The Secret SEO Strategy that 2x Atlassian Organic Traffic from 4M to 8M - Kevin Indig - VP of SEO and Content at G2.com (GMT043)

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In this episode we talk about something Kevin dubs as “microsite 2.0” strategy that doubled the organic traffic from 4M to 8M at Atlassian. We also talk about a link building strategy that Kevin called “account-based link building.” Finally we talk about big shifts in SEO in 2020 and beyond.

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If a business gets a significant amount of traffic from Google, it needs to add Google to its list of competitors. – @kevin_indig Click To Tweet

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

How Atlassian doubled their organic traffic using the “Microsite 2.0” strategy
Kevin’s 5-step “problem-driven keyword research” for creating content that ranks in search engines
Kevin’s link building strategy for 2019 called “account-based link building”
Big shifts in SEO in 2020 and beyond
What marketers should be doing with recent Google algorithm updates

My Takeaways from This Episode

Focus on the problems of your customers. Kevin said that you have to think beyond Google. Search volume is a lagging indicator. It’s so easy to get caught up with keywords, monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and other metrics. But, Kevin’s problem-driven approach to keyword research starts with deeply understanding your customers’ problems, pain points and obstacles.
To win with SEO, you need to build a strong brand. Finding keywords to exploit is great. But going forward, we have to make sure that our site becomes a real destination. You really want to create a brand that stands out from the rest, with its own positioning and values.
Build a “microsite 2.0”. That means having a landing page with several links to related articles that lead users down a user journey. Instead of trying to get users on your site, you want to keep her or him there by guiding them through the user journey and not give them a reason to go back to the search results, but to actually stick around.

Tweet Some Quotes from This Episode

If your business gets a significant amount of organic traffic, you have to add Google to your list of competitors,– @kevin_indig Click To Tweet There are two different types of user intent - immediate intent and greater intent. People use search queries to voice their immediate intent. But, you have to extract that deeper to figure out the greater intent. What is the problem… Click To Tweet If you don't match the user intent that Google has identified for a search, your site will not rank. It doesn't matter how good your content is or how good your backlinks are. – @kevin_indig Click To Tweet Just having longer content for SEO doesn't help. You want to have meaningful length, not just for the sake of length. It should be as short as possible by being as long as necessary. – @kevin_indig Click To Tweet There are two topics that work better for link building. The first one to have a strong opinion on something. People tend to agree or disagree and they tend to link to it more. The second one is statistics or original research. –… Click To Tweet If a business gets a significant amount of traffic from Google, it needs to add Google to its list of competitors. – @kevin_indig Click To Tweet

Instead of trying to get users on your site, you want to keep her or him there by guiding them through the user journey and not give them a reason to go back to the search results, but to actually stick around. – @kevin_indig Click To Tweet Google is transitioning from search to an answer machine. SEO isn't going to die. I'm just saying it's going to change a lot because Google is answering more and more itself. – @kevin_indig Click To Tweet As marketers, we have to diversify traffic channels and not be reliant on organic traffic too much. And we have to make sure that our site becomes a real destination. – @kevin_indig Click To Tweet

About Kevin Indig

Kevin Indig is the VP of SEO and Content at G2 and Growth Mentor at German Accelerator. He writes about the intersection of SEO, Growth and some other stuff on his personal website kevin-indig.com.

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Show Notes

3:42

How Kevin went from economics degree grad to VP of SEO at G2
7:28

Is SEO dead in 2019 if it’s getting harder to rank in search engines? Why should companies still invest resources in SEO?
9:10

Kevin’s 5-step process to keyword research for content marketing
13:20

Tools Kevin use when doing keyword research
14:10

10 factors that make content great for ranking in search engines
17:55

Why Kevin thinks that content writing by topic experts will rank higher than unestablished authors
19:28

What’s the ideal content length to rank for search engines (hint: it’s neither short-form or long-form content)
20:35

How Kevin’s strategy that he called “microsite 2.0” grew Atlassian organic traffic from 4M to 8 M monthly organic users.
23:15

How the “microsite 2.0” SEO strategy has a shorter path to conversion that traditional topic cluster strategy
25:25

How long was the root article vs shorter articles in this “microsite 2.0” pages
26:44

What’s the difference between microsite 2.0 and microsites
28:02

Kevin’s distribution strategy once content is published
29:27

Kevin’s strategy for getting backlinks he calls “account-based link building”
31:32

How can startups with no domain authority start getting an SEO growth engine going
33:55

Kevin’s SEO process at G2
35:42

Why Google is becoming more of a competitor to other websites. It’s showing answers and less traffic to another website
39:45

How Google is improving its understanding of rich media (video and audio)
41:55

Why companies need to start thinking about audio and video for ranking in search engines
42:49

How can companies get started with audio and video for SEO
44:45

Kevin’s thoughts on Google changing recently how their ads looking more and more like organic.
45:40

Should companies optimize for favicons now that they’re showing that for organic results?
47:47

With Google doing some things that are stating to seem unethical, is there anything marketers can do?
50:12

What are the big shifts in SEO that are coming in 2020 and beyond?
52:12

Should we as consumers be concerned about buying more Google-branded hardware products because of privacy concerns?
54;59

Where can people find Kevin online?