Article's Content
Article's Content
More isn’t always better, and Contentsquare knows why.
Sure, you shouldn’t be surprised that a unicorn tech company with “content” in the name has a great content strategy. But it turns out that their winning strategy doesn’t actually require you to be worth billions or on the cutting edge of CX technology.
Instead, it just takes some great content planning and the willingness to invest in quality content marketing.
Here’s how they did it.
Contentsquare’s Valuation and Market Position
Contentsquare creates tools to help you understand how people are engaging with your content: Where they are clicking, where they are spending their time, and what you can do to improve it. With this innovative technology and the strategy to support it, they recently secured a valuation of $5.6 billion following a $600 million funding round.
This significant investment highlights the growing importance and recognition of user experience (UX) analytics across industries. Contentsquare’s platform provides businesses with comprehensive insights into user interactions on their websites and apps, allowing them to optimize the digital customer journey.
Founded in 2012, Contentsquare has rapidly ascended the ranks in the tech world, offering solutions that blend artificial intelligence with behavioural data to help companies enhance user engagement and drive conversions. Their tools are designed to provide actionable insights that improve site performance and user satisfaction, catering to a wide range of industries from retail to finance.
One of the contributors to their impressive growth has been a quality-focused, highly effective digital marketing strategy. Let’s unlock their secrets.
The Rise in Organic Traffic
From August 2023 to June 2024, Contentsquare experienced an extraordinary increase in their organic traffic, underscoring the power of strategic content efforts. Starting at an average monthly organic traffic of 4,837 in August 2023, the traffic numbers surged to an impressive 13,423 by June 2024.
This nearly three times increase is particularly notable given that the Contentsquare blog had only six more organic pages in June 2024 than it did in August 2023. This fact highlights that the quality of content, rather than quantity, was the primary driver of this growth.
The upward trajectory began in September 2023, with traffic increasing to 6,083, and continued steadily each month. While there were minor fluctuations, the overall trend remained strongly positive. The significant jumps in traffic, particularly from January 2024 onwards, demonstrate the sustained impact of their content strategy.
Let’s look a little closer at that strategy. They achieved that growth without publishing many new articles, so the key to their success was not in the quantity of content produced but in its quality. The articles they published were of high value and relevance, effectively engaging their audience and improving their search engine rankings.
Key Articles Driving Traffic
One of the standout articles contributing to the surge in organic traffic for Contentsquare is their article on qualitative and quantitative data. This article has been particularly effective due to its comprehensive coverage of a relevant topic and its alignment with SEO best practices.
It excelled in three main ways:
- Relevance: The article addresses a critical topic for Contentsquare’s audience — businesses and professionals interested in data analytics. By explaining the differences, strengths, and applications of qualitative and quantitative data, it meets a common need for clarity in this area.
- Depth and Clarity: It provides a thorough analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data, including their definitions, collection methods, and purposes. The clear comparison helps readers understand when and how to use each type of data, making it highly educational and useful.
- SEO Optimization: Strategic keyword usage ensures that the article ranks well in search engine results, driving continuous organic traffic. The structured format with subheadings and key takeaways makes it more readable and searchable.
But this wasn’t the only one of Contentsquare’s articles on this topic to exceed expectations. Articles that have the word “qualitative” in their headers account for over 36% of Contentsquare’s blog traffic.
Clearly, this topic is one where Contentsquare has established themselves as subject matter experts. That’s an example worth learning from: When you focus on a subject you can express your expertise in, search engines will tend to reward you by making it easier to rank high for those keywords.
Google has expressed over and over again that they seek helpful content written by sources worth trusting. One way to earn that trust is by specializing in a given subject area. That’s exactly what Contentsquare has done: They found their niche and dug in.
Shift in Keyword Focus
That niche allowed Contentsquare to move away from relying on branded keyword searches.
Initially, branded keywords accounted for 81% of their traffic, but they’ve reduced that dependency all the way down to 40%. This shift demonstrates Contentsquare’s ability to diversify their keyword strategy, thereby improving SEO performance and reaching a broader audience.
The pivot also lets Contentsquare tap into a broader range of search queries, reducing dependence on brand-specific searches. By focusing on high-value, non-branded keywords, Contentsquare has improved their visibility and relevance in search engine results, drawing in users who might not have been previously aware of the brand.
