Steal the SEO Playbook Cloudinary Used To Become Worth $2B

When I first heard the name “Cloudinary” two weeks ago, the word “Dictionary” came to mind. 

Of course, we all know dictionaries clarify the meaning of unfamiliar terms in a way that’s easy to understand. But I found Cloudinary does the same thing as well. 

Apart from offering tools for storing, optimizing, delivering, and manipulating images and videos on the internet, Cloudinary helps developers and businesses understand unfamiliar image- and video-related words. 

The result?

The bootstrapped company gained the trust (and money) of more than 1,000,000 developers and nearly 10,000 companies, including Atlassian, Levi’s, Chegg, Etsy, Sunny, and Virgin. It also attracted a total funding of $100,000,000 over four rounds, including one from Blackstone that pushed Cloudinary’s valuation to a whopping $2 billion.

But all these wouldn’t be possible without visibility, which is where Cloudinary’s SEO strategy comes in. I break down two SEO strategies the company used to gain visibility, rank for competitive keywords with helpful resources, and gain the trust of millions of customers. 

Let’s jump into the good stuff. 

2 Ways Cloudinary Used SEO To Become a Media Dictionary for Developers

Cloudinary’s search scorecard isn’t nearly as impressive as many companies we’ve analyzed in-depth; however, its growth shows solid potential. For example, its monthly organic traffic has grown steadily from 17,500 to 60,000+. That’s nearly 4X growth in just two years. 

Here’s what its search scorecard looks like this as of this writing:

Of course, this growth wasn’t coincidental — it took consistent effort to create content developers would love, almost like Confluent did. I did some digging and discovered these two content types contributed most to Cloudinary’s growing traffic: guides and API documentation. Let’s go over each in detail. 

How Cloudinary Drives 23K+ Monthly Organic Traffic Using Guides

Ultimate guides aren’t dead, and Cloudinary’s success is proof. These guides account for close to 40% of its website’s total organic search traffic. Here’s what its search scorecard looks like:

Ultimate guides play a significant role in SEO. 

Just like a dictionary serves as a comprehensive reference for words and their meanings, ultimate guides serve as comprehensive resources for specific topics within the industry. And their benefits are twofold: for humans and search engines. 

For example, Cloudinary delves into various aspects of image and video optimization, explaining the technical details, best practices, and how Cloudinary’s features can help. These guides are grouped into categories, almost like NerdWallet’s topic clusters.

Instead of creating pillar pages, Cloudinary focused on organizing content around specific themes to improve the user experience. Visitors landing on this page can easily navigate through related guides and quickly find the information they need. 

Of course, this is good for SEO, especially because Cloudinary can cover a range of relevant keyword variations within a single topic, which helps the company target a wider range of search queries and capture traffic from various long-tail keywords.

Let’s see this in action:

Cloudinary’s video format category ranks for more than 5,000 keywords with 15,000 monthly organic search traffic. Here are the top five keywords it ranks for: 

Cloudinary ranks for these keywords because its guides cover the topic extensively and link to related topics, which signals to search engines the depth and authority of your content. 

Take Cloudinary’s “What Is the M4A Format?” guide, which dominates the SERPs for the keyword “m4A” and attracts more than 5,000 monthly visitors. 

Apart from ranking for related keyword variations, the guide gives a clear and concise breakdown of basic questions the reader would have.

Not all readers will be familiar with your product or industry, so answering “basic” questions helps people understand associated terminologies to keep them from getting confused later. Answering them shows you care about helping readers, which makes them trust you more. 

To make your guides valuable to the reader, use simple language and avoid jargon to ensure that even those who are not familiar with your industry can understand it. 

Cloudinary also includes internal links to other content in the category using a side menu:

Including a side menu with related links lets your audience easily access additional resources related to the guide they’re reading, which is super helpful for getting more in-depth info. Also, new site visitors might not be aware of all the valuable content you offer, so linking to them in a side menu guides them to explore topics they might not have initially intended to read.

Other things you can do to improve your guides include:

• Incorporate relevant keywords and search queries that your target audience is likely to use naturally in the guide’s content, headings, subheadings, and metadata.
• Present the content in an easily digestible format with clear headings and subheadings, lots of white space, bullet points, and related visuals.
• Ensure your guide is optimized for mobile devices, as a significant portion of your audience accesses content through their smartphones and tablets.
• If your guide includes images, infographics, or videos, ensure they are optimized for web loading speed without compromising quality.

How Cloudinary Uses API Documentation To Build Trust With Developers

Cloudinary’s main users include developers who often search for technical information and solutions related to image and video management. 

To capture their attention and build trust, the company uses comprehensive API docs.

Since developers are more likely to share links, collaborate on forums, and engage with the content more if it satisfies their intent, this kind of engagement results in more backlinks and increased domain authority. 

Currently, Cloudinary’s API documentation has an ultra-high domain rating with a backlink profile of 27,000+, many of which are from high-authority sites, such as Adobe, Stack Overflow, jQuery.com, and Twilio.

So, what makes Cloudinary’s API documentation link-worthy? 

For starters, it provides comprehensive information about the topic, which makes it a valuable resource for developers looking to integrate Cloudinary into their projects. Its “image transformation” documentation, for example, has a table of content that helps readers navigate the content easily. They can find answers to specific queries without scrolling extensively.

If you haven’t already, you should organize your documentation into sections, each addressing a specific aspect of the API. Create a linked table of contents using clear headings and subheadings that reflect the content within each section.

Cloudinary also includes practical code examples that demonstrate how to use its API.

Developers prefer to have working code snippets they can adapt to their projects. These code examples save time, offering them a starting point and reducing the need to figure out syntax and structure from scratch. Plus, you can break down complex operations into small steps through these examples, so developers can follow along step by step.

To create API documentation that developers will love, you should focus on making it informative, user-friendly, and engaging. Here are some key elements and features to include:

• Start with an overview of what your API offers, its main features, and the problems it solves. Explain why developers should consider using your API.
• Provide a step-by-step guide for developers to quickly get up and running. Include instructions for setting up an account, obtaining API keys, and making a basic API call.
• Include all available endpoints, methods, parameters, and response formats. Each endpoint should have clear explanations of its purpose and usage.
• Include examples in multiple programming languages that demonstrate how to use different endpoints and features and cover common use cases and edge cases.
• Consider offering interactive examples that developers can run directly in the documentation. This allows them to experiment and see immediate results.
• Create in-depth tutorials that walk developers through specific scenarios using your API. 
• Provide real-world use cases and case studies to showcase the practical applications of your API. Highlight how it has benefited existing users.
• Include guidelines and best practices for using your API better, including performance optimization, error handling, authentication, and more.
• Make sure to include information about rate limits, pricing models, and any associated costs. Transparency in this area helps developers plan their usage effectively.
• If you offer SDKs or client libraries for different programming languages, provide installation instructions and usage examples to streamline integration for developers.

Incorporating these elements ensures your API documentation provides a positive experience for developers, so they’ll know how to make the most of your API’s capabilities.

If You Serve a Technical Audience, Steal Cloudinary’s SEO Strategy

Cloudinary positioned itself as the media dictionary for developers, providing the resources they’ll need to understand and use the product better.

Because this piece is focused on its SEO strategy, I didn’t cover other ways Cloudinary is building trust with its technical audience, such as its community of developers on Discord and an academy with lessons for developers. 

Giving users a reason to trust you is a great way to get their attention and make them want to stick with you. And what better way to do this than answer questions they have? 

Invest in building a content marketing engine that not only makes you visible but convinces millions of people that your product and resources are the tools they need to produce results in their role.