. list articles, how to posts, landing pages, etc.) are showing up in the existing top results. This information indicates the topics and page types that Google has determined are the best match for the intent of that search query.

• Creating content that is informed by that SERP analysis. Once you’ve determined the topics you need to cover and the type of page you need to use in order to match search intent for your target keyword, you need to create content that follows that framework and covers those topics (and ideally do so in a way that’s better or more thorough than existing results). 

Many companies lack the know-how or process to do one or both of these steps. As a result, they end up creating content that doesn’t sufficiently meet the search intent of their target keywords, and they fail to rank. 

Reason #2: They Just “Sprinkle” Keywords into Their Content, Thinking That Will Get Them to Rank

A common practice in SEO is to hand writers a list of keywords that they want to rank for and have them “sprinkle” those keywords throughout the articles they write, thinking this will get their site organic rankings for these keywords.

This doesn’t work. 

As we explained above, ranking for target keywords requires a much more strategic process of creating content that deeply meets search intent. If others are creating tailored content to rank for specific keywords, and you’re just sprinkling keywords in here or there, you have a slim shot at ranking.

Reason #3: They Try to Rank for Many Different Target Keywords with Individual Posts

Another common mistake that companies make is trying to rank for a number of competitive keywords with a single web page or blog post. (There was a time when this strategy worked, but for the most part, it doesn’t anymore.)

In doing so, their content gets outranked by competitors that are creating dedicated pages to go after each search term, allowing them to more deeply meet the search intent of each keyword. 

Reason #4: They Aren’t Strategic Enough When Choosing Target Keywords

A final mistake that we commonly see, discussed at length in our post on Underdog SEO, is companies investing heavily in ranking for a few of their highest buying-intent (but highest competition) category keywords, while ignoring their less competitive (but still high buying-intent) long-tail keywords.

For example:

• A hosting company spends all of their effort trying to rank for “web hosting,” while ignoring slightly lower competition opportunities such as “web hosting services for ecommerce” or “web hosting services with email.” 

• A content marketing agency focuses all of their effort trying to rank for “content marketing agency,” while ignoring opportunities such as “outsource content creation.”

• A CRM tool trying to rank for the term “CRM software,” but ignoring opportunities such as “CRM that integrates with QuickBooks.”

Don’t get us wrong. We support businesses going after their main product and service category terms. But companies ranking for these sorts of category-definition keywords usually have extremely strong domains, are well-known brands in their category, have spent tens of thousands of dollars to own and protect those keywords (mostly through building a ton of links to the ranking page), have more money to spend on content and SEO, and have spent years trying to rank for these terms. 

So, one way to outrank your competitors is to go after less competitive, long-tail keywords that they may not even be thinking of targeting. These variations will generally have lower search volume, but they can still drive significant conversions. And furthermore, ranking for them builds up your domain authority over time which can help you target and rank for those higher competition, category-definition keywords later. 

It is some combination of these mistakes that often cause companies to get outcompeted in organic search. By following the framework laid out below, you can give yourself a much better chance at outranking competitors, even when you have a less authoritative domain.

Our 3-Step Process for Outranking Competitors in Organic Search

1. Base Every Piece of Content on an In-Depth SERP Analysis for a Specific Target Keyword

For each individual keyword that we decide to target for a client, our process begins with doing an in-depth analysis of the existing Google search results for that term, including:

• Reviewing the titles, page types, and sources of existing page one results. SEO titles and page types reveal the types of content ranking for a given keyword (e.g. list posts, “how to” articles, guides, product landing pages, etc.).
  
  In general, what is ranking tells you what Google’s algorithm already thinks is best for this keyword, so typically we will use one of those content types for our piece of content. But that’s not a hard and fast rule. If we feel we can better meet search intent with another type of content, we may try it.
  
  We will also note the sources of the top results to understand who we’re competing against (e.g. Direct competitors? News sites? Adjacent products and services?, etc.). Our goal is to understand exactly what the existing results are doing and be intentional about what content type we’ll use.

• Reviewing the topics discussed inside of those posts or pages — identifying themes or topics that come up repeatedly. 
  
  Next, we’ll scan or read each of the results on the first page and pay attention to topics that are discussed (especially those listed in subheadings) throughout the page. As we go through the results, we’ll take note of topics that come up frequently. This indicates that they likely need to be covered in our post in order for it to rank.

• Identifying what individual pages or articles do well — and what they do poorly. 
  
  Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of existing top results allows us to incorporate elements that we think work well, and gives us insight into the ways in which we can differentiate our post to create a better piece of content.

• Determine the intent of searchers typing in this term. 
  
  Once we’ve gone through the results, we’ll summarize the core intent(s) of the users searching this keyword. 

You can check out our interview with Bernard Huang of Clearscope for an in-depth video tutorial on doing SERP analysis.

For more detail on how we approach this, check out our article on SEO content writing which walks through an in-depth example of a SERP analysis we did for our previous client, TapClicks.

2. Create Dedicated Blog Posts or Pages That Deeply Satisfy Search Intent for Each Target Keyword

We use a one-page-per-keyword strategy, targeting individual keywords with unique, dedicated pages. This enables us to meet search intent more thoroughly than competing content, and achieve more page one rankings (specifically position 1–3 rankings where the majority of search traffic comes from) for our clients.

Based on our SERP analysis, we’ll choose a post framework (e.g. “how to,” product list, comparison, etc.) that others are using to get top results for that keyword — unless we think we can beat existing results with a different format. 

Once that’s decided, we use an interview-based writing process, whereby we interview experts at our client’s company on the topic, ensuring that we get their perspective on all of the necessary subtopics (again, based on our SERP analysis) that we need to address in the article in order to rank, as well as any unique or original ideas that they have on the topic which can help us differentiate the article.

We then leverage any insights gleaned from the interview to come up with a unique angle for the post and write the piece, covering each of the necessary topics to satisfy search intent, while incorporating originality and differentiation wherever possible. This combination is what makes truly high-quality content.

Finally, once we have a completed draft, we use the SEO tool Clearscope to ensure we’re using enough related keywords in our post for on-page SEO, add internal links, and write our SEO title and meta description.

3. Target a Strategic Mix of Keywords with Varying Levels of Competition

We have written extensively about how and why our SEO strategy focuses on ranking for bottom of the funnel, high buying-intent keywords. 

Specifically, keywords that fall into three broad categories:

• Category Keywords: Terms that describe the exact category of the product or service our client sells (e.g. social media management software, digital marketing agency, user experience designer, etc.). 

• Comparison and Alternatives Keywords: Terms where potential customers are comparing products or services and looking at options on the market (e.g. Google Analytics alternatives, Ahrefs vs. Semrush, etc.).

• Jobs to Be Done Keywords: Keywords that indicate someone has a problem that your product helps solve (e.g. how to measure organic traffic, improve search engine rankings, etc.).

Within each of these categories, there is a wide array of keywords with varying levels of search volume, intent, and competition. So, when we’re doing keyword research and developing a keyword strategy for a client, especially if they have lower domain authority compared to their competitors, we don’t just focus solely on their highest competition, category-defining keywords.

We likely will target some of those, but we’ll look for longer tail opportunities like we discussed above. In particular, we’ll look for keywords that map to a competitive advantage that our client’s product/service has over their competition, per our specificity strategy.

For example, when working with a QA testing platform, we didn’t immediately target “qa testing.” We targeted keywords such as “automated web application testing” and “codeless test automation” which directly mapped to their core differentiator of being a codeless tool. 

These are examples of lower competition, but still high buying-intent category keywords. But these opportunities can be found in the other keyword categories as well. 

For example, we were working with a remote executive assistant service that had a domain rating of 28 (quite a low DR). And while many of the posts we produced for them were taking months to progress towards the first page of search results, the comparison keywords we targeted were getting onto the first page within weeks of publishing.

In looking in Ahrefs at their rankings today, we see that all 5 of the comparison keywords we went after are ranking in the top 3 positions of search results.

There are different factors that we think contributed to this. For one, we created in-depth dedicated pages targeting each of these keywords and optimized them very precisely in order to rank. But we also found that the competitors in their space hadn’t caught onto this strategy yet, leaving the door open for us to rank for these terms.

This strategy works and is the foundational principle behind Underdog SEO, as we’ve demonstrated in numerous case studies.

Here are a few to check out:

• Scaling content: Expanding from bottom of funnel content to top of funnel (Geekbot case study)

• Scaling SEO traffic from 920 to 14,577 sessions in 6 months (Circuit case study)

• How to do B2B content marketing without domain expertise (Rainforest QA case study)

• How to create a keyword strategy for a new, innovative product (case study of a video editing software client)

Learn More about Our SEO and Content Marketing Agency

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute a content marketing strategy built around driving lead generation and sales, not just traffic, you can learn more about our service and pricing here. We also offer a PPC service for paid search, which you can learn about here.

• Join Our Content Marketing Team: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing in this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course and community, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback. Learn more here. 

But in our experience working with many dozens of companies over the years, most try to rank for them with product pages (eCommerce) or a few “Solutions” or “Use Case” pages (SaaS).  

What we’ve learned after publishing and tracking hundreds of pieces of content is that the most effective way to rank for (all) the long-tail keywords that relate to your brand’s products or services is by creating dedicated long-form content — ideally, one piece of content for every long-tail keyword you’re going after. 

Your Homepage Can’t Magically Rank for All of These Long-Tail Keywords

Ranking for use-case-specific keywords doesn’t happen by accident. You can’t just plug these keywords on your site pages and hope you will automatically rank for them. You have to create dedicated content to rank for super-specific, long-tail keywords. Why? Because:

• Homepages and product pages rarely have sufficient detail. They contain high-level copy about the brand and product that isn’t specific to any industry or reader. 

• Industry or Use Case pages aren’t usually competitive enough to hit page one because, even though they have more focused information, they rarely satisfy search intent for long-tail keywords. 

For example, look at the SERP for the keyword “accounting software for small business:” the first three results are all list posts comparing accounting software (in fact, 8/10 results on page one are all comparison posts). 

Google clearly favors list posts because that’s what best appeals to search intent — the searcher is shopping for accounting software and wants to find the best solution for their small business, it’s obvious that they will want to compare a few options before making a decision. So there’s just no way a homepage or landing page that talks about only one brand will rank for this specific search query.

To capitalize on these audience-specific keywords, you need to do the hard work of creating blog content that systematically ranks for each one. 

Not only is this the most effective way to hit page one for these search terms, but by creating this content, you create opportunities to speak directly to all the different target audiences that are searching different long-tail keywords — their pains, what they hope to accomplish from their search — and describe in clear detail and with specific examples how your product can be tailored to their requirements. This specificity in your content is important for conversion rate. 

We’ve done this work for dozens and dozens of clients and have seen time and time again that dedicated blog content outranks and outperforms landing pages sprinkled with industry-specific, long-tail keywords for the reasons above. 

Below, we explain our process to rank for long-tail keywords. We’ll also run through a few case studies so you can see how we find these keywords for clients and the results from our work.  

How to Rank for Long-Tail Keywords 

1. Find Keywords That Are Closely Related to Your Brand, Products, and Services 

The first thing to do is find the long-tail keywords that are most relevant to your offerings. These are typically variations of what we refer to as your main “category keywords” in our Pain Point SEO framework, that is, keywords that indicate the searcher is looking for your exact type of product. 

The first group of long-tail keywords you should look at just add one layer of specificity to your most relevant category keywords. 

In the example above, it was: accounting software (the primary product category) for small businesses (the layer of specificity). There are tons of examples that could fit this framework.

• Accounting software for nonprofits 
• Professional accounting software  
• Enterprise accounting software
• Accounting software for HVAC businesses
• Accounting software for eCommerce
• Accounting software for property management 
• Accounting software for personal use 
• Accounting software for beginners 

This list goes on.

Choosing which of these layers of specificity makes the most sense for you comes down to considering your ideal customers and unique selling points — which audiences do you want to attract, which strengths or differentiators position you above competitors?

You can also think about long-tail queries that indicate searchers have a question, pain, or job to be done that your products or services satisfy. We call these “Jobs-to-be-Done keywords.” Look for queries that closely align with your brand offerings —the problems or jobs that you offer the absolute best solutions for. These are typically action statements or “how to” type searches. 

Some keyword suggestions here are: how to organize purchase orders, track invoices and payments, or track mileage for taxes. 

Choosing keywords that most closely align with your product or service is important for obvious reasons — the whole point of this SEO strategy is to get your name in front of the right audiences — but it’s also important for rankings because these are the queries where you have the most topical authority and the best chance of hitting page one.

Bonus: Using SEO Tools to Find More Long-Tail Keywords

There are plenty of keyword research tools to find long-tail keyword ideas, popular options include Semrush, Ahrefs, and Answer the Public. 

Semrush is free to use (up to 10 searches per day) and a fairly popular keyword tool, so we’ll show you how this works with their features. 

Start in the Keyword Overview tool and type the keyword phrase you want to search — one trick to find industry or user-specific long-tail keywords is to type “[software category] for” and see all of the results. For example, “accounting software for”.

On the next page, you can see metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, and CPC, then Semrush displays a list of keyword ideas below. 

There are often an enormous number of these industry- or use-case-specific keywords with extremely high buying intent available — we see over 7K options related to accounting software — so you have to filter and use your best judgment. 

Semrush displays categories on the right side (in the screenshot we see: best, business, small, free, mac, etc.) so you can easily filter keywords by topic. There are a number of additional filtering options. We suggest searching by term to find keywords related to your layers of specificity. 

Ahrefs also has a free keyword research tool, where you can do similar searches. Note that they allow an unlimited number of searches, but only show the first 100 keyword ideas with limited metrics on the free plan (you can always upgrade to see the full list and all metrics). 

Start by opening Ahrefs Keyword Generator and typing the keyword phrase. We’ll stick to our “accounting software for” example from above.

From there, Ahrefs displays a list of ideas. You can see keyword difficulty and search volume, and when those metrics were last updated. 

(Keep in mind, both Semrush and Ahrefs offer paid subscriptions with full access to these tools.)

Note: As per our Mini Volume Keywords article,we strongly caution against dismissing keyword opportunities solely because they have low search volume. Many of the super specific long-tail keywords will have lower search volumes, and this is to be expected because they are so specific; but as per that article, the actual traffic you get is almost always much higher than the stated search volume, and as per Pain Point SEO, the conversion rates can be so much higher than top of funnel, higher volume keywords. 

2. Create a Dedicated Blog Post for Each Target Keyword

As we already warned, you can’t create a few landing pages or one massive “ultimate guide” that’s going to hit on every long-tail search that relates to your brand and offerings. 

Think about it: the search results for best accounting software for small business will (and should) be different from results for enterprise accounting software or accounting software for eCommerce. These are three different audiences; they have different problems and require different types of solutions. You can’t possibly hit every vertical with general website pages. 

The only way to effectively rank for each opportunity is to create a unique piece of content for each query. 

Comb through your list of keywords to prioritize topics and plan an individual blog post for each one. 

3. Perform SERP Analysis to See What Your Post Requires to Compete with Top Search Results

Before you start writing, it’s critical to analyze the search engine results page to figure out the search intent of your target keyword. 

Remember, Google’s entire goal is to deliver the most helpful results to satisfy search queries, so the page one results offer a strong indication of what its algorithm favors or wants to show its users for your target keyword. 

Consider again our example above — accounting software for small business: 

One look at the SERP (screenshot above) tells us we need to create a software comparison guide. We can take research a step further, actually scanning through each content piece, to see what competitors they mention and any other topics they cover. Then we know what our post requires and can determine ways to improve upon what’s already ranking. 

You can read more about SERP analysis in our SEO Content Writing guide.

4. Write Content to Appeal to Search Intent and Audiences

Tailor each content piece to the target audience — you need to touch on relevant topics and solutions to rank, but content also needs thoughtful examples, advice, opinions, recommendations, etc. to engage readers and satisfy search intent. 

All of the “fine details” should be catered to the person reading the content. 

In each piece, think about the target audience: their current processes and pain points, how your solution appeals to them, and the specific benefits your solution offers. This lets you speak to each audience more head on; you can drop in relatable quips about what audiences are doing now and how your solution solves their challenges. This gives you a much higher chance of converting the readers who land on your content.

We also wrote a guide on creating reader-centric and conversion-oriented content, which you can find here: Pain Point Copywriting: How to Write Compelling Sales Copy Inside Blog Posts

Here are a few examples of our work ranking clients for these industry-specific long-tail keywords: 

Case Study #1: Ranking Digital Asset Management Software for Industry, Business Size, and Location-Specific Keywords 

A client we recently worked with offers digital asset management (DAM) software. If you’ve never heard of DAM before, it’s essentially Google Drive on steroids, for companies that have tons of digital assets and several employees who need to find them, and thus for whom Google Drive or Dropbox aren’t enough.

Their primary audience is marketers and creative teams since these folks often store and share the most digital files. But, as you can guess, all kinds of businesses can benefit from DAM software, and our client offers features so they can work with small businesses, enterprises, and global teams. So our task was to find allthe long-tail keywords that would get our client in front of the right target audiences. 