If you rely on branded searches, the TAM of your SEO efforts is limited to people who are already aware of your brand. That means you can only write mid or bottom-of-funnel content. By moving towards non-branded keywords, you can start to go after the top of the funnel as well.
This shift to non-branded searches is the only way that the rise in organic traffic we saw before is possible without a major shift in sales, PR, or product. Raising your branded searches takes a concerted (and often expensive) brand awareness campaign. But raising non-branded searches just takes a solid SEO strategy. The trick is to marry the two so that the non-branded searches increase brand awareness and come from a relevant audience.
Impact of Non-branded Keywords
So, what’s it look like when you make that pivot?
Let’s look at some of Contentsquare’s top-performing keywords. Keywords such as “qualitative data definition” and “difference between qualitative and quantitative” not only attract substantial traffic but also engage users effectively due to the depth and relevance of the content provided.
But it’s not all positive. The double-edged sword becomes clear when you see how Contentsquare ranks at the top of SERPs for terms like “qualitative data definition sociology” and “explain the difference between qualitative and quantitative data, and give one example of each”. Those searches are more likely done by college students than the B2B tech buyers Contentsquare is more interested in talking with.
That’s the nature of content marketing: Not every search you get is relevant. Mixing in some less relevant searches is the only way you’ll expand your audience, though, and talking to people outside of your audience isn’t always a bad thing, either. After all, those sociology students will get internships and then jobs, and they might become part of Contentsquare’s ideal customer profile (ICP) within just a couple of years.
A New Phase for Contentsquare
Okay, it’s time to break the fourth wall. I’m going to give you an exclusive peak behind the curtain here at Foundation.
When I wrote the outline and did the initial research for this article, I was focused on how Contentsquare was valuing quality content over publishing in high volumes. My recommendation at the end was going to be that now they can scale that high-quality content with our 100 blog posts framework. The idea is that those ideas don’t need to be in contradiction — you can have both.
But after I did that initial research, something interesting happened: Contentsquare took my advice.
They had been publishing one or two SEO articles a week for a long time. A steady pace, likely set by a well-planned content calendar. But as I sat down to draft this, I checked their blog again:
Four new articles in as many days. Going back a few months, I can’t find a single time when Contentsquare published at this volume before.
The takeaway?
I think they’re entering a new phase of their marketing strategy.
In this new phase, they’re taking that tried-and-tested content strategy and accelerating it, publishing as much content in a week as they used to in a month.
That’s the real value of quality content. Once you get the hang of publishing it, you can scale that process and have an even greater impact. But what does it mean to “get the hang” of publishing quality content?
Pillar Content and Contentsquare’s Future
It’s not just enough to write a great article. As much as you might wish that just writing beautiful prose and making a good point was enough to top SERPs, you need to support your content with a carefully crafted strategy.
That’s where it becomes difficult to write quality content at scale. Sure, Contentsquare can focus on qualitative vs. quantitative analysis, but there are only so many articles to write there and so many keywords to rank for. At a certain point, they need to figure out how to expand.
That’s where pillar content comes into play. You write one definitive article, like the one on quantitative and qualitative data, and make a series of more specific articles on related topics that link back to it. This shows both readers and search engine crawlers how these topics relate to each other and reinforces the subject matter expertise of the site.
This is one area where Contentsquare has the opportunity to grow their content strategy into an even more impactful one. They can learn from their successes in content niches like qualitative data and create similar clusters of content around related topics. In fact, they’ve already started this by writing multiple series of articles on topics like UX. All they’re missing is the structure: Making sure those articles link to one another in an intentional, structured way.
It’s Not That Simple
Contentsquare has a content strategy that looks easy. But it isn’t that simple.
As we’ve covered, they had to carefully target where to focus their efforts and be sure it’d be worth all the extra work if they succeeded. Fortunately, they did.
A quality-first strategy can have huge dividends. But another way to drive organic traffic is with a high-volume strategy like the one outlined in our article here. Or, if you want to learn more about how to effectively distribute that content to get even more eyes on it, you could check out our breakdown of how Attentive does just that.