During our extensive onboarding interviews with their sales and marketing teams, we talked about: 

• The DAM’s customizability — they can tailor their product to virtually any requirement, offering a “universal DAM.”

• All industries they could realistically cater to, and who to avoid. 

• The DAM’s scalability and support for enterprise companies — these are the big ticket sales. 

• Their onboarding services and custom pricing for small teams. Our client works primarily with enterprise brands, but one of their USPs was support for small, expanding businesses, so targeting small business keywords was a priority for them. 

• The DAM’s global capabilities and expanding their reach beyond the US, into the UK, Australia, and APAC countries. 

We found over a dozen highly specific, long-tail terms to create dedicated content. These were keywords around DAMs for different departments, different use cases, different company sizes, and more. After publishing, we saw 75% of blog posts for all “category + layer of specificity” keywords hit the first page of search results. 

Case Study #2: Finding & Ranking a Unique Help Desk Software for the Right Layer of Specificity Keywords  

Another client of ours who sold help desk software had a slightly different dilemma: they have a solution they can theoretically market across industries, however, their software is strictly an email management system with a few straightforward features, it does not have other help desk tools like live chat, voice, or social media messengers.

So we had two layers of specificity to determine during keyword research: the “help desk software” keyword variations specific to email management plus the additional layers of specificity determined by target audiences and unique selling points. 

Here are some of the important findings from our strategy calls: 

• The help desk is easy to use and offers affordable pricing, so they are a known choice for small businesses. 

• On the flip side, they also have multi-brand features and global scalability, so they can support enterprise and international brands. 

• They are one of the only help desk brands to offer a self-hosted solution, which can be essential for federal institutions or meeting GDPR compliance.  

While we assume that anyone searching general help desk keywords could be interested in software with all the bells and whistles, our client is a good option for anyone needing an email-based, multi-brand, or self-hosted help desk. So we found specific category keywords related to ticket and email management, ease of use, cost, industry, business size, location, device, and hosting options. 

Here’s a look at their ranking positions:

At first, rankings moved slowly; posts were indexing at positions 30+ and crawling to page one. So we: 

• Performed quick SERP research for each piece of content to ensure blog posts still satisfied search intent and were competitive with what was already ranking. 

• Built backlinks to promote content.  

• Performed a technical audit to see if anything on the site’s backend affected the poor rankings.

After identifying and addressing subdomain issues, we saw these posts achieve top rankings — and they’ve sat on page one for 6+ months. They consistently drive traffic from search engines and convert website visitors, without us needing to update or “maintain” content. 

Case Study #3: Covering Every Base for Time Tracking Software That Caters to All Industries & Business Sizes 

The last client to talk about here sells an employee time clock software — a software solution that can obviously be used across any business with hourly employees.

In addition to time tracking, they also offered scheduling and payroll, support for field service teams via mobile apps, and flexibility to customize the software via integrations. They could work with virtually any organization interested in time clock software. 

Since they sold a common software type and worked with businesses big and small, we had a lot of directions to go in during keyword research — some of the boxes we wanted to check were: 

• All feature specific category keywords and their combinations. For example, keywords that suggest the searcher is looking for time tracking and payroll or payroll and scheduling. As an example from another industry (ours, SEO) it would be something like “keyword research and rank tracking tool.”

• All layers of specificity that apply to the product’s unique benefits. For example, many field service teams want GPS-enabled time tracking software so they can see where workers are clocking in from and their routes; since our client’s product has GPS, we could target GPS related keywords. 
• Industry-specific keywords. This client wanted to capitalize on keywords related to contractors and construction teams since they had luck with these types of businesses in the past. However, they also wanted to hit on all industries they could (realistically) sell to — restaurants, hair salons, healthcare organizations, accounting firms, banks, insurance companies, and more are all good candidates for our client’s product. 

• Small-business-related keywords. Our client’s product gets good feedback from reviewers for its ease of use, and they have packages for all team sizes, so they wanted to attract more small business users who were moving away from manual processes. 

• Enterprise keywords. This client usually attracts mid-size and enterprise companies, so we wanted to double down on what was already working for them and pinpoint more of those same leads.

Over our years working together, we’ve written over 100 pieces of content targeting these highly specific, long-tail category keywords. And at the time of publishing, those articles rank for more than 100 BOTF keywords on the first page of Google search. (Many articles rank for more than one keyword.)

Note: In addition to ranking this client in top search positions for these keywords, our content brought in over 2,000+ conversions in 2022. 

When we look at conversions by page, we see most top performers are blog posts written to target specific variations of main category keywords. For example, a category keyword related to construction drove 130+ conversions alone. Another category keyword related to a specific feature benefit generated 100 conversions.  

And this is why we say you need dedicated content to capitalize on these keyword opportunities fully: there’s no way a homepage or landing page is going to rank for these specific keyword phrases, and even if they do, they won’t convert readers nearly as well as tailored content will. 

Want to Work with Us or Learn More About Our Approach to Content Marketing?

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to develop, manage, and execute your content marketing strategy, you can learn more about our service and pricing here.

• Write For Us: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better digital marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback.

And for good reason. As we’ll show below, competitor comparison landing pages are some of the highest converting page types we have seen from the thousands of articles we’ve published for clients over the years.

So, in this post, we’re going to define what these pages are, discuss the main reasons why they’re worth creating for many businesses, and share three unique comparison page strategies that we’ve learned and used to drive significant conversions for our clients. 

Below, we cover:

• What is a competitor comparison landing page?
• Why should you create competitor comparison landing pages?
• 3 unique strategies for creating competitor comparison landing pages

Note: If you’d like help creating pages to rank for your competitor comparison keywords, you can learn more about our agency here and reach out about working with us here.

What Is a Competitor Comparison Landing Page?

Competitor comparison landing pages are website pages in which you compare your product or service to a direct or peripheral competitor. Typically these pages include a feature comparison table, messaging about your service’s unique differentiators, social proof, and a call-to-action (CTA). 

Originally, comparison pages were primarily used by SaaS businesses for PPC advertising, such as Google Ads. However, many SaaS companies (as well as eCommerce businesses) now incorporate comparison pages into their SEO strategies, creating them to rank for brand comparison keywords in organic search. 

Why? Because if you can optimize your comparison pages to get organic search rankings for the same keywords you’d be bidding on through ads, you can generate conversions from that page over the long-term — without paying for every click. 

Why Should You Create Competitor Comparison Landing Pages?

1. Competitor Comparison Pages Have Some of the Highest Conversion Rates of Any Type of Content

Competitor comparison keywords, including “versus” keywords (e.g. QuickBooks vs. FreshBooks) and “alternatives” keywords (e.g. QuickBooks alternatives), is one of the three bottom of the funnel keyword categories that we focus on in our client work. 

In a recent analysis of 95 articles we’ve written for our clients — What SEO keywords convert the highest? — we found that comparison and alternative keywords had the highest average conversion rate of the posts that were measured.

Comparison and alternative keywords had a conversion rate over 7.5% and versus keywords had the second highest conversion rate at over 5%. 

To our surprise, both of these comparison keyword categories converted higher, on average, than even main product category keywords (e.g. best accounting software), which are some of the most common-sense, must-have keywords in a bottom of funnel SEO strategy. 

Furthermore, despite SEO tools often reporting these keywords as having a very low number of monthly searches, which might cause you to question whether these pages are worth creating, we have found that:

• These keywords almost always get more traffic than their monthly search volume estimates would suggest (often a lot more).

• With such high conversion rates, they can deliver significant conversion volume, even while generating less traffic than other pages.

For example, in our post on Mini-Volume Keywords, we show how 6 comparison articles (all with less than 20 searches per month) collectively drove 149 organic signups for a past client, with an average conversion rate of 2% and one post converting at 4.5%.

This is why competitor comparison pages are a high priority in our SEO content strategy, and, in our opinion, should be considered a valuable SEO asset for many businesses.

2. Competitor Comparison Keywords Can (at Times) Be Surprisingly Easy to Rank For

There are a number of accounts that we have worked on in which we’ve found comparison keywords to be some of the easiest and fastest keywords to rank for. We’ve seen this even in cases where a client’s domain rating was very low, and ranking for other buying-intent keywords was difficult and took a lot of time. 

For example, we were working with a remote executive assistant service that had a domain rating of 28 (quite a low DR). And while many of the posts we produced for them were taking months to progress towards the first page of search results, the comparison keywords we targeted were getting onto the first page within weeks of publishing.

In looking in Ahrefs at their rankings today, we see that 5 out of 5 comparison keywords we went after are ranking in the top 3 positions of search results.

There are different factors that we think contributed to this. For one, we created in-depth dedicated pages targeting each of these keywords and optimized them very precisely in order to rank. But we also found that the competitors in their space hadn’t caught onto this strategy yet, leaving the door open for us to rank for these terms.

This obviously will not be the case for every business. Depending on your space, it may be more competitive and challenging to rank for these keywords. But anecdotally, we’ve had experiences where it was relatively easy to rank for comparison keywords with clients who were in competitive spaces as well as clients who were not. 

Coupled with the high conversion rates discussed above, the potential for comparison keywords to be low hanging fruit from a rankings perspective is another reason they’re worth prioritizing.

3. Competitor Comparison Landing Pages Can Aid in the Sales Process

Lastly, the content and format of competitor comparison landing pages is well suited to inform potential customers about how a product or service differs from competitors’ products, and therefore can help prime prospects for sales conversations. 

We’ve also had clients remark that they like the ability to direct prospects to comparison pages to help them better understand their unique selling propositions (USP) and the concrete differences between their products and relevant competitors that prospects may also be considering.

3 Unique Strategies for Creating Competitor Comparison Landing Pages

There are 3 unique comparison page strategies that we’ve found to work well but haven’t commonly seen discussed by other brands and agencies. 

The first two strategies use long-form content to target comparison keywords instead of the usual short-form landing page format. The third strategy is to target different variations of competitor comparison keywords beyond just “brand vs. competitor.”

Let’s look at each.

1. Use Blog Posts Instead of the Usual Landing Page Format

The prevailing method for creating competitor comparison pages (as you have likely seen if you have ever looked at one) is to use a short-form landing page format. 

In other words, a concise, conversion-focused page with the elements we discussed above: a feature comparison table, bullet points or short paragraphs about the service’s differentiators, customer testimonials, pricing comparison, and CTAs. 

Here’s a SaaS comparison page example of Pipedrive vs. Salesforce that follows this usual format:

At first glance, there’s nothing overtly wrong with this page. But in our experience, there are a number of weaknesses with using this type of landing page format that blog posts or longer-form content can solve:

• These comparison landing pages are often too basic to be compelling to advanced prospects. We have looked at tons of comparison pages and too often they offer very little detail that is useful for helping (particularly advanced B2B SaaS) target audiences understand the true differences between competing products. This is especially true for prospects that have experience using products in your category, and are looking for an alternative that can solve their pain points better than their current solution.

• Landing page formats tend to be harder to get ranking. It’s often much more difficult to get a landing page to rank highly in search engines, especially for brands with lower domain ratings and authority in their space. A blog post format gives you more room to include relevant SEO keywords and answer the intent of the searcher, so blog posts often allow you to compete better with established competitors in the SERPs.

• Landing page formats are at times a mismatch for meeting search intent. There are cases in which top results for a comparison keyword are blog posts (not landing pages). This is Google signaling that searchers are looking for more in-depth content. In these scenarios, landing pages are unlikely to satisfy search intent and therefore unlikely to rank. And if a page doesn’t rank highly, it doesn’t matter how high its conversion rate is. 

Furthermore, conversion rates of landing pages are not always higher than conversion rates of blog posts, as we discussed and presented data to support in a previous post. So using a blog post doesn’t necessarily mean you need to sacrifice conversion rate, and in some cases, blog posts can actually convert better than a landing page. 

For all of these reasons, we typically use blog posts instead of landing pages when creating competitor comparisons, which can convert at an extremely high rate (as shown above) while solving all of these potential issues.

Check out our article on SEO content writing for an in-depth look at the writing process we use to create these pages. 

2. Use a Hybrid Landing Page + Blog Post Format

We have also had success with using a hybrid comparison page format that adds long-form blog-style copywriting at the bottom of a comparison landing page to help with SEO ranking and provide greater detail for prospects that want it. 

This can be approached in a number of ways. If you have pre-existing comparison landing pages and are having trouble getting them to rank, you can write longer form editorial content and add that to the bottom of those pages to help with SEO.

Alternatively, you could create the blog post first to have the highest likelihood of ranking. And then once you’ve achieved that ranking, build a landing page-style template around it later to optimize the page for conversions.

Lastly, you could create a hybrid page from the get-go. Either way, based on what we’re seeing, it’s absolutely worth testing a hybrid strategy.

You can find an example of us describing how we used this with a client in this post. 

3. Target ‘Competitor vs. Competitor’ or ‘Competitor Alternatives’ Keywords to Get Discovered by Prospects Looking at Other Brands

A final strategy we use that’s less common is to look for “competitor vs. competitor” and “competitor alternatives” keywords. By targeting these variations, you can reach prospects that are showing clear buying-intent but may not have heard about your solution yet.

‘Competitor vs. Competitor’ Keywords

“Competitor vs. competitor” keywords are search queries in which prospects want to understand the differences between two of your competitors, not including you! This can be especially useful for startups or lesser known brands that have less search demand. 

We’ll often use this approach when we search for our client’s brand versus competitor keywords in SEO tools and find there to be no registered search volume. For example, here’s a screenshot showing no registered search volume for “Circuit vs Onfleet” (Circuit being a past client of ours, Onfleet being one of their competitors). 

Meanwhile, we found that there was some registered search volume for “Postmates vs. Onfleet” (both solutions in which Circuit could be a viable alternative), as shown here:

So, we created a three-way SaaS product comparison — “Postmates vs. Onfleet vs. Circuit” — to piggyback off of that search demand, and insert our client into that conversation and consideration among prospects. 

At the time of this writing, that page ranks in position one for the query ‘postmates vs onfleet’ in Google:

There are a lot of instances in which these opportunities exist and are worth taking advantage of, especially for small businesses with lesser known brands.

‘Competitor Alternatives’ Keywords

While most people associate competitor comparison landing pages with only “versus” keywords, “competitor alternatives” keywords are a close cousin that many marketers ignore but that actually convert the highest out of all the buying-intent keyword categories we’ve measured. 

People often search these terms when they’re either (a) a competitor’s customer that’s unsatisfied with their current solution, or (b) wanting to compare the solution they’re considering to other options before making a purchase decision. In both cases, their buying-intent is high and these are valuable prospects to show up for in search results.

So, in addition to targeting “brand vs. competitor” and “competitor vs. competitor” keywords for our clients, we also look for opportunities where there is some search demand for their “competitor alternatives” keywords. 

As a hypothetical example, if we were working with Podia, a platform for building websites and digital products (online courses, webinars, etc.), and their sales team said that their top SaaS competitors were Wix, Squarespace, ClickFunnels, and WordPress — we’d plug “wix alternatives,” “squarespace alternatives,” etc. into our SEO tools, assess search volumes, analyze the search results for each term, and prioritize which ones to go after.

We’ll typically target these pieces with list-style blog posts because that is what search intent generally calls for. We put our client at the top of the list and walk through their unique differentiators in detail to clearly communicate the advantages they can offer over other solutions. Then, we include a call-to-action to reach out and learn more about their service before carrying on with the list of competitors. 

Learn More about Our SEO and Content Marketing Agency

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute a content marketing strategy built around driving lead generation and sales, not just traffic, you can learn more about our service and pricing here. We also offer a paid search service, which you can learn about here.

• Join Our Content Marketing Team: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing in this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course and community, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback. Learn more here.

In this post, we share data from our client work that demonstrates this, and cover everything you need to know about what bottom of funnel keywords are and what it takes to rank for them.

Table of Contents

• What are bottom of the funnel keywords?
  • Top of the funnel vs. bottom of the funnel keywords
• The main types of bottom of funnel keywords
  • Category Keywords
  • Comparison and Alternative Keywords
  • Jobs to Be Done Keywords
• Ways to find bottom of the funnel keywords
  • Start with brainstorming your Category, Comparison, and Jobs to Be Done Keywords
  • Begin Googling your BOFU keyword ideas
    • SEO titles
    • People Also Ask
    • Related searches
    • Google Suggested Search
  • Using keyword research tools
• How to rank for bottom of the funnel keywords

Note: If you’d like help identifying and ranking for your bottom of funnel keywords, you can learn more about our agency here and reach out about working with us here.

What Are Bottom of the Funnel Keywords?

Bottom of the funnel keywords are search queries in which people indicate that they have intent to buy a product or service. They are also referred to as “buying-intent keywords.” 

Top of the Funnel vs. Bottom of the Funnel Keywords

In contrast, top of funnel keywords are keywords that could still be searched by a brand’s target audience, but do not directly indicate that searchers are in the market for their product or service.

In our analyses across dozens of clients, we have found that bottom of the funnel, high buying-intent keywords don’t just convert a little bit better than top of funnel, low buying-intent keywords, they often convert hundreds (and in some cases thousands) of percent better. Yes, it’s that dramatic.

This is summarized in this analytics screenshot from our article on Pain Point SEO (our agency’s foundational SEO strategy): 

The right most column shows new user signups from each page. The three boxed posts rank for bottom of funnel keywords (via our Pain Point SEO approach). The rest rank for top of funnel keywords, that is, something the target audience could search for, but not a high buying-intent keyword. 

The new user signups from the three Pain Point SEO posts are hundreds of percent higher.

We also showed this at a larger scale in an analysis of 60+ posts for our client Geekbot:

The posts targeting bottom of the funnel, high buying-intent keywords converted 2400% better. In that case study, you can read about how the higher conversion rates more than made up for any differences in search volume or traffic between the two buckets. 

This is why we very strongly feel businesses should spend far more effort and time creating bottom of funnel content to rank for their buying-intent keywords before moving up the funnel. But most don’t.

There’s a culture in SEO and content marketing where marketers think their company needs to be the one to educate all potential customers at every stage of the funnel, starting at the top. This is not true, and it results in a huge waste of resources on content marketing that does little to help get conversions. For almost every business, there are plenty of people in later stages of the buyer’s journey that are already searching for bottom of funnel search terms.

Therefore, we think a more effective SEO content strategy should prioritize bottom of the funnel topics to capture people who are ready (or getting close) to make a purchase decision. 

The Main Types of Bottom of Funnel Keywords

We view bottom of the funnel keywords as any that indicate the searcher has purchase intent (in that respect we don’t care too much about distinguishing between bottom and middle of funnel, anything with buying-intent can be thought of as bottom of funnel). And, as we define in our Pain Point SEO framework, these basically all fall into one of three categories: 

1. Category Keywords
2. Comparison and Alternative Keywords
3. Jobs to Be Done Keywords

Let’s define and look at examples of each.

#1. Category Keywords

Category keywords are search queries that describe exactly what you offer — i.e., the person searching is shopping for the specific products or services you offer. They’re the top terms that most businesses are bidding on through Google Ads, and the most obvious keywords that any business would want their website to rank for.

This includes keywords like “best accounting software” or “men’s running shoes.” If you sell accounting software or men’s running shoes, these are keywords you absolutely want to be ranking for. In our case study on What Blog Keywords Convert the Highest?, we found category keywords to have an average conversion rate of 4.85% (to be clear, this is very good — the majority of SEO content that brands publish converts to product related CTAs at less than half a percent). This is why we have long advised that brands prioritize these keywords, and our data presented in that case study further supports that assertion.

A key thing to keep in mind about category keywords is that there are often more category keywords that closely describe your business than many companies realize. For example, if you sell accounting software, you may have distinct category keywords pertaining to different features (e.g. invoicing, time tracking, etc.), industry verticals (e.g. small business, freelancer, etc.), or product category variations (e.g. software, app, tools). 

We find that many (if not most) of the clients we work with are in a similar situation where there are many different ways that people search for what they sell. As you begin your keyword research, it’s useful to find as many of these variations as possible. 

#2. Comparison and Alternative Keywords

Comparison and alternative keywords are queries that indicate the search intent is to learn about how different solutions compare, and which product or service would best suit their needs.

This includes alternative keywords like “Salesforce alternative” and versus keywords like “Salesforce vs. Pipedrive.” And one of the most interesting takeaways from the case study cited above is that comparison and alternatives keywords convert at a higher rate than any other keyword type. We found them to have an average conversion rate of 8.43%! This is not surprising. Anyone searching these terms knows what they want, even knows the options in this space, and is just comparing before trying or buying one — their buying-intent is very high. 

Tactic worth trying: ​​When working with new or smaller brands where there aren’t many searchers looking for their brand versus a competitor, we’ve had success creating content targeting “[competitor] vs. [other competitor]” keywords. We’ll create content for “[competitor] vs. [other competitor] vs. [our client’s brand]” to piggyback off the search volume of people comparing our clients’ competitors, and insert them into the list of options being weighed by prospects. We have found these terms to be relatively easy to rank for, even for clients with low domain authority. 

3. Jobs to Be Done Keywords

The final category in our Pain Point SEO framework is “Jobs To Be Done” keywords — queries that describe a job to be done (or pain, challenge) that is best solved with your product or service.  

These are slightly more middle of the funnel because they don’t explicitly say “software” or “service” (like category keywords) or mention competitors (like alternatives keywords) — these are mostly “how to” queries: how to organize design files, how to do a poll in Slack, how to get video testimonials from customers. 

Although these users may not be aware of your brand, or competitors, or precisely what they need for their problem, they still have the potential to buy because they have a job or problem that you solve. 

We insert our clients’ names in these conversations by creating content to specifically solve what the reader is searching for in the context of the client’s solution, and we’ve seen these convert at a ridiculously high rate. 

Ways to Find Bottom of the Funnel Keywords

1. Start With Brainstorming Your Category, Comparison, and Jobs to Be Done Keywords

Before you begin using search engines and keyword research tools, it’s worth listing out all of the search queries you can think of in the three bottom of funnel keyword frameworks discussed above:

• Category keywords: List all of the different ways that people might phrase your product or service.

• Comparison keywords: List out all of your top competitors in [Competitor brand vs. Your brand] and [Competitor brand + alternatives] formats. 

• Jobs to be done keywords: List out all of the phrases that indicate someone has a problem that your product helps solve. Read our JTBD post for guidance on how to do this. 

This brainstorming session will establish a foundation for the rest of your keyword research. You may not end up targeting all of these, but they’ll lead you to discovering your highest buying-intent target keywords.

Note: Check out our post on content ideation for additional guidance on this step. 

2. Begin Googling Your BOFU Keyword Ideas

Once you have a running list of bottom of funnel (BOFU) keyword ideas, you can begin analyzing the search engine results page (SERP) for each keyword. This will give you insight into the exact phrasing people are using when they search for that topic, as well as provide you with related searches and other valuable keyword ideas.

As you analyze the SERP for each keyword, here are some aspects to pay attention to.

SEO Titles

The exact phrasing that is used in the search result titles, known as SEO titles (i.e., the blue links), is a good indicator of the specific target keywords and phrasing people are using when they search that term.  

In some cases, the SEO titles throughout the page will use the exact phrase you typed in. For example, if you Google “accounting software,” all of the results use that exact phrase in the title. You can therefore feel confident that is the correct phrasing to use as your target keyword. 

In other cases, you might find that the SEO titles use a different variation of the phrase you typed in. For example, if we look at the SERP for the keyword “executive assistant service,” we see phrases such as “Remote executive assistants,” “Virtual executive assistants,” and “Virtual administrative assistants.” 

With that in mind, you might decide that a better keyword to target might be (or include) one of those variations.

People Also Ask

‘People also ask’ is a SERP feature that you can use to figure out subheadings and topics to cover in your page targeting that keyword, as well as find additional keywords that you could target with a dedicated page.

Related Searches

Likewise, the bottom of search engine results pages show related searches that can give you additional keyword ideas to target.

Google Suggested Search 

Finally, as you type in your keyword ideas, you can find great opportunities by paying attention to Google Suggested Search. For example, if you type in “accounting software,” you’ll find that people search for “accounting software for small business,” “accounting software for nonprofits,” and “accounting software with payroll.” These could all be potential keywords to target with dedicated pages.

3. Using Keyword Research Tools

By following the two steps above, you can make significant progress on finding bottom of the funnel keyword opportunities to go after. But, once you get this initial brainstorming done, it’s useful to plug them into keyword research tools to: 

1. See their search volumes
2. Find other similar ideas and long-tail keyword variations you didn’t think of

We use Clearscope and Ahrefs, but you can use SEMrush, Google Search Console, Moz Keyword Explorer, or any other keyword research tool. 

Here are some examples of how we use keyword research tools to find additional BOFU keyword opportunities:

• Keywords Explorer: Most SEO tools offer a keyword explorer feature that allows you to type in specific queries and find related keywords to that topic. You can use this much like you used Google in the above example: type in the BOFU keywords you brainstormed and find all the similar variations of that keyword. The key advantage of doing this in a keyword research tool, however, is that you get data on search volume and difficulty that can help you be strategic in how you prioritize keywords to go after. 

• Content Gap: Tools such as Ahrefs offer a “Content Gap” feature that allows you to review organic keywords for competitor domains compared to your own to see where your keyword gaps are. It’s important to note, however, that most companies are doing a terrible job of ranking for BOFU keywords, so you likely will see tons of top of funnel keywords in your competitors’ rankings. Don’t be scared or deterred from your BOFU strategy when you see this. We assure you, we have seen under the hood of so many brands’ analytics — they are not getting many conversions from these top of funnel rankings. So, it can be useful to filter for specific keyword modifiers, such as “software” or “service,” to find keywords in the various BOFU frameworks discussed above. Check out our post on researching competitor keywords for a deep dive on how to use this tool. 

• Organic Keywords: As you publish content to rank for your BOFU keywords, you can periodically plug that URL into your keyword research tool to see all the organic keywords it’s ranking for. Often you’ll find variations of your target keyword in which you’re ranking on some page below page one that also have high buying-intent, but that you could target with a separate, dedicated page to get a top ranking position for that variation of the query. 

How to Rank for Bottom of the Funnel Keywords

Understanding the various bottom of funnel keyword frameworks and how to find them for your business is necessary, but the difficult part is creating blog posts or landing pages that actually rank for these buying-intent keywords. 

We have written extensively about the in-depth process we use, and that we feel is needed, in order to create content that ranks for these highly competitive BOFU keywords. 

To understand what it takes, check out our post on SEO content writing, which covers the following 5 step process:

1. Topic: Come up with content ideas and identify target keywords that have business value.

2. SERP Analysis: Analyze the search engine results page for each of those keywords to understand which topics need to be covered in your article for it to rank.

3. Structure: Choose the angle and structure of your article based on that SERP analysis.

4. Writing: Write the content in a way that fills in that structure with compelling information to sell your product or service.

5. On-Page SEO: Optimize your content with on-page SEO.

We see content marketers make mistakes at every stage of this process. So, as we cover each step throughout that post, we discuss those and their implications so you can avoid them in your business.

Learn More About Our SEO and Content Marketing Agency

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute a content marketing strategy built around driving lead generation and sales, not just traffic, you can learn more about our service and pricing here. We also offer a paid search service which you can learn about here.

• Join Our Content Marketing Team: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing in this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course and community, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback. Learn more here. 

Over the past 6+ years running our agency, we’ve helped to create and implement SEO strategies for dozens of B2B SaaS businesses and acquired page one rankings for hundreds of valuable keywords for our clients (as we’ve demonstrated in case studies like this).

During that time, through speaking with many different software companies who’ve done SEO previously (either in-house or through an agency), we’ve learned that companies and SaaS marketers often struggle to achieve the SEO results they’re seeking. 

Specifically:

• They (usually unknowingly) don’t go after the most high-buying-intent keywords.

• Their feature and solutions pages often don’t end up ranking for their intended keywords.

• They don’t see meaningful increases in trials, demos, and product signups as a result of their SEO efforts.

In our opinion, these are strategy problems, not issues at the tactical level (e.g. fixing broken links or doing on-page SEO). To fix these problems, you need to fix your SEO strategy. 

In this article, we explain why these problems are so common among B2B SaaS businesses that try to do SEO. And then we walk through a 5-step process that you can follow to create a SaaS SEO strategy that solves these problems, based on the process we use at our agency.

The 5-step process we’ll cover includes:

1. Identifying high-intent keywords: Prioritize finding keywords with high buying-intent, that is, those that indicate people searching are looking to buy or solve a problem your product solves — instead of only prioritizing search volume.
   
   
2. Producing a unique piece of content to rank for each keyword: Create dedicated pages or blog posts for each keyword that deeply satisfies search intent instead of simply sprinkling SEO keywords throughout a bunch of blog posts.
   
   
3. Selling your product through your content: Talk about your product extensively in these articles including outlining your unique product features and differentiators. Don’t worry about common content marketing myths about not selling your product. 
   
   
4. Technical SEO: Fix and monitor for technical SEO errors.
   
   
5. External link building: Generate backlinks to boost domain authority and keyword rankings.

Curious about having us do SEO for your business? You can learn more here. Or, if you’d like to learn the SaaS SEO strategy that we share below, we also teach our content marketing strategy and process in our course and community.

How Most Businesses and Agencies Approach B2B SaaS SEO Strategy 

As we mentioned above, we’ve spoken to many B2B SaaS companies about their past experiences doing SEO. And through those conversations, as well as what we see in our day-to-day work at the agency, we’ve observed that the typical SaaS SEO strategy consists of two key parts:

1. Optimizing core website pages: Optimizing the core pages of their marketing website (i.e. home, feature, solutions, pages) for high-intent, software category keywords (e.g. “accounting software”).
   
2. Producing blog content: Creating and publishing some form of blog content on an ongoing basis loosely guided by SEO keywords or by using the “sprinkle” method of asking writers to sprinkle certain keywords throughout the posts.

There may also be some link building or technical SEO tactics that happen. But these are really the two key parts to the strategy. 

Let’s take a closer look at each, and then below we’ll discuss the flaws of how this approach is typically executed in practice.

1. Optimize Home, Feature, and Solutions Pages for High-Intent Keywords

Most SEO agencies and SaaS businesses focus the majority of their SEO efforts into optimizing their core web pages — homepage, feature pages, and solutions pages — for a handful of target keywords. 

The standard process for this involves:

• Selecting primary target keywords for each page. These are generally the most obvious, high-value keywords that describe exactly what your product is (or what we call “software category keywords”) like “accounting software” or “enterprise CRM”. 

• Selecting supporting keywords for each page. These are generally pulled from a list of keywords that keyword research tools suggest including in your page in order to rank for the primary target keyword.

• Optimizing each page for their target keyword. Adding the target keyword or keywords into the title tag, page headings, and page subheadings throughout each page. And then using on-page SEO tools and sprinkling the supporting keywords throughout the body copy. 

For feature pages, they’ll often optimize for software category keywords (e.g. lead generation software, social media management software, etc.). 

For solutions pages, they’ll often optimize for a particular industry or vertical they serve (e.g. marketing agency operations software, enterprise CRM software, etc.). 

Homepages will often be optimized for either a brand keyword, a software category keyword, or a mix of both (e.g. QuickBooks accounting software). 

This is the base-level strategy that B2B SaaS companies and SEO agencies implement. Once these pages are optimized, they build links to them in an effort to boost their rankings. But often they don’t end up ranking, for reasons we’ll explain below.

2. Create and Publish Some Form of SEO Blog Content

The second core part of the typical SaaS SEO strategy is to publish some regular cadence of blog content. And there are a few common ways that companies approach this:

• Outsource to freelance writers 
• Outsource to content agencies
• Hire an in-house writer or content marketer

We’ve written extensively about the pitfalls involved with each of these, which you can read about here and here. 

Outsourcing content is more common for SaaS startups, while larger and more established SaaS companies often opt to hire in-house. But regardless of which option you choose, usually one of the following two content strategies is used:

1. The “Sprinkle” Method: Create blog posts haphazardly and “sprinkle” keywords throughout the articles, hoping they’ll rank for something. (Note: We’ve learned from speaking to clients that a lot of SEO agencies do this. This is not an effective way to create content.)
   
   
2. The “Top of the Funnel” Volume-Driven Method: Intentionally choose and prioritize keywords based on those that have the highest search volume, and write articles to rank for those keywords. These keywords are typically loosely related to the business’s target audience, but have no buying intent (and do not indicate people searching are looking to buy).

The second method is the more strategic of the two approaches. However, in our experience, neither of these methods are effective at generating trial or demo signups. 

Let’s look at why.

3 Flaws with the Typical Approach to SaaS SEO Strategy

Flaw #1: It’s Difficult to Rank Home, Feature, and Solutions Pages for High-Value Software Category Keywords

As we mentioned above, SEO agencies and SaaS companies tend to focus the majority of their SEO efforts into optimizing the core pages of their marketing website for high-intent, software category keywords.

But there are fundamental attributes of these pages that make it difficult for them to rank for highly competitive, purchase-intent software keywords.

Namely:

• Core website pages have limited space to include relevant SEO keywords. It often takes including 50+ supporting keywords (worked in naturally — not “stuffed” in) to rank for a given target keyword. And typical home, feature, and solutions pages don’t offer enough space in the headings and body copy to naturally include this volume of keywords.

• Core website pages are first and foremost meant to explain your features and solutions (not meet the search intent of specific keywords). The purpose of feature and solutions pages are to explain your features and solutions! There’s only so much you can modify them to address search intent. And yet, satisfying search intent is the key ranking factor used by Google and other search engine algorithms. Therefore, these pages have difficulty competing with other page types, such as dedicated landing pages or in-depth blog posts, which can leverage longer form content to deeply address topics and better satisfy search intent.

• Core website pages do not typically mention competitors, but ranking for software category keywords often requires including lists of software options. The intent of people searching for SaaS category keywords is often to see lists of SaaS solutions. And most SaaS businesses aren’t going to include lists of their competitors on their core website pages (that would make no sense!). So their pages aren’t going to outrank the SaaS review sites and list-style blog posts (often from direct competitors) that better meet search intent.

This is why, despite their efforts, many companies never see their core website pages rank for their intended keywords. 

Note: We’ve talked to (or are actively working with) multiple SaaS companies who have had such bad experiences working with SEO agencies that they’ve concluded they simply “can’t rank” for their top keywords. They’ve concluded that “Google just won’t rank us” on the first page. This is obviously not true and a shame.

By all means, companies should be strategic about optimizing these marketing site pages. But they should be aware that, as we’ve explained, they can be difficult to rank. And if these are the pages you put the majority of your SEO efforts into, you’re unlikely to see great results from SEO.

In addition, as we’ll demonstrate next, you’ll leave a ton of high-value keyword opportunities on the table — even if you get those pages ranking for their intended target keywords.

Flaw #2: There Are Way More High-Intent Keyword Opportunities Than You Can Reasonably Rank for with Feature and Solutions Pages

How many feature and solutions pages does a B2B SaaS marketing site typically have? In our experience, with the exception of “all-in-one” platforms that offer extremely large feature sets, it’s less than ten. 

Of those, maybe 2–5 of them have enough relevant content to be morphable into something that could rank for a valuable, competitive target keyword (per the issues we discussed above).

So, at best, most SaaS websites can only rank for a handful of “Bottom of the Funnel” SaaS category keywords with their feature and solutions pages. And yet, as our work has shown, there are often dozens upon dozens of keywords with good conversion potential in your space! 

Many of our SaaS clients have 50+ keywords that indicate people searching are potential customers looking to buy. And if you only use your feature and solutions pages to target high-intent keywords, you’ll leave all of those remaining opportunities on the table.

This is where companies can leverage blog content to go after these additional high-intent opportunities (as we do at our agency), but most do not. 

Flaw #3: Blog Content Isn’t Used Strategically to Rank for Valuable Keywords and Drive SaaS Product Signups

Of the two common methods to SaaS SEO content that we mentioned above, the “Sprinkle” method and the “Top of Funnel” method, neither are well-suited (or even intended) to rank for high-intent keywords (i.e. all of the purchase-intent keywords that your core website pages don’t end up ranking for). 

As we’ve explained in our post on SEO content writing, ranking for keywords with blog content requires a much more strategic approach than simply “sprinkling” in keywords. So the “Sprinkle” method is wholly insufficient when it comes to ranking for keywords that have actual business value. 

The “Top of Funnel” (TOF) method — which is the predominant method used by agencies and companies that are genuinely trying to be strategic about content — can work great for driving organic traffic. But as we’ve argued in many articles such as those linked below, it often doesn’t end up producing many leads.

Companies and agencies using the TOF method don’t choose keywords based on searchers’ intent to buy. They choose keywords based on how much traffic a given search query can drive to their site. And as a result, the majority of traffic they receive isn’t from people who are in the market looking to buy the type of software they sell, and conversion rates from their content tend to be very low. We’ve had countless conversations with companies who say “We have all this blog traffic but it barely converts” — this is why. 

You might think, “Well, even if the conversion rates are lower, doesn’t the increased search traffic make up for that?” It’s a good question, but in our experience, the theory that TOF traffic eventually leads to conversions down the line (through email marketing, PPC remarketing ads, etc.) isn’t always true.

In fact, as we’ve explained and demonstrated in numerous articles and B2B SaaS case studies — such as our foundational article on SaaS content marketing, our article on Pain Point SEO, and our Geekbot case study — not only do BOF, high-intent keywords produce significantly higher conversion rates, they also tend to produce a higher volume of overall conversions. 

By choosing and prioritizing keywords based on purchase intent instead of search volume, companies can: 

• Strategically go after all of the remaining high-intent keyword opportunities that their core website pages don’t rank for.

• See significantly higher conversion rates and conversions from their blog content.

• Drive meaningful increases in trial, demo, and product signups as a result of their SEO efforts.

In the next section, we’re going to walk through how you can execute this for your business and how we approach this at our agency.

Our 5-Step B2B SaaS SEO Strategy: Use Blog Content to Tackle All of the High-Intent Keywords That Your Core Site Pages Won’t Rank For

We have written at length about every step of our SaaS SEO strategy. So here we’re going to list and describe each step in our process, and link out to the individual articles that dive deeper into each step.

At Grow & Convert, our B2B SaaS SEO strategy consists of the following:

• Step 1: Do keyword research to identify high-intent keywords.
• Step 2: Create a dedicated blog post for each keyword that deeply satisfies search intent.
• Step 3: Sell your product in each piece of content.
• Step 4: Fix and monitor for technical SEO errors.
• Step 5: External link building.

Let’s look at each.

Step 1: Do Keyword Research to Identify High-Intent Keywords

The most fundamental part of a SaaS SEO strategy is keyword selection. If you don’t pick the right keywords (ones that, if ranked for, will drive demos and trials), then nothing else in your SEO strategy matters:

• Your technical SEO doesn’t matter. (It doesn’t matter how well your site is optimized if it’s not ranking for keywords that bring in customers.)

• Your link building doesn’t matter (same reason).

• The number of blog articles you write doesn’t matter.

Thus, keyword selection is the most important thing to get right. 

We’ve written about how you can approach this step effectively in our article on SaaS content strategy. 

In that piece, we cover:

• High-converting SaaS keywords: The specific types of keywords we choose and content we create to drive customer acquisition for our SaaS clients (e.g. product category keywords, competitor comparison keywords, template keywords, etc.).

• Live article examples: For each content type, we link to examples of live articles we’ve written for clients that you can go and read, find ranking in Google, and use as inspiration to build your own equivalent content (following the structures used in those articles).

• Topics we prioritize for our SaaS clients: The mix of content that we typically prioritize for our SaaS clients in the first 3 months of an engagement.

Check that article out here to kickstart your keyword research.

Step 2: Create a Single, Dedicated Blog Post for Each Keyword That Deeply Satisfies Search Intent

As we mentioned earlier, ranking on the first page for a high-intent keyword requires a very strategic approach to content creation. You can’t just sprinkle in keywords and hope that your post will rank, especially for high-intent terms which are valuable and highly competitive. 

When it comes to Step 2 of creating your content, there are two key factors to be successful:

1. Create a dedicated page for each keyword.
2. Deeply match search intent with each piece of content.

Create a Dedicated Page for Each Keyword

One of our key learnings (and a differentiator of our agency’s strategy) is that the best way to get top positions for high-intent keywords is to create a dedicated page for each one — even when keywords are nearly identical and have similar meanings. 

As we discussed in our conversation with Bernard Huang of Clearscope, you only get one SEO title, one H1 heading, one meta description, etc. — and these are key ranking factors for getting top positions.

If you try to rank for multiple target keywords with one piece of content, it will often only end up ranking for one of them (or worse, you won’t match the intent of any individual keyword, and you won’t rank for any of them).

Deeply Satisfy Search Intent with Each Piece of Content

Satisfying search intent begins with analyzing the search engine results page (SERP) for your target keyword to understand a) which topics need to be covered in your article for it to rank and b) how you can differentiate or improve on existing results to get a top ranking position.

We’ve documented the exact process we use when analyzing search engine rankings for target keywords in our post on SEO content writing. Check that out to view examples and learn how you can approach this.

Step 3: Sell Your Product in Each Piece of Content

In search engine optimization and content marketing, there tends to be an aversion to selling products and services through blog content. Blogs are considered to be primarily for generating traffic and brand awareness, and most marketers think that you shouldn’t be too salesy.

But when you design your content strategy to go after high-intent keywords, where people are at the purchase stage of the buyer’s journey, a key part of meeting search intent is discussing your product! This is what people are literally searching for. They want to know about what your product does, how it solves their problems, and how it’s different from other products and services on the market.

Therefore, an additional key step to writing your content is that you need to discuss the details of your product features and differentiators. And this has implications on how your content is produced — the person writing the content needs to know these things. 

This is why we urge companies not to fully outsource their content to freelance writers or agencies, unless those freelance writers or agencies have a process for developing deep expertise in your product or service and its differentiators (most do not).

At Grow & Convert, we solve this by interviewing the experts at our clients’ companies for each piece of content we create. This allows us to express the company’s expertise on each topic to create truly high-quality content. This is in contrast to doing what we call “Google Research Papers” — learning about topics in Google and regurgitating what everyone else is saying (what many digital marketing agencies and freelancers do). 

To better understand how you can approach selling your product through your content, check out our post on SaaS content writing which walks through an example. 

Also, check out the SaaS content strategy post we shared above, which has links to a bunch of articles we’ve written for our clients. (We discuss our clients’ products in every article we produce.) 

Step 4: Fix and Monitor for Technical SEO Errors

Technical SEO — the process of resolving any technical website issues that might hurt your organic search performance — is a necessary part of SaaS SEO. 

However, while we occasionally run into larger site architecture issues with our SaaS clients, the need for ongoing technical SEO support is more common in eCommerce where sites can have hundreds of product pages that target tons of long-tail keywords (very specific product queries).

For SaaS companies with largely static marketing sites, you should think of technical SEO as a baseline housekeeping item. If you notice sudden drops in rankings (which can be monitored in tools like Ahrefs or Semrush, along with other SEO metrics), then it’s worth looking into whether technical SEO might be present. But otherwise, technical SEO for SaaS websites can usually be taken care of with a one-time SEO audit and occasional follow up.

Step 5: Link Building

Link building — the process of generating backlinks to pages on your site — is helpful for supporting your website’s domain authority and keyword rankings. 

However, it’s key to understand that link building is a supporting element of a good SaaS SEO strategy. Sometimes agencies or companies think that link building is the thing that gets content ranking. But in our experience, it’s not. 

If you don’t get the key steps of creating your content right (i.e. creating dedicated pages for each keyword, and deeply matching search intent), no amount of outreach, link building, or internal links will get your content up to the first page. So, link building is something to do and pay attention to, but don’t expect it to be a magic bullet for your SEO campaign.

We’ve found that building links to individual articles can often give them a boost in rankings and help support content in getting up to the first page. Each month, we build links to different articles we’ve published as an ongoing effort.

To learn more about our approach to link building, check out our content distribution strategy article. 

Measuring Traffic, Keyword Rankings, and Conversions 

To measure SEO performance, see what’s working and not working, and spot additional keyword opportunities, we track and report on a variety of metrics for our clients with the following tools:

• Conversions: We track and report on conversions using the Model Comparison Tool in Google Analytics. 

• Keyword Rankings: We use Ahrefs rank tracker to monitor rankings progress for each article’s target keyword. (You could also use Semrush, Google Search Console, etc.)

• Overall Pageviews and Organic Traffic: We set up traffic dashboards in Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) that measure overall pageviews and organic traffic to our articles.

The most notable of these three KPIs is conversion tracking. Most SEO teams (in-house or agencies) don’t hold themselves accountable to leads generated from content. In fact, most don’t even report on this. But without conversion data, you are essentially conceding that your SEO strategy is traffic focused (because everyone tracks traffic). 

Check out our article on tracking conversions in Google Analytics 4 to learn more about how to measure conversions from SEO content. 

Want to Work with Us or Learn More About How We Approach Content Marketing?

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute content marketing in this way, you can learn more about our service and pricing here.

• Join Our Team: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing in this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team. 

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback. Learn more here or watch our video walkthrough here.

But less-discussed is the other side of ChatGPT and SEO: What happens if people start using ChatGPT to search instead of Google?

For those of us in SEO, that’s a scary thought. We’ve built our careers by ranking clients on Google. How do we rank on ChatGPT? Can you even control that? What does “ranking” on ChatGPT even mean? How does ChatGPT decide what products to recommend when users ask for recommendations? 

That’s what this study seeks to explore. 

We looked at product recommendations from ChatGPT across 7 different B2B SaaS product categories and compared them to what products were most popular on Google’s first page  in those same categories. 

The results give us insights into the differences between how ChatGPT and Google rank products or websites and whether there is a correlation between what ChatGPT recommends and what’s already ranking on Google. 

Why We Studied ChatGPT vs. Google

Ultimately, we want to know if we can predict which products ChatGPT is going to recommend by seeing what ranks on Google. Closely tied to that, and a bit of a “stretch” question is: If I rank on Google for a product related query, does that increase my chances of having ChatGPT recommend me for similar queries?

Why focus on product recommendations?

As we’ve written about extensively and built our service on: bottom of funnel, product related queries are the highest ROI searches that a brand can show up for. As a result, they are the most valuable queries to understand with respect to ChatGPT. When someone asks ChatGPT for product recommendations, it means they are very motivated to buy. So showing up in ChatGPT’s recommendations is very valuable. 

Why compare ChatGPT to Google? 

We’re comparing ChatGPT to Google because Google is how most people search for products. We want to understand: Is the SEO work we’re doing for clients on Google going to help them get recommended by ChatGPT? Are they correlated at all?

How We Did This Study

We focused this study on B2B SaaS products because that’s what we know best. (We may do a follow up study on consumer product searches.)

We Googled 6 different phrases: 

1. Best time clock software
2. Inventory management software
3. Best crm
4. Best heatmapping tools
5. Best ecommerce platforms
6. Best accounting software for small businesses

Then, we asked the same thing of ChatGPT but in natural language:

1. “What are the best time clock software options?”
2. “What are some good inventory software options?”
3. “What are the best CRM options?
4. “What are some of the best heatmapping tools?”
5. “What are the best ecommerce platforms?”
6. “What are the best accounting software options for small businesses?”

We recorded every single product recommended by both Google and ChatGPT in a spreadsheet. 

Recording ChatGPT’s results is easy because it just lists 6–8 tools: 

Note: ChatGPT doesn’t recommend the same tools every time (even if you ask it the exact same question). It swaps in 1–3 new tools in its answer every time you ask. To keep things simple, we just used the first answer from ChatGPT.

On Google, however, there are pages and pages of results, each of which is typically a list of 10–30+ products. So we recorded every single product mentioned in each result on the first page, which was typically around 100 products.

Since the goal of this study is to see if ranking on Google can predict whether a product will be recommended by ChatGPT, we counted how many times each product mentioned by either tool was found on Google’s first page— that is, how many times it was repeated inside the list posts and software recommendation sites on the first page. We can call this the Page One Popularity number. That’s what you see in the right most column of the screenshot above (color formatted so we can see patterns visually).

So if there is some correlation with ChatGPT’s results and Google’s, we should, in theory, see high page one popularity numbers in ChatGPT’s recommendations.

ChatGPT Does Tend to Mention the Most Popular Products on Google’s First Page

Here are the average page one popularity numbers from Google (blue) and ChatGPT’s (red) product recommendations in each category.

For every query besides “best time clock software”, ChatGPT recommends products that are mentioned more often on Google’s first page than the average product listed by Google itself. In other words, ChatGPT tends to recommend the most popular products from Google’s first page results. 

So there is some correlation between the products listed in the page one results on Google and what ChatGPT recommends. Remember, of course, that correlation does not equal causation — it doesn’t mean ChatGPT is “reading” Google and listing products mentioned there, it just means the two tools have some overlap (sometimes a decent overlap) in the products they recommend when users ask for recommendations. 

Why does Google, on average, list less popular products than ChatGPT?

Why are Google’s products on average mentioned less times on its first page results than ChatGPT’s? 

The answer is not that Google doesn’t list popular products. It absolutely does. We’re literally defining popularity by how many times a product is mentioned on Page 1 of Google. 

The reason it’s page one popularity numbers are lower is because the list posts on page one of Google are so full of random obscure products that it’s bringing Google’s averages down. 

In contrast, ChatGPT doesn’t waste time listing as many lesser known products. When you ask ChatGPT for product recommendations, it only lists 7–8, and it biases those towards genuinely popular products. 

You can see this extremely clearly when we visualize the results for the query “best CRM”:

Every product is shown above as a blue line (if Google listed it) or red line (if ChatGPT listed it). The height of the line is how many times it appeared inside Google’s page one results. 

First, note that Google also lists the most popular products. The most popular products on the right side are in order of popularity: Salesforce, Pipedrive, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Freshsales, and Zendesk Sell. They’re all there on Google’s first page. 

But the key takeaway is on the left side: The articles on Google’s first page list dozens of obscure, lesser known, products. That’s what’s bringing the average popularity of Google’s product suggestions down in the earlier graphs. 

In contrast, all of ChatGPT’s red lines are clustered on the right, meaning it’s listing the most popular CRMs, as defined by how many times they show up on Google. That’s notable. It means that ChatGPT is biased towards recommending genuinely more popular products.

ChatGPT fans could even argue that these results show how ChatGPT is more useful than Google — you don’t have to sift through pages of nonsense, you can get the heart of the answer more quickly. But that’s a debate we’re not getting into here. 

Instead, we can start to answer the main question we set out to explore.

Does this mean ranking on Google helps you rank on ChatGPT?

Let’s be honest, it would be extremely convenient if the above data meant that you could “rank” on ChatGPT by simply ranking on Google. Those of us in the SEO space know how to rank on Google already, so this would let us sort of “hack” the process of ranking on ChatGPT. 

But can we really get on ChatGPT by just ranking on Google? The data above gives a mixed answer. 

Yes, on average, ChatGPT is recommending the more popular products on Google’s first page. But by no means is the correlation perfect! We saw plenty of instances of:

1. ChatGPT not listing the popular products on Google.
   
2. ChatGPT listing products that are barely mentioned on Google.

For example, here are the 8 products recommended by ChatGPT for “best heatmapping tools” next to how many times they were mentioned on Google’s first page: 

Here is that same data, presented visually, in the same away we did for “best CRM” above: 

Indeed, ChatGPT mentions the three most popular heatmapping tools: Hotjar, Mouseflow, and Lucky Orange. After that, Crazy Egg and FullStory are also very well known tools in this space and are mentioned 6 and 7 times on Google’s first page. So those five products make sense. 

But then ChatGPT also lists Matomo and Yandex Metrica, which were only listed once out of 117 tools (42 unique tools) listed on the first page of Google. Once! These tools are not popular heatmapping tools by any means. I, personally, have been in the UX space for nearly a decade and have used multiple heatmapping tools for many clients and have never heard of Matomo or Yandex Metrica for heatmapping. Yet, ChatGPT recommends them. 

On the other hand, Smartlook, a former client of ours, is mentioned 9 times on page one of Google for “best heatmapping tools”. Some of that is due to our SEO work, sure, but we don’t own all of the sites on the first page, so it means they are genuinely popular in this space as well. But Smartlook wasn’t mentioned by ChatGPT at all when we asked it about the best heatmapping tools. 

This goes to show that being one of the most popular tools in Google’s results does not guarantee that ChatGPT will also mention you. 

This pattern of ChatGPT also throwing in a few obscure products in its recommendations wasn’t limited to heatmapping tools. When asked about “best inventory management software”, it recommended TradeGecko, among others, which is not mentioned even a single time out of 97 products listed on the first page of Google!

How can we make sense of this? Why is ChatGPT usually listing the most popular products on Google, but also throwing in some less popular products? How is ChatGPT getting its recommendations in the first place? Is the correlation with Google’s results just random chance or is it expected based on how the two products work? 

Reasons Why We Can Expect Some Overlap Between Google and ChatGPT’s Results

ChatGPT is a language model, meaning it ingests a bunch of text — such as articles on the internet, books, sites like Reddit, and more — and it learns what patterns or sequences of words most commonly appear together. It’s then trained to put words together in a sequence that closely matches those patterns. 

(See OpenAI’s original paper explaining how GPT-2 works.) 

For example if you ask it to complete the sentence “A large ecommerce platform based in Canada is ____”, its model, based on all of the text it’s “read” or been trained on, guesses the word that is most likely to come next. That word, in this case is, of course, “Shopify”. 

At a high level, that’s largely all ChatGPT does. It puts words together in ways that most closely match patterns in everything it’s read (which is terabytes worth of data). 

So, for our question of how to get ChatGPT to recommend your product, if nothing has been written about your product in books or on the web before, it’s impossible for ChatGPT to mention you. It won’t associate your product’s name with sequences of words about your product category because no one has done that already. 

That means, by its very nature, ChatGPT isn’t likely to mention brand new products in a category. 

Inversely, this means that if a bunch of text on the internet has talked about your product, you have a good shot at being mentioned by ChatGPT. In fact, the more your product is talked about on the internet, the higher your chances of being mentioned by ChatGPT. 

And, specifically, since it’s a language model, the more your product is mentioned in the context of the category-related words you want to show up for, like “CRM” or “small business accounting tools”, the higher the chances that ChatGPT’s language model will associate your product’s name with those words.  

But the details matter. Specifically, as marketers, knowing exactly what ChatGPT has been trained on would help us understand how to get it to mention our company or our products. 

Exactly what information is ChatGPT trained on? Does it “read” Google?

OpenAI is intentionally vague about exactly what material its latest model, GPT-4, is trained on — as this article in the New Yorker says — in order to not help their competition. 

They just say it’s trained on both publicly available data and private data they license:

In terms of what this “publicly available data” could be, one of the original papers from OpenAI about how GPT-2 worked said they devised their own version of a web crawler, focusing specifically on pages that were linked to by humans, on sites such as Reddit: 

Again, this paper was about GPT-2, but based on this, we can say it’s unlikely that GPT-4 was trained by literally Googling things. So we can’t explain the correlation between Google’s results and ChatGPT’s recommendations in our data above by saying “ChatGPT reads Google.” But rather, the correlation likely comes at a more general, higher level: 

Google scrapes the web and links to pages based on what it decides is most relevant to a search query. ChatGPT also scrapes the web (among other materials) and writes natural language answers based on what it thinks is the most common sequence of words on a topic. 

Both tools are scraping the web and determining, in their own ways, what’s most relevant, popular, or likely to be said by others when you ask it a question. So it’s not totally surprising that they have overlap! 

At a high level, that means the goal of marketing teams should be more or less similar for both: be mentioned as much as possible in content around the internet to increase your chances of being mentioned on Google or by ChatGPT. 

Google is Easier to Manipulate or Hack Your Way Into

Google is just an index of websites (we’re not talking about Google Bard here, just the regular Google that millions of people use daily). It ranks them based on a bunch of factors, including, notably, how many times other sites link to them. These two characteristics of Google…

1. Google just links to websites, as opposed to generating its own content 
2. Google chooses those websites in large part by how many other sites link to it 

…make it relatively easy to get onto Page 1 of Google even if you aren’t really that popular. 

Specifically, you can hack your way onto Google’s first page in two notable ways:

First, you can just pay one of the sites already ranking on page one to list your tool. This sounds nefarious but it’s actually extremely common. One of the most obvious examples in software are review sites like G2 and Capterra. G2’s pages say they are listing the “best [insert space] software” but everyone knows the top products on those lists are just paying G2 the most. And yes, you can also just pay Google to show up in one of the ad spots, but we’re just talking about ranking organically for now because ChatGPT could, in theory, also serve contextual ads if they wanted. 

Second, you can “SEO” your way onto the first page. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long established field, with a set of best practices around getting on the first page of Google for a given search term, in particular (1) good on page content and (2) backlinks. 

What’s important here is that you can rank your site on the first page, even if you aren’t the most popular — that is, your tool hasn’t been mentioned all over the internet. Trust me, we’ve done this for many clients who didn’t come to us as the market leader in their space. You absolutely don’t need to be Salesforce to get on page one for “best CRM”, or you don’t need to be QuickBooks to get on page 1 for “accounting software”. You do have to know how to do SEO, of course, but that’s knowable (you can hire an agency like us, build an in-house team, contract freelancers, etc.). 

Why Ranking on ChatGPT Seems Harder: You Genuinely Have to Be Popular

In contrast, based on the results of this study and how ChatGPT works, getting ChatGPT to suggest your product seems harder. This is for the same two reasons that make Google easier. 

First, ChatGPT is generating its responses by itself word for word. It’s not linking to other people’s content. So its results are a lot more concise. Look at our study above, ChatGPT recommended 7–8 tools for each query, whereas there were over 100 tools listed in the 8–10 results on Page 1 of Google for the same query. For one, that’s just a much smaller list you need to get onto. Second, you can’t use the typical SEO tactic where you create a page that fulfills most of Google’s criteria, but also throw in a mention of your client’s tool. ChatGPT isn’t linking to your page where you can write whatever you want, you need it to literally write about you. 

Second, their language model doesn’t seem to have obvious factors you can control and manipulate (like backlinks for Google). As we detailed above, these GPT models read a ton of text, and then predict word for word what that text would likely say in response to a question. So it’s spitting back a sort of “average” or “most probable” list of words based on the terabytes of text it’s been trained on. How do you hack that? There isn’t some clear action you can take like “building links” to get its algorithm to mention you. You kind of genuinely have to be mentioned a lot in its training text (which we don’t even really know the identity of). This is harder. 

Nonetheless, the core takeaway from above still holds: you need to be mentioned in as many places and as many times as possible to increase the chances that ChatGPT mentions you to its users. In the end, that’s marketing. And you could even argue it’s more honest marketing than trying to “game” Google by buying a favorable domain or building a bunch of links — you have to actually get popular. 

How Ranking on Google Can Increase the Chances of ChatGPT Mentioning You

Ranking on Google is one (great) way of becoming popular. Google is still the #1 portal into the internet for the majority of the world, by a wide margin (93% vs 3% for Bing). 

If you get a bunch of SEO traffic from useful, relevant keywords in your niche, then it’ll naturally expose you to other people who may also write about you. 

In other words, SEO is just a great evergreen marketing channel (yes, we’re biased, but it’s true). Paid ads, the other dominant inbound channel, can also work, as can influencer marketing, going on podcasts, or a bunch of other marketing tactics. But SEO has the advantages of (1) showing up for the exact right terms and (2) giving you free traffic for as long as you’re ranking — you don’t have to keep paying for every click. 

Ranking on Google for relevant terms in your industry is a way to get more people on the internet to write about you, which increases the chances that ChatGPT or other AI tools will read about you when being trained. 

All of This Only Matters If ChatGPT Becomes a Popular Search Engine

Of course, all of this is only relevant if a significant percent of the public starts using ChatGPT or equivalent AI to do product searches. From the searchers’ side, there are pros and cons to ChatGPT vs. Google. 

On the pro side, the analysis above shows that ChatGPT on average, for product queries, suggests more genuinely popular products. You don’t have to sift through pages of obscure products no one has heard of to get to the actually popular products in a category. You don’t have to wonder “did they just pay ChatGPT to get listed?” like you do with G2 or Capterra lists. 

But there are also cons to using ChatGPT for product searches. If you actually do want a long list, ChatGPT is more of a pain. You have to keep asking for more. Second, you can’t verify sources or citations like you can on Google. If you want to ignore G2’s list on Google, for example, you just don’t click on it. You can also more easily search for recommendations from a particular source on Google (e.g. “best tax software pcmag” or “best blender wirecutter”). 

With ChatGPT, if it mentions an obscure product (like the heatmap examples above), you’re sort of at a loss as to why. Finally, the propensity of ChatGPT to make up random facts could just hurt people’s overall confidence in its results, causing them to use it less as a search engine replacement. 

None of us can predict the future, but in June 2023, ChatGPT saw its first decline in users — almost 10% — which is somewhat significant. 

We’ll see how Google’s AI equivalent, Bard, does in popularity once it’s released to the wider public. 

Future Studies

In this study, we only looked at the correlation of how many times ChatGPT’s recommended products were mentioned in Google’s first page results. 

But there are a lot of other proxies for popularity in society that we could also look into to see if ChatGPT’s recommendations are more strongly correlated with other factors. 

For example: 

• Domain rating or domain authority — These metrics from SEO tools are largely a measure of how many backlinks a site gets, that could also be an indication of the likelihood that ChatGPT will run into that product in its training text. 

• Reddit — We know ChatGPT uses Reddit as one of its training sources, so we can try to find a way to correlate its recommended products with popularity on Reddit. 

• Size of company — We could even look at whether ChatGPT biases towards large or public companies since it’s likely that those companies are just mentioned more in society and literature than smaller private ones. 

Any other ideas, questions, or requests for us to study? Ask us in the comments. 

At Grow and Convert, we generate conversions (not just traffic and rankings) for clients by writing original, interview-backed blog content optimized to rank for high buying-intent keywords.

Every blog post we write for a client is written to rank for a specific keyword, and it’s written with the intention that it will convert. What counts as a conversion varies from client to client, but it’s generally signing up for a free trial or scheduling a demo.

This strategy has been incredibly effective for clients across all types of industries, including:

• A no-code software testing platform
• A post-concussion treatment center
• A self-service B2B SaaS company

Because we’re hyper-focused on bringing in conversions for our clients, we know when a blog post starts to falter or plateau (i.e., converting less than it once did or not continuing to grow as expected).

This happened last year with a SaaS client. 

The number of free trial signups directly attributable to our content for this client was growing steadily before plateauing in 2022 and then dipping in late 2022 and early 2023 (see how we attribute conversion events to specific pages in GA4 here). 

What was the problem? And how did we turn it around? 

It turns out there were multiple factors in play (including Google algorithm updates), but, in our analysis, we also discovered the massive importance of secondary keywords. Secondary keywords are keywords that our posts happen to rank for but aren’t the main target keyword that we optimize the post for. 

In the case of this client, we noticed that these secondary keywords, which were similar in intent to the primary keyword, often brought in more traffic than the primary keyword — sometimes significantly more. 

For example, “accounting app for small business” gets 390 searches a month, but many posts ranking for it also rank for “small business accounting software,” which gets 9900 searches per month. That’s an extreme example, but it’s illustrative of the impact secondary keywords can have. We had countless posts that were doing exactly this for our client. What’s also pertinent about this example is that the search intent of these two keywords is similar: both indicate someone is looking to buy accounting software. 

So, if you rank for secondary keywords like this, those “serendipitous” or “unintentional” rankings will also bring in conversions for you. Inversely, if you lose this ranking, you’ll see a dip in conversions from that article.

And that’s what happened with a few key articles for our client. The SERPs changed over time, and our content started losing its top positions for secondary keywords. Finding those secondary keywords allowed us to implement strategies to reclaim those lost rankings, which ultimately increased conversions for our client.

That’s what this post is about, and we break it down into these three sections:

1. Conducting a content audit to find opportunities
   
   
2. Locating high-value secondary keywords that were lost due to SERP changes
   
   
3. Developing a strategy to re-rank for those lost secondary keywords

1. Conducting a Content Audit

We had published original blog posts for this specific client for ~2 years, which meant we had published ~71 posts — all of which were designed to rank for high buying-intent keywords. 

As per our Pain Point SEO strategy, we targeted category keywords, comparison keywords, jobs-to-be-done keywords, and deviant keywords. We discovered keywords in each of those buckets by first interviewing the client to learn what specific pain points they solve for their customers and then finding keywords that correspond to those pain points.

And the results were strong. 

• By the first 6 months, our content had converted 168 times. 
• By the first 12 months, our content had converted 848 times.
• 18 months into the engagement, our content had brought in 2,059 conversions.

Plus, our client was seeing a significant ROI based on their internal data of how many free trials were converted to paid customers and the average lifetime value of one customer.

But, as discussed in the intro, a plateau in new free trial sign-ups occurred, followed by a dip. The growth we saw in the first year of engagement wasn’t happening (that we could see) in the second year. 

When we noticed this stagnation and degradation, we did a high-level content audit. We looked closely at how each article was converting to try and spot opportunities for improvement. 

After conducting the audit, we saw two things.

First, plenty of our posts were still converting well. 31 out of 60 published posts were converting consistently (and bringing in at least one conversion a month). A quick note: Blog articles take time to rank, so we excluded 3 months’ worth of published posts from this tally as those posts are too new to consider in the round-up of “Is this post ranking and converting?”. 

But we also noticed some posts that either a) weren’t performing as well as they once did, or b) hadn’t performed well comparatively. We grouped these posts into 4 different categories:

1. Historically high-converting posts that had dropped out of the top 3 spots for their target keyword. 
   
   
2. Historically high-converting posts that were still ranking in the top 3 for their target keyword yet saw a significant dip in conversions. 
   
   
3. Historically low-converting posts that were (and had always been) in the top 3 for their target keyword.
   
   
4. Low-converting / non-converting posts that had never consistently ranked for their target keyword.

Once we had those broad categories, the next step was developing strategies to increase conversions and continue to deliver growth to our client.

Narrowing Our Scope (to See as Much Growth as Possible, as Soon as Possible)

Since our goal was to reverse the conversion dip as fast as possible, we decided to focus on these two categories of posts first:

1. Historically high-converting posts that had dropped out of the top 3 spots for their target keyword. 
   
   
2. Historically high-converting posts that were still ranking in the top 3 for their target keyword yet saw a significant dip in conversions. 

These posts had, at some point, brought in a lot of conversions, so we just had to get them to do that again.

In contrast, the category “historically low-converting posts that always ranked in the top 3 for its target keyword” involved posts that never brought in a lot of conversions despite ranking well. We noticed that those posts just got less traffic and, thus, fewer conversions. So while their conversion rates were on par with the rest of our content, they were always just going to bring in fewer conversions for the client. And, while there are strategies to improve those types of low-converting posts, the immediate effect would be too small to make a significant difference in growth. 

Similarly, “low-converting / non-converting posts that had never consistently ranked for their target keyword” would take longer to see growth and conversions because you have to wait to get rankings you hadn’t had before. Therefore, we marked these as low-priority posts that we’d take a closer look at after we first maximized growth by targeting the two types of historically high-converting posts. 

Developing the Appropriate Strategy (on a per Article Basis)

Once we had a list of posts to focus on, we thought of two immediate tactics to reclaim lost secondary keyword rankings and increase conversions again.

Tactic 1: Increase Link-Building Efforts

As part of our normal service, we build links for clients to help our content rank faster. We have a certain number of articles and links that we create on behalf of the client every month, but the challenge on the link-building side is that some articles require more links than others. So we don’t distribute links evenly. 

As the engagement goes on, we shift priorities from building links to recently published pieces to focus more on building links to the pieces we know convert well. 

After doing the audit, we felt there was an opportunity to build more links to some of the pieces that had recently slipped in rankings.

We were more likely to choose this strategy if:

• The post in question didn’t have a lot of backlinks built to it.

• The post was ranking in position 3-5 for the target keyword.

• The SERP for the target keyword has not changed significantly since the post was published (more on this below).

Tactic 2: Re-optimize Past Content

When we write content for a client, we use two sources of information that help inform our post: 

• The client-specific information that we get during interviews with them. It’s this information that lets us do productive and intentional keyword research, where we find keywords tied to real pain points that the client’s customer is actively trying to solve. It’s precisely what gets our content to bring in high buying-intent traffic that generates leads and new customers. 

• The existing SERP for the keyword. Our posts must rank high for their target keyword to have a chance at converting — that means we must have a case for how our content will rank in the SERP.

But SERPs change over time. New content gets published by the competition. Interpretations and meanings of search terms shift and evolve. Google updates its algorithm. So we considered it might be the case that some of our previously published content might need to be “re-optimized” to be able to compete within the new SERP landscape.

Here’s a hypothetical example of SERP changes that should help illustrate our point.

Example 1: Changing Target Customer

Let’s say we wrote a blog post targeting the keyword “vacation tracker,” and at that time, the SERP was full of posts about vacation tracking software for companies, i.e., software that helps companies track their team’s vacations. But let’s say as time went on, the SERP began to change into a different use-case: individuals tracking their own personal vacation. 

In that case, we’d need to take the original content we wrote for “vacation tracker” and re-optimize it towards a more suitable keyword. 

Example 2: Changing Solution Types

Here’s another hypothetical showing a different (but also common) way that SERPs can change: let’s say we wrote a post for “employee onboarding systems,” and when we wrote the post, the SERP was full of listicles and how-to guides showing small businesses how to onboard new employees using ad hoc tools like spreadsheets to build their own “system” — a keyword in that search query. 

But, say that over time, more HR SaaS solutions emerged with dedicated software for employee onboarding. It’s quite possible, in that case, that the SERP would change, and some of these “how to build an onboarding system with spreadsheets” posts would get replaced by sites from these dedicated onboarding SaaS tools. It’s also likely that the search engine would no longer differentiate between “system” and “software,” and the SERP for “employee onboarding system” would have a lot of overlap with “employee onboarding software”. We’ve seen shifts like this many times. 

In this case, again, our old content would need to be updated and re-optimized to the new SERP landscape.

We were more likely to choose this “re-optimization” strategy if:

• The post was ranking in position 6 or lower for its target keyword.

• The SERP had changed significantly since our piece was published.

• The post’s Clearscope score has gone down. 

A quick note: We use Clearscope, a content optimization tool, to help give our blog posts an even greater competitive edge within search engine results. While a piece’s Clearscope score is not the ultimate deciding metric in whether or not a piece will rank, we’ve found that it helps. There are other content optimization tools you can use, but we really like Clearscope and prefer it. Full disclosure: They are also a client, although we had been using the tool long before working with them.

It was in the process of assigning one of these strategies to each post that we discovered secondary keywords and their potential impact on conversions, which is what we discuss below.

2. Finding Secondary Keywords with High Buying-Intent

When we took a deeper look at historically high-converting blog content that was still ranking in the top spots for its target keyword yet had seen a drop in conversions, we noticed something that we started calling “secondary keywords”. Secondary keywords are keywords that our blog posts had ranked for indirectly. As discussed in the intro, these secondary keywords were often semantically similar or related to our primary keyword. Here’s an example using a blog post from our own blog.

We wrote this post, How to Create a SaaS Content Strategy That Drives Signups, to rank for the target keyword “saas content strategy.” 

At the time of writing this post, that post ranks for its target keyword in position 5. A quick note: These screenshots are pulled from Ahrefs, but many other keyword research tools like SEMRush do something similar in terms of secondary keyword analysis. Although, you’ll likely need a tool more advanced than Google Keyword Planner.

But, if we look at all of its organic keywords, we see that it ranks for around 91 other relevant keywords. Most of these keywords are semantically similar or just variations or synonyms of the main keyword. But this post receives a good percentage of its traffic from these secondary keywords.

To find as many opportunities to add to our list of keywords, we can take a look at the specific post’s performance in terms of traffic. When we do that, we see that right now (as of this article’s writing), it’s at a peak in terms of traffic. But it also had a strong month in April 2023, with its highest organic traffic date being April 15th.

Then we can pull up all the secondary keywords this post ranked for on April 15th and compare them to those it ranked for on June 22nd (i.e., the current date at the time).

This lets us see what keywords were gained or lost in that time.

This example illustrates the crux of our process, but, when it comes to doing this type of research for our client, what we look at first is the best converting month for a specific post in the entire engagement (not the highest-trafficked month, though they’re often the same). 

For example, here’s a screenshot of a waterfall chart we use to track conversions for this client. You can see that in June 2022, the highlighted post had converted 61 times, then it began to decline, getting as few as 15 conversions in December and 24 in January 2023. 

To fix this problem, we pulled up what organic keywords this post was ranking for in June 2022. And then we focused on the keywords that brought in the most traffic and that had the highest buying-intent. It’s essential to keep in mind that our focus on targeting high buying-intent keywords never goes away.

Identifying high buying-intent keywords (whether they’re long tail keywords, comparison keywords, etc.) is the foundation of our content marketing strategy.

Our goal is not to increase traffic but to increase conversions (that’s why this process starts with consulting our conversion spreadsheet, not our traffic report). All other things being equal, we would pick a secondary keyword with high buying-intent and low search volume over a secondary keyword with low buying-intent and high search volume.

3. Developing a Strategy to Re-rank for Those Lost Secondary Keywords

Once we had the secondary keywords we thought were the most valuable, we saw two viable strategies:

1. Write brand new content for those secondary keywords we had once ranked for but had since lost.
   
   
2. Go back and re-optimize that existing post to rank for that lost secondary keyword.

Let’s look at how we decided which method to use.

Deciding When a Lost Secondary Keyword Warrants a New Article

A lost secondary keyword can be a great opportunity for a brand-new article. This is because the secondary keywords we found are of similar intent to keywords we know convert. 

If the SERP has changed enough between the primary keyword and the secondary keyword, a new article may be warranted. 

To figure out if this is the case, we look at the existing SERP of both the primary keyword and the lost secondary keyword. This free tool lets you do a high-level SERP comparison, but we also recommend taking a deep-dive into the SERP and looking at what the ranking articles are positioning. 

Another way to find potentially new keywords to target: Secondary keywords that were never ranking in the top 10 spots could also be viable options for new articles

Deciding When a Lost Secondary Keyword’s Intent Can Be Fulfilled by an Existing Article

But, sometimes the lost secondary keyword doesn’t warrant a new article. Instead, we found the best strategy was to re-optimize the existing article to target that lost secondary keyword.

This is the case when the SERPs for the two distinct keywords are more similar than they are different or if that secondary keyword is still ranking on the first page of the SERP.

For example, let’s look back at our own blog post we referenced above. 

You can see the post is ranking in position 5 for the keyword “saas content marketing” and in position 8 for “b2b saas content marketing strategy.”

So the question becomes: Does the inclusion of “b2b” and “strategy” in that secondary keyword make the SERP different enough that it warrants a brand-new post? 

To answer this, we first look at a clear visual comparison of the SERPs (using the free tool we referenced above).

From this tool, we can see that these keywords have the same #1 post. The SERPs are also 60% similar. And, more importantly, our one post is ranking in both SERPs. Because of this, we would re-optimize our existing post to also rank for the secondary keyword “b2b saas content marketing strategy.”

What Does Re-optimizing Content Look Like?

The actual specifics of re-optimizing a blog post are too nuanced to get into here, as it changes drastically depending on the specific keyword you’re trying to rank for.

But, as a general guideline, we focus on:

• The angling and intent of the blog post. At the forefront of our minds through every edit is: does the angling/positioning match the searcher’s intent. While there will be overlap between related keywords, there are also likely some differences. We make sure the updated content is tailored towards the search intent of both the primary and secondary keywords.

• Basics of on-page SEO. We look at the title, headings, meta descriptions, and alt tags. We also check to make sure the new keyword is mentioned throughout the copy (while avoiding obvious pitfalls like keyword stuffing or flagrantly forced writing). 

Results from This Process

We started doing this re-optimization process for our client in February 2023, and the results were quick and promising.

Our client saw an all-time high in free trial sign-ups, and while there were ebbs and flows in performance in the following months, conversions were now bottoming out at what was once an all-time high.

In the 4 months before we did re-optimizations, our content was averaging 171 conversions a month. In the 4 months since we started doing re-optimizations, our content has averaged 258 conversions a month.

Finally, we re-optimized 22 blog posts to re-rank for secondary keywords. We had 30 secondary keywords we were trying to re-rank for. Out of those 30, 20 of those secondary keywords saw significant improvement in ranking positions.

Liked this article? You might also enjoy:

• Growing a Digital Marketing Agency: from $0 to $1M in 12 Months

• How to Research Competitor Keywords (and Find Hidden Gems)

• SaaS Keyword Research: Finding the Best Keywords to Drive Leads

Learn More about Our SEO and Content Marketing Agency

• Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute a content-focused SEO strategy built around driving lead generation and sales, not just traffic, you can learn more about working with us here.

• Join Our Content Marketing Team: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing in this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.

• Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course and community, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback. Learn more here.

Specifically, in our experience, most companies follow a herd mentality where they all research each other’s keywords and copy each other. That results in everyone in a space targeting the highest search volume keywords they can find. 

On the surface, this seems fine. More search volume means more traffic. But as we’ve argued in many articles and shown in a ton of case studies, traffic and pageviews don’t equate to actual conversions (like leads, demo requests, or contact form fills). 

So if you blindly follow your competitor’s keywords, it’s extremely likely that you’ll end up where they very likely are: with a bunch of content that gets traffic but doesn’t convert. 

Instead, what you should do, and what we’ve stressed many times, is prioritize keywords that show buying intent. These are the keywords that indicate readers’ active interest in your product or services; they target audiences who are: 1) a good prospect for your business and, 2) ready to take action — and they convert at a much higher rate than other keywords. These keywords are the hidden gems in your competitors’ SEO profiles.

This helps turn SEO and content marketing into a revenue-generating, ROI-positive channel.

Below, we’ll explain this logic and show you how to find the most valuable opportunities from competitors’ content plans. 

Note: You can learn more about how our agency approaches content marketing and SEO here or inquire about working with us here. We also teach our content marketing strategy and process in our course and community.

Flaws with the Traditional Approach to Researching Competitor Keywords 

Usually, the approach to researching competitor keywords looks like this: 

• You plug competitors’ sites into Ahrefs or Semrush to see a list of keywords they’re ranking for. 

• You identify gaps between your content and their content. (What keywords have they targeted that you haven’t? Where are they outperforming you on the SERP?) 

• Then, you “bridge the gap” by targeting keywords they rank for that you don’t. 

But the key is that last step: Which of the “gap” keywords do you actually go after? As we argued above, we think the vast majority of keywords your competitors rank for are not useful to you. Specifically: 

1. Many are just obvious duds. Things like branded keywords for them and terms that just don’t apply to your product or service. It’s easy to weed these out.
   
   
2. Top-of-funnel keywords that won’t ever convert. These are the tempting ones. If your competitor ranks for some high-traffic keyword in your space, it’s really hard to not go after those same keywords. But if you can avoid this temptation and filter their keywords by buying intent for your products or services, you will have a much higher ROI on your SEO and content efforts. 

To convince you why #2 is important, let’s look at a case study of one of our clients. 

Case Study: Geekbot and the Power of Bottom of Funnel Keywords

For our client, Geekbot, we measured conversion rates by keyword type to assess how different opportunities and pieces of content were working for them. 

Overall, we looked at 64 articles: 22 targeting bottom-of-the-funnel keywords — this is another term we’ve used to describe high-buying-intent keywords — and 42 targeting top-of-the-funnel content (a.k.a., educational or awareness-style content to drive traffic and introduce readers to your brand). 

Over two years, these posts brought in 232,493 organic page views — as you might expect, TOF brought in the majority of that organic search traffic: 204,303 website visitors. BOTF keywords generated 28,190 page views. 

But despite TOF content bringing so many more visitors to the site (10x more!), BOTF content still drove more business: keywords with high buying intent converted at a 25x higher rate than top-of-the-funnel content. 

Geekbot’s top-of-the-funnel keywords brought in 397 conversions with a conversion rate of 0.19%. On the flip side, the bottom-of-funnel keywords brought in 1,348 leads and converted at 4.78%. 

That’s why we continually say that maximizing conversions over traffic is more valuable.

You’ll achieve ROI sooner by targeting competitor keywords with high buying intent. Then, after you exhaust those opportunities, you can move “up the funnel” to more brand-building keywords.

Pain Point SEO and the 3 Categories of High-Buying-Intent Keywords to Look For

Our foundational framework for targeting high-buying-intent keywords — something we coined as Pain Point SEO — classifies high-buying-intent keywords into three categories. 

The idea here is that any company can follow this framework to identify high-buying-intent opportunities (and avoid the pitfalls discussed above) when finding competitor keywords to target. And we’ve seen this strategy work time and time again. 

1. Category Keywords

Category keywords indicate that someone is literally searching for your product or services. They’re usually pretty obvious and easy to think of. For example, say you are developing a keyword strategy for a help desk software company (an example we walk through in detail below); you’d want to rank highly for keywords like “help desk software,” “email ticketing system,” and “customer service software.” 

When somebody is researching a product or service category, they’re in the process of learning about available solutions and comparison shopping — so if somebody is searching for the product or service you offer, you’d obviously want to introduce your solution to those readers.

The trick here is to think of the different ways somebody might look for your solution; an HR user exploring help desk software might search “email ticketing system,” while a customer service user might search “customer service software.” Either way, both users are looking for help desk software, so you’d want to target those variations of your product category.  

When performing competitor keyword research, you can look at the category keywords they target and find options that tie back to your product or services. We recommend looking at your closest competitors here — the competitors with offerings most similar to yours — because their category keywords will be more appropriate for your business. 

2. Comparison and Alternative Keywords

Comparison and Alternative keywords indicate Googlers are researching and comparing competitor brands, products, and services — they could be transitioning away from a competitor’s solution, or aware of your competitor’s brand and curious about alternatives… but again, we know this searcher is in the market for what you offer and trying to decide on the right solution. So it makes sense to be a part of this conversation. 

For example, in the help desk space, somebody might research “Zendesk alternatives” (or “Zendesk competitors”) because Zendesk is a well-known help desk software brand. Or they might research Zendesk vs. [other help desk competitor name] to see how one solution stacks up against another. We talk more about the value of these keywords in our case study here.

This is a valuable strategy when analyzing competitor keywords because you can discover new brands (you may compete with directly or in search engines) and stay on top of competitors’ competitors. Pursuing these keywords lets you introduce your brand to audiences who are interested in products or services that closely relate to what you offer.  

3. Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) Keywords

Jobs To Be Done keywords lean more into the idea of “pain point SEO” because they indicate that the Googler is experiencing a problem or pain that your solution can solve. Though users aren’t directly searching for your solution (or a competitor’s), like the categories above, these keywords still indicate buying intent because users require a solution to a current problem (or have a job that needs to be done). 

JTBD keywords present an opportunity to “drive awareness” because Googlers may not be aware of your solution — but you’re driving awareness to more qualified searchers, instead of starting at the top of the funnel. 

Circling back to our help desk example, some JTBD keyword ideas would include: “how to organize customer support emails,” “how to manage a team inbox,” or “how to create and send automated support emails.” All of these search terms indicate that the Googler has a problem help desk software solves, so introducing this solution to readers means there is a chance they’ll convert and make a purchase. 

This is useful when researching competitor keywords because you can learn more about your target audiences’ pains — pains you might not have thought of or realized from past customer conversations — and determine the best ways to position and present your solution. 

Look at our diagram below to visualize these keyword categories “in the funnel:” 

How to Apply This in Your Competitive Keyword Analysis 

Now we’ll show you how this works with an example — I’ve done this competitive keyword research for the company HiverHQ (not a client and totally unaffiliated to us) to see how they compare to bigger help desk software brands, like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and HelpScout. 

There are several digital marketing and keyword analysis tools to perform this research, including Moz, Semrush, and Ahrefs. We use Ahrefs in our processes, but you can also follow these steps in other SEO tools. 

The first step is to open Ahrefs and navigate to “Site Explorer”. 

Here, you can paste your site URL to get a bird’s-eye view of your site’s keyword data, backlink profile, and traffic sources. Then, open the “Content gap” tool to add competitor URLs and review their keywords.

When you run the content gap report, you’ll be hit with pages and pages of organic keyword options — this is the time to sift through keywords and find the opportunities worth prioritizing. Ahrefs will show you competitor rank positions and metrics like keyword volume and difficulty, which you can use to filter options (to a degree). As we’ve stressed above, you should prioritize search and buying intent above all else.

Competitor keyword analysis will require a time investment, but doing this research upfront lets you pinpoint the valuable keywords and avoid wasting resources on opportunities with no business potential. 

Let’s review the keyword gap report below: 

First, there are the obvious duds: “Uber customer service number” (and similar keywords) are not at all related and easy to weed out. 

However, we can spot category keywords that could be relevant — like AI Chatbot. Most help desk tools include or offer an AI Chatbot, so if your tool also has an AI chatbot (or related) feature, targeting this keyword could get you in front of the customers looking for that software solution. 

If it doesn’t, it’s not relevant to you, and you should move on. This illustrates a key point: what is a bottom-of-funnel term for your competitor isn’t necessarily a relevant keyword for you. 

Another keyword later on this list is “enterprise customer service software,” which is a super valuable opportunity for help desk software brands targeting enterprise users. 

Think about the types of buying intent keywords we described above while you perform gap analysis. You can filter the keyword research tool by term to find topics that fall into those buckets. For example, you could type “software” (or feature names, like AI Chatbot) to see every keyword that mentions a specific software category or solution. Or you could find “alternative” keywords by looking for competitor names.   

As you review each keyword, think about the searcher and:

• The questions they have
• The problems they want to solve, or tasks they want to accomplish
• The goal of their research 

When you consider the search intent — and really put yourself in the reader’s shoes — you can gauge business potential and identify “pain point” keywords. Is this searcher looking for a product or service? Do they have a problem and are seeking a solution? Do YOU have a good solution for this Googler?  

Then, you can review the content gap report and hone in on the specific keywords that make the most sense for your business. 

Also, keep in mind, there are usually a few overarching goals teams have when digging into competitor keywords:

• Target the same (high-buying-intent) keywords as competitors to compete for rankings in the same search engine results pages.

• Discover pain point, JTBD, and long tail keywords used by your target market that you hadn’t thought of yourself.

• Find and begin targeting keywords that competitors have not yet targeted.

Establish specific goals before building out your content plan. Is there an audience you want to target, like enterprise teams? (Alternatively, are there audiences you want to avoid?) Do you want to promote certain product features? Was your product designed to solve very specific problems? You can implement our strategies while still driving research around your goals.

On that note… let’s talk about finalizing keyword ideas and developing strategies to target competitor keywords.

Dotting Your I’s & Crossing Your T’s 

By now, you should have a pretty good list of keywords to slot in your content plan. But before you start tackling topics, there are two remaining steps: 

First, you want to perform brief SERP research to finalize keyword ideas and ensure each option is solid.  

This includes opening the search engine results page for target keywords and checking out your organic competitors (who already ranks in the top #1-10 positions). 

• What type of sites do you see? 
• Who are you competing with? 
• What type of content have they produced on the topic? 
• Does it make sense to introduce your business/solution to this conversation? 

Finally, if everything checks out and you determine the keyword presents a strong opportunity for your business, you can decide on the SEO strategy to target it. 

• Think about your existing content — are there any opportunities to update and re-optimize current content to rank for these new keywords? (Then, you can boost ROI from previous content marketing and reserve resources to build new content.) 

• Look at the overlapping keywords that you and your competitors have both targeted; determine where they out-rank you, and schedule updates to that content.

• Build new content to target remaining keywords. 

It’s important to remember that finding the right keywords is only a small part of strategic SEO. Even if you identify the most valuable keyword opportunities, you will only see success from content marketing by delivering helpful, well-written content that caters to search intent. 

We won’t dive into all of that in this post, but you can read about the next steps of our process here: SEO Content Writing: A 5-Step Process You Can Follow

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In our experience, there are three main types of high-converting keywords:

• Category keywords, where someone’s looking for your product or product category; they’re ready to buy what you offer, and just need to be convinced that you have the solution they need. This includes searches such as ‘best crm software’ and ‘children’s hiking boots’. Plus all the variations, for example ‘best crm system’ and ‘children’s hiking shoes’.
  
  
• Comparisons and alternatives, where someone’s comparing products or services in your space. In the case of a project management software, this might be ‘trello vs asana or alternatives to zoho’. Again, the searcher is indicating their readiness to buy.
  

• Jobs-to-be-done, where someone is indicating that they want to achieve a goal or complete a task. For example, ‘how to do financial projections’, ‘best way to clean grout’, or ‘natural way to increase testosterone’.
  
  Note: To learn more about JTBD keywords, read my previous post: How to Use Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) Keywords in Your SEO Content Strategy

There are loads of opportunities within all of these categories, so you won’t be short of topics to write about—whatever industry you’re in. And as well as the clear and obvious opportunities (e.g. ‘best crm software’), there’s a not-so-obvious approach you can try, too.

We call these more obscure opportunities ‘deviant’ keywords.

Deviant keywords aren’t immediately evident, and you might even consider them ‘wrong’—but they make sense to target because they’re still likely to generate conversions for your business.

In this post, I’ll explain what deviant keywords are and show some examples of how they work.

What are deviant keywords?

Deviant keywords are keywords that seem unusual, and on first glance they’d appear to be unacceptable for you to use in your content marketing strategy. Generally, finding deviant keywords demands a certain amount of ‘outside-the-box’ thinking.

Granted, a deviant keyword does sound pretty menacing. But we can thank the Cambridge Dictionary for the neat definition that we’ve been able to use for this concept:

What are the different types of deviant keywords?

First, it’s worth outlining what I’m not talking about when I suggest targeting deviant keywords:

I’m not suggesting you write content to rank for random keywords simply to generate traffic. This can be tempting, especially if you can see your competitors’ websites getting a lot of visitors. But website traffic by itself is a vanity metric. It’s better to have modest traffic but a high percentage of visitors converting—e.g. signing up to a free trial, sending an inquiry, or calling your office—and that’s why we even target mini-volume keywords for our clients.

Deviant keywords are simply a non-intuitive or seemingly wrong way to achieve that same end: get conversions from SEO and content.

Let’s look at examples of deviant keywords in each of our three Pain Point SEO frameworks.

First, Deviant keywords can be found in category keywords (from our Pain Point SEO framework):

• Inaccurate descriptions of a product or service: People use all sorts of phrases to describe what they need, many of which aren’t technically correct. In some cases, Google will default its SERPs to the correct search, but not always. It pays to ‘meet searchers where they are’ rather than sticking to the terminology that you deem to be accurate.
  
  For example, some companies we’ve worked with have had major BoF category keywords (with high search volume = great opportunities) that are downright wrong. I’ll dig into two of these stories later in this post.
  
  
• Overestimation of needs: Sometimes people assume they need a big expensive tool when they actually need something very specific. For example, the Timetastic app is designed specifically for companies to manage staff leave. It won’t help with other HR tasks (hiring, resource planning, payroll, etc.) but for many businesses, that functionality would be overkill anyway. Many people searching ‘hr software for leave management’ don’t actually need HR software, per se—they just need something that helps them schedule and record staff leave. Thus, this would be a good deviant keyword because not everyone understands the jargon and nuances between types of software.
  

• Underestimation of needs: Our client, StrataPT, offers a complete platform for physical therapy (PT) practices, but their main functionality is billing (because reimbursement from insurance companies is a nightmare). In this case, calling their product ‘billing software’ is technically inaccurate, because it does so much more. But people searching for this keyword are still great prospects, because one of—if not the main—benefit of buying their software is to improve their billing process and collection rate. Plus, in fact, standalone billing software without the other stuff never gets the same results anyway.
  
  
• Free/Freemium: If your product isn’t free, it may feel weird to target this keyword—but there are logical angles here. If it’s a SaaS product and you offer a free subscription plan, it isn’t really a deviant keyword. And if you only offer a temporary free trial, we don’t recommend framing your product as free because that just annoys people. In this case, we’d target the ‘free’ keyword by writing a piece that highlights the pros/cons of free software (mainly the cons). For example, The Hidden Costs of Free CRM Software.

And in the comparisons and alternatives keyword group, such as:

• Non-ideal alternatives: Several marketing experts will say not to sell too hard to people who aren’t yet ‘product-aware’ because they’re not ready to buy. We think differently because, in our experience, someone who demonstrates a pain point is open to a good product or service that will solve their problem. Even when they’ve searched for something else, as long as that ‘something else’ is indicative of their pain point, you have a real chance of convincing them your solution is worth a shot instead.
  
  An example to illustrate the point: Let’s say you have a software that helps companies with staff travel (from a quick Google search, one prominent brand is TravelPerk). The keyword ‘travel request form’ is an example of a non-ideal alternative; the searcher is indicating they need something to help them to organize corporate travel (they might be an employee themselves or HR trying to formalize the process for staff). If using TravelPerk is better than processing forms manually, this is a great place to make that argument.
  
  In fact, TravelPerk has targeted this keyword with What is a business travel request form?. But in my view, they’d be better off taking a different angle: either leading explicitly with the downsides of using a travel request form, or targeting travel request form template instead—providing a template, while making the case for their alternative.

Again, this keyword is ‘wrong’ because TravelPerk is the antithesis of a template for manually managing corporate travel. It doesn’t actually describe their solution at all.

Another non-ideal alternative could be a non-ideal competitor; an example would be a tool that has a proportion of users/potential users whose needs overlap with what TravelPerk offers. This might be a software focused only on travel expenses and financial records. In that case, they might want to target a keyword like ‘payhawk alternatives’.

We did something similar for Leadfeeder, a software that helps B2B companies see what businesses are visiting their website. At that time, it was built on top of Google Analytics, and wasn’t a replacement for it at all (it doesn’t touch any traffic analytics or other core features of Google Analytics). But we targeted the term ‘google analytics alternatives’, which converted very well for them. As of now, that post (note: heavily edited since we first published it) still ranks in the top 5 spots for that keyword.

And finally, in the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) group of keywords:

• Inefficient ways of doing a job: This is pretty similar to the non-ideal alternatives (see above)—but with more emphasis on the task that needs to be completed.
  
  For example, an accounting software might want to target ‘how to create an invoice in word’ because the person searching for this is doing something arduous when they can offer a better alternative (perhaps without cost, if the feature is part of the free plan). At first this seems irrelevant because your product would have absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft Word, but actually, the searcher is telling you they want to do something in a way that you know is costing them time and energy, with substandard results.
  
  (In my post about JTBD keywords, I also mention the article we wrote for Circuit’s route planner about how to create a route for multiple destinations using Google Maps. We gave the step-by-step process for doing this while highlighting the hassle it involves, and the fact there’s a maximum limit of 10 stops. This post has generated thousands of free trial signups for Circuit because we put forward a convincing case that using Circuit is better than fiddling with Google Maps to find workarounds. More on this later.).

Again, what we’re not talking about here is targeting irrelevant keywords for the sake of getting web traffic. Deviant keywords will still generate conversions.  

When does targeting deviant keywords make sense?

Targeting deviant keywords usually makes sense when you’ve already covered all of your high-priority bottom-of-funnel keywords.

We tend to prioritize in the below order (though not always):

1. Category keywords
2. Comparisons and alternatives
3. Jobs-to-be-done keywords
4. The deviant keywords within each of the groups above

In most cases, deviant keywords can be considered ‘mid-funnel’ opportunities. In other words, they’re either demonstrating an inherently lower buying intent, or we think that the buying intent of the people searching for it is more mixed and uncertain (i.e. some want to buy, others don’t).

There are exceptions to this, however. These exceptions are mainly deviants within the category keywords. As I noted earlier in this post, inaccurate descriptions can sometimes be very high intent; the issue is simply that the searcher doesn’t have their terminology correct. In the next section of this article, I’ll give you an example of a company whose highest-intent keyword was a deviant keyword because it was a popular misconception about their technology.

But mostly, these deviant keywords are something to look at when you start to move up the funnel, after exhausting all of the keywords that are likely to give you the most conversions.

3 real-world examples of targeting deviant keywords

I’m going to wrap up this article with three examples of how we’ve embraced deviant keywords and achieved results for real-world clients.

1. Renewable heating company: Using an inaccurate category description

A few years ago, I worked with a UK-based renewable energy company that specialized in sustainable heating and cooling. Charged with growing their organic traffic and online inquiries, I started exploring BoF category keywords; the ways people described their products.

There were some pretty obvious ones that they were already targeting on Google Ads, including:

• air source heat pump
• ground source heat pump
• heat pump for cooling
• heat pump system for house

As well as some middle-of-funnel keywords, such as:

• how much does a heat pump cost
• heat pump settings for winter
• heat pump vs furnace
• how does a heat pump work

These were all good opportunities. But speaking to the sales and customer service teams uncovered something interesting: as experts in the technology, they were really frustrated that people kept coming to them asking about geothermal heat pumps.

In the UK, a geothermal heat pump means something very specific; it’s not at all suitable for residential properties (although the US seems to have adopted this term more easily). Geothermal heating is generally an industrial solution, involving drilling a massive borehole deep into the earth close to the earth’s core. Not something you’d want to do in your back garden.

This mistake annoyed the team, because they cared a lot about the technology. Yet this was the language people were using to describe what they needed.

I managed to convince them that despite the description ‘geothermal heat pump’ being erroneous, keywords like the following were worth writing content about:

• residential geothermal heat pump
• geothermal heat pump installation cost
• water to water geothermal heat pump
• best geothermal heat pump

The beauty is that many of their competitors were similarly frustrated by the popular misconception about geothermal energy and were avoiding the keywords, too. This meant they were actually much less competitive in the SERPs than the correct descriptions at the time.

The lesson here is to not be too precious about your product or service. If people are using certain language to describe their needs, it makes sense to be there for those searches. You can then use your posts and pages to explain the nuances of what they really need (if that matters).

As this was a few years ago, I unfortunately don’t have the conversion metrics for these specific geothermal keywords. But I do know that they contributed to an overall 8x growth in conversions and a growth of 3,400% in (high-intent) organic traffic over two years.

2. Cognitive FX: Embracing unwanted terminology

My colleagues, Olivia Seitz and Devesh Khanal, put together a full case study about our work with Cognitive FX: How We Grew Cognitive FX to 70,000 Pageviews in 14 Months.

Cognitive FX is a concussion treatment center based in Provo, Utah. What we haven’t highlighted in our case study is that one of their best-performing keywords—one that we’ve used across dozens of posts—is actually one their medical professionals didn’t want to use.

The doctors at Cognitive FX are not fans of the term ‘post-concussion syndrome’ because ‘persistent post-concussion symptoms’ is the most up-to-date, medically accurate description. But patients—and many in the medical community who don’t specialize in the condition—will search for post-concussion syndrome or its abbreviation, PCS.

Keywords such as ‘post concussion syndrome test’, ‘living with post concussion syndrome’, ‘what can a neurologist do for post concussion syndrome’, or ‘how to treat pcs’ are high-intent, and therefore, valuable — despite searchers using the ‘wrong’ term to describe their problem.

The articles that are targeting PCS-related terms accounted for 23% of all blog conversions in the month prior to us writing this post. According to Olivia, these articles are consistently driving 20-25% of all blog conversions on a monthly basis.

Plus, there are other opportunities around wrong—or at least strange—ways to describe the condition. For example, an article targeting ‘neuroplasticity treatment’ has consistently brought in conversions. It’s not a term their clinicians would ever use, but it’s one of the ways their target patients search for help online.

We can learn from these two companies that if you have a complex service or product—whether it’s technical, medical, financial, or something else—many people searching for it (and around it) will use terms that are wrong, ambiguous, or non-ideal. Don’t avoid these keywords. Instead, invest some time and effort in uncovering these deviant keywords.

3. Circuit: Combining JTBD with an alternative/competitor

A deviant approach to jobs-to-be-done keywords (e.g. ‘how to’ and ‘can I’ keywords) is to combine them with alternatives that might seem irrelevant at first glance. In this case, the person is asking ‘how can I do [task] using [tool]?’—in many cases, they’re deviant keywords because these alternative tools do not directly relate to your product or service, and the search suggests that the person is already dead-set on what solution they’re going to rely on (and it’s not yours).

However, we don’t write these keywords off because the person is trying to complete a task in a way that we know is inefficient, full of hassle, and prone to error. This gives us a chance to convince that searcher that they’re better off taking a different route now or in the future.

One of the strongest examples of this approach is our article for Circuit, a software for delivery companies that handles route planning, courier tracking, and much more.

We decided to target the keyword, ‘how to plan the shortest route for multiple destinations in google maps’ even though this was helping someone do something without using Circuit. The idea was that by taking the searcher through the step-by-step process of planning an efficient route for multiple stops in Google Maps, they’ll see that it’s actually a real pain.

This pain then opens up an opportunity for us to make the case for Circuit being a better option.

The bonus is that a significant number of people searching for this are doing so because they’re making deliveries. They don’t say that in their search term, but that’s one of the primary reasons for someone needing to create the shortest route from a list of destinations. This is Circuit’s main audience, and as a result, this post has generated thousands of free trial signups.

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As we’ve written about extensively, including in our foundational Pain Point SEO article, we always prioritize bottom-of-funnel (BoF), high-buying-intent keywords for clients—because we’re more interested in generating conversions from SEO and content than just traffic. To recap, Pain Point SEO utilizes three main content frameworks. The two highest converting frameworks are:

1. Category Keywords

These are keywords that indicate someone is simply looking for your exact product type or category. For Shopify, for example, these would be keywords such as ecommerce software or ecommerce platform, as well as all the variations on those terms, including solution, app, service(s), tool(s), etc.

2. Comparisons and Alternatives

• These are keywords where the searcher is comparing two or more products in your space. For QuickBooks, for example, these would be keywords such as quickbooks vs xero, quicken vs quickbooks, quickbooks vs freshbooks, etc. We might also tap into related searches that don’t contain QuickBooks and insert them into the conversation, for example honeybook vs freshbooks (vs quickbooks).

• If we were working with Asana, we could target keywords such as trello alternative, podio alternative, and monday.com alternative, as well as ‘alternatives’ variations—plus ‘alternative to’ and ‘alternatives to’ keywords. In some cases, people search for ‘competitors’ (e.g. asana competitors has 2k monthly volume).

And slightly ‘up-funnel’ from these two are jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) keywords.

3. Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) Keywords

Jobs-to-be-done keywords are keywords that indicate someone has a problem that your product helps solve. Unlike the two frameworks above, the searcher isn’t explicitly searching for your product or a competitor, but they need to accomplish something. Their query indicates that it’s something your product can help with. The most common type of JTBD keywords are ‘how to’ searches.

For example, going back to the Shopify case, we’d look at keywords such as how to sell products online, how to add a shop to my website, or how to start an ecommerce store. There are several other options beyond these ‘how to’ keywords, too—which I outline in the rest of this post.

As you can see in the graphic above, JTBD keywords are more mid-funnel, so they don’t have the extreme buying intent of the first two frameworks—but they do unlock a much greater number of keywords/topics. Importantly, they’re still likely to drive conversions because people searching for them are indicating a specific pain point that you can solve.

This post deep-dives into how we think about JTBD keywords. I’ll introduce the different types of jobs-to-be-done keywords with several examples to make sure you don’t leave topic ideas on the table. Then, I’ll finish up with a final section about a more niche approach: combining jobs-to-be-done with competitors and alternatives.

What are your jobs-to-be-done keywords?

As we said above, JTBD keywords are search terms that indicate someone is looking to solve a problem or accomplish something that your product or service helps them achieve.

Although these queries don’t mention your product, your product category, or competitors directly—like Pain Point SEO frameworks #1 (category keywords) and #2 (comparisons and alternatives) do—they unlock a large number of keywords that still have buying intent beyond those first two frameworks.

We coined this name ‘JTBD keywords’ based on the famous jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework by economist Theodore Levitt and later popularized by a widely-shared HBS article by Clayton Christensen, Scott Cook, and Taddy Hall.

It’s fairly straightforward to get your head around this concept: You simply need to understand how your product or service helps someone achieve a desired goal. Then, when you’re selecting keywords to target, you think about that goal rather than the product itself. 

(Note: Content marketing advice often recommends not talking about your product too much in blog posts. But we do sell our clients’ products in JTBD blog posts, often heavily. After all, the whole point is that JTBD keywords still have buying intent. What we’re talking about here is that when choosing the keyword, you look for terms that indicate the user has a goal that your product can help achieve. When you’re actually writing the article, you definitely need to sell how your product helps achieve that goal—in detail.)

The most obvious examples of JTBD keywords are ‘how to’ keywords. These exist for products or services serving basically any industry (B2B and B2C), for example:

• How to sell furniture online (est. 1.5k global monthly searches)
• How to do financial projections (est. 250)
• How to integrate technology in the classroom (est. 500)
• How to screen record with sound (est. 6.2k)
• How to start a vending machine business (est 7.2k)
• How to set up a trust (est. 4k)
• How to drill a hole in glass (est. 3.4k)

What’s often overlooked, though, is that you can look into ‘how to’ keywords without the ‘how’ attached—for example, keywords such as manage staff, hire movers, or find therapist.

In many cases, Google will default to the search intent it thinks is most relevant, for example the results page for hire movers is dominated by ‘how to hire’ posts. But there are exceptions. Find therapist, for example, brings up a list of posts and pages that target search terms like ‘find a therapist’ and ‘find therapists’:

JTBD keywords can also be different variations of ‘way(s) to’ keywords:

• Best way to manage multiple projects (est. 200 global monthly searches)
• Ways to conserve energy (est. 4k)
• Best way to file taxes online (est. 700)
• Best way to clean grout (est. 5.9k)
• Natural way to increase testosterone (est. 1.8k)
• Safest way to buy bitcoin (est. 1.8k)
• Best way to learn bookkeeping (est. 50)
• Easy way to clean oven (est. 2.2k)
• Best way to recruit employees (est. 250)

You can also look into ‘can you/I?’ or ‘should you/I?’ keywords. For example:

• Can you do your own taxes (est. 300 global monthly searches)
• Should I lease or buy a car (est. 3.8k)
• Can I manage my own rental property (est. 100)
• Should I install solar panels (est. 250)
• Should I hire an interior designer (est. 250)

People searching for this are trying to get something done, and they’re considering their options.

And finally, these ‘can you/I?’ keywords also link in with branded searches, which we discuss in more detail later in this article. For example:

• Can you use quickbooks for personal finance (est. 150 global monthly searches)
• Can you integrate shopify with squarespace (est. 30)
• Can you add grammarly to outlook (est. 20)
• Can you sync asana with google calendar (est. 20)

We treat these with more skepticism because a higher proportion of these people will already be using the product they’re searching for (hence less potential for conversions, because they’re either already committed to something else or they’re already your customer).

But they’re still worth considering for two reasons: 

• If it’s your brand someone’s searching for, they might be doing their final research about a specific use case before deciding whether or not to buy, and they may just need another nudge to be convinced that it’s the right choice.

• If it’s not your brand they’re searching for, the product they’re using right now might not be able to do what they want. If you’re a competitor, this gives you an opportunity to explain how your product would solve that pain point for them, if they switched. (More on this approach in the second half of this post, which explains how you can combine JTBD with competitors and alternatives).

So, in summary, most of the best JTBD keywords will be:

• ‘How to’ keywords (and variants without the how, such as find therapist)
• ‘Way(s) to’ keywords
• ‘Can you’ or ‘can I’ keywords
• ‘Should you’ or ‘should I’ keywords

How to find JTBD keywords 

Unsurprisingly, we think the best way of getting to these types of keywords is to know what pain points your product or service solves. JTBD keywords are in many ways the heart of Pain Point SEO. You need to get into the weeds on all the different levels of what your product does for people, and also understand the different ways people describe the jobs they need to do.

Sources of that information include:

• Customer enquiries (emails, webforms, social messages)
• Product demo recordings
• Interviews with internal experts at your company
• Customer service emails, calls, and surveys
• Forums, chat rooms, and social media platforms
• SEO software (though imperfect, many will reveal interrelated topics and keywords)

There’s no quick-win here; to get hold of these different keyword angles, you need to have a deep understanding of the problems you fix, the mindset of someone who wants to fix it, and the language they’re using to find that solution online.

Combining JTBD with competitors and alternatives

There’s another level of jobs-to-be-done keywords that you can tap into if you’re ready to start moving up the funnel with your content strategy (i.e. if you’ve already mopped up the highest-buying-intent terms, such as ‘how to’ searches): combining JTBD with competitor and alternatives, including non-direct or ‘low tech’ alternatives.

Before you do this, it’s important to have a firm grasp of who and what your competitors are—both in terms of the product you offer but also in the context of Google’s search results. There are actually many more angles to cover here than it initially seems.

How to Define Your Competitors for SEO Content

Spreadsheets are (often) an underestimated competitor

If you’re working in the software/tech industry, you’ve probably already heard the old adage about Excel being your biggest competitor. We’ve certainly found that to be a pretty common scenario for B2B software. Anecdotally, for example:

• Back in 2021, we started working with the staff leave planning app, Timetastic. Most of their new customers were coming to them because they were fed up with managing time off via emails and spreadsheets—either designed from scratch or using templates. Still, the vast majority of businesses still keep using spreadsheets. Why?
  • They feel like they’re doing just fine with spreadsheets and it’s ‘free’.
  • They’re unaware of the time they’re losing by managing staff leave manually.
  • They’re unaware that there’s an affordable way to do things better, and/or unaware of what ‘better’ actually looks like.
• We’ve also been working with StrataPT—a software platform for physical therapy practices. Most PTs are still using a mixture of manual processes and software, with one of the mainstays being Excel. Practice owners use it for everything from documenting new patients and treatment, to billing and recording the practice’s financial performance.

In fact, you can look at all sorts of software use cases and see how MS Excel or Google Sheets might be one of the most-used alternatives: project management, team workflow planning, documentation, financial reporting, sales prospecting… the list goes on.

So, for many software businesses, spreadsheets are something to position yourself against. 

Defining the rest of your competitors

It’s important to remember: we’re writing articles to rank for conversion-generating keywords. This means we need to work really hard to make sure we’re covering all the bases and finding as many angles as possible to tap into real pain points. That’s why we recommend thinking methodically about who, or what, your competitors are—because this will give you topic ideas.

So here’s my full list of competitor types:

• Direct competitors who do exactly the same as what you do, targeting the same people with similar features or services that alleviate the same pain points. They have roughly similar pricing structures. You probably know most of them already.

• Niche competitors who do the same as what you do, but for a smaller market—either geographically or for a section of your audience. This is relative. For example, if you run an accounting software company, the niche competitor might be software designed for healthcare. And if you run a healthcare accounting software company, the niche competitor might be one designed specifically for dentist offices. And so on.

• Broader competitors. Same as above, but in reverse. If you run that dental accounting software, you might be competing with bigger tools that offer a plugin or template which customizes the experience for dental practices.

• Alternative solutions, including spreadsheets—but also humans. For example, an alternative to StrataPT’s physical therapy billing software is an outsourced team of humans who create and submit claims, then chase insurance firms for payment. While this is undoubtedly less effective than software + humans, it’s still being done and is still an option on the table for physical therapists who need help with their billing. Building an in-house team to do a certain job is also an option that should be seen as competition.

• Search competitors who write about the same stuff, but don’t offer the same product:
  • Similar audiences, different product use cases. You’ll need to be mindful of companies that aren’t direct product competitors but are competing with you in search because they happen to target the same audience.For example, Monday.com has written extensively about remote work because remote teams are an ‘audience’ they’ve identified as using their software. If you have a product specifically geared towards solving remote work pain points—e.g. an app helping remote teams record time—you might not think of Monday.com an actual competitor, but on Google, you’ll end up competing with them and other large companies that also target remote workers. This can make ranking high more difficult than you initially thought (although it’s never impossible—see Underdog SEO on how to approach SEO against large sites).
  • Completely different companies or products that use the same terminology. For example, one client integrates technology in offices and commercial buildings for energy control, access, and air quality. It’s a specialized, high-ticket purchase; yet a bulk of their keyword opportunities are ‘poisoned’ by overlapping B2C terms, e.g. air quality sensors, smart heating system, or automatic door closer.

How to combine JTBD keywords with competitors and alternatives

The best way of showing how we do this is to provide a few real examples:

1. How to add annual leave to Outlook Calendar

Timetastic founder Gary Bury has always told us their biggest competitors are Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. Despite there being loads of HR apps and staff leave planners available, the majority of companies still use spreadsheets.

This meant we were referencing spreadsheets in most of our posts, either as a solution the reader might be considering or as the thing they were already doing.

We also went after terms such as staff leave planner for excel and google sheets annual leave template, which generated more than 40 free trial signups (via organic visitors) across 9 months. These posts gave the reader template options while setting out a robust argument for why a spreadsheet template doesn’t actually cut it.

But we also knew people were using Outlook and other work calendars to manage staff leave (often in combination with spreadsheets), so we wrote a post combining a job-to-be-done with an alternative to Timetastic: Microsoft Outlook.

It might seem like a weird keyword to go after, since at first glance, Timetastic doesn’t help at all with this problem. The link we saw was that:

• The process of adding annual leave to Outlook is a pain for anyone. It’s surprisingly convoluted. So we knew that this was someone who’d be primed for a better solution.

• Timetastic can integrate with their users calendars, including Outlook Calendar. This means users could manage annual leave in the Timetastic app and everything would be automatically reflected in their work calendar.

Within that post, we explained the step-by-step process of adding staff leave to Outlook. But we also made sure we highlighted that there was a much easier workaround for the long-term. That easier workaround is Timetastic, and we made that argument openly, without being coy. This post generated 20 free trial signups in the first 6 months after publication.

2. How to Plan the Shortest Route for Multiple Destinations in Google Maps

Probably one of our biggest successes was our post “How to Plan the Shortest Route for Multiple Destinations in Google Maps”, which has generated thousands of free trial signups for Circuit’s route planning software since it was published back in 2020.

Note: We wrote a full case study on our work with Circuit, which you can find here: Scaling SEO traffic from 920 to 14,577 Sessions in 6 months: Circuit Case Study

The angle here is similar to our other example:

• It’s possible, but not ideal, to find the shortest route for multiple destinations on Google Maps—it’s doable, but fiddly. Plus, there are limitations (e.g. maximum 10 stops at once) that Circuit doesn’t have. For people who want to figure out the best route around more than 10 stops, Google Maps isn’t really the best solution.

• A significant proportion of people searching this keyword are doing so to better manage their delivery routes, or they’re visiting multiple customers or business contacts in a single day and want to know the most efficient route. That is Circuit’s audience.

• Circuit integrates with Google Maps, meaning the person can still use Google Maps for their navigation with the help of Circuit behind the scenes to optimize the whole route.

In both of these examples, there’s one common theme:

‘You can do it. Here’s how. But it’s not ideal, and here’s why. We have a better option for you.’ 

We’re genuinely helping them do the job they need to do with whatever tool they have, while showing them how they could have a much easier life by doing it differently next time.

Theoretical ideas for JTBD + competitors/alternative keywords

Just as some food for thought, here are a few theoretical JTBD + competitor/alternative topics for some real-world companies:

• Shopify can pick up on the weaknesses of other eCommerce platforms and go after those with helpful ‘how to’ posts that also make the argument for switching, such as: how to customize woocommerce shop page or how to edit a woocommerce checkout page—give the reader the answer clearly and honestly, but highlight how much easier, faster, or cheaper this is to do on Shopify. If they’re suffering from the hassle of WooCommerce, they may be ripe for a switch to another platform.

• Slack can target keywords that indicate someone’s pain points around email. For example:  best way to manage email, how to organize your email, or how to manage your inbox—Slack has historically positioned itself against business email, and they’ve even created comparison pages to list the pros and cons of Slack vs email. Someone searching for ways to manage or organize their email is clearly experiencing downsides, and may be open to doing things differently. So, Slack could target these keywords to offer advice on useful ways to manage/organize their email, while pointing to a better solution for internal communication—Slack.

• QuickBooks, Freshbooks, or Xero will know that people are managing their business finances using a mix of free online alternatives. So they might want to go after keywords such as: how to make invoices on word, how to do invoices on excel, or how to make a budgeting spreadsheet. Again, this will give them the space they need to make a robust argument for why their product makes these jobs much easier to do.

• SimpliSafe might see a bulk of their new business customers switching from 24/7 onsite security to a technology-assisted approach (I actually have no clue whether this is true or not, but it’s just to illustrate my point). With this in mind, they could do a teardown of the traditional approach by targeting keywords like hiring security or how to hire a security guard. Pros, cons, ways to recruit… plus the ‘modern’ alternative: SimpliSafe.

• As a content/SEO agency, we at Grow and Convert have a pretty strong argument for why working with us makes more financial sense than building an in-house writing team or hiring a load of freelancers. The goal for our clients is to get more customers through their website, but they’re searching for all sorts of ways to get that job done: how to hire freelance writers, how to build a content team, and how to write seo content—as well as alternatives to content and SEO (e.g. how to get more customers via social media).
  
  In the future, we might look to target some of these keywords with guidance on best practices (e.g. for hiring writers), while making the argument that the reader could avoid the hassle, costs, and risks of substandard results (i.e. poor ROI) by working with us instead.

When writing JTBD posts, it’s important that you properly and honestly serve the search intent. Start by giving the reader the information they need to do the job. Then, make an up-front argument for why they might want to try a different solution in the future.

JTBD keywords are the key to unlocking the potential of Pain Point SEO in your content strategy. Once you’re done targeting category and competitor keywords, JTBD keywords will open up years of content ideas with high buying intent, so you can keep doing content marketing and SEO that generates leads and sales.