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Article's Content
BrowserStack has built a mountain of content. Their guide pages rank for 87,668 keywords at the time of writing, and it’s no wonder — their website has 1,878 pages of guides alone.
That marketing strategy has helped propel the company to success. By 2021, BrowserStack was India’s highest-valued SaaS company.
Let’s break down how BrowserStack dominates SERPs, builds an impressive SEO moat, and captures valuable traffic.
BrowserStack’s Rise to $4 Billion
BrowserStack was founded in 2011 by Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal. They began as a solution to a common problem faced by web developers: testing websites across different browsers and operating systems.
By offering a cloud platform where developers could test their websites on various browsers and devices without needing to own them, BrowserStack quickly became popular. A part of this fast growth was a marketing strategy focused on creating a large volume of helpful guides for their users.
This customer-centric approach, combined with strategic funding rounds and expansion into new markets, propelled BrowserStack’s valuation to $4 billion in 2021.
What BrowserStack Does
BrowserStack specializes in providing developers and QA engineers with a cloud platform for testing their websites and mobile applications.
The platform works across a myriad of browsers and devices without the need for physical infrastructure, and it offers a range of products and services tailored to different testing needs:
- Live, for manual testing
- Automate, for Selenium and Appium-based automated testing
- Percy, for visual testing
- App Live and App Automate for mobile app testing on real devices
BrowserStack also provides enterprise solutions with added security and privacy options, making it a comprehensive tool for both development and testing teams. This suite of tools addresses the need for cross-platform compatibility, a critical part of delivering a great user experience in today’s fragmented digital landscape.
How BrowserStack Attracts 156k Visitors Every Month
BrowserStack has averaged over 156,000 organic visitors to their site every month in 2024 so far.
Those visitors are distributed widely across different pages, so let’s dive in and dissect what makes their content marketing strategy so effective.
BrowserStack’s Guides: High Investment, Great Payoff
BrowserStack leverages an extensive collection of guides rather than a traditional blog.
This choice indicates their focus on delivering in-depth, useful content directly related to their services, positioning these guides as the cornerstone of their SEO and content strategy. They use their blog for updates and news, keeping their main focus on the guides.
BrowserStack has published almost 2,000 pages in the guides section of their website. It’s the main engine driving traffic to the site and brings in 113,000 of the 156,000 organic visitors they get every month.
They’re able to cover a huge range of topics with this content, and the “wide net” approach prioritizes covering many different keywords rather than focusing on just a few important ones.
In fact, BrowserStack ranks for more than 76,000 keywords, and BrowserStack’s guides are responsible for almost 63,000 of those.
Notably, the traffic distribution across the guide pages is relatively even, showing a broad reach rather than reliance on a few high-traffic posts.
The graph below shows the traffic to their top guide pages. None of the numbers are very exciting — they don’t need to be. What makes them effective is the sheer quantity of pages built up over the years, establishing an SEO moat across a wide range of terms.
Such an approach comes with its own set of challenges and benefits. The investment in creating and maintaining nearly 2,000 guide pages is substantial, both in terms of time and resources. It’ll also result in plenty of duds — they have 426 lonely pages that get fewer than ten visits monthly.
But that’s the natural outcome of a high-volume strategy, and the overall results are undeniable. While it might not yield the highest traffic per page when compared to more concentrated strategies, it ensures BrowserStack’s omnipresence in relevant search results.
The primary advantage of this approach is the comprehensive coverage of topics relevant to their audience, establishing BrowserStack as a go-to resource in the web and app testing space.
Breaking Down BrowserStack’s Top Pages
BrowserStack’s top guide pages are three of the four highest-volume pages on their site. These pages stand out as deep dives into specific, highly relevant topics for web and app testing, presented in a clear, accessible manner.
Let’s take a closer look at a few of these to find out why they consistently get traffic in the thousands.
The BrowserStack guide on regression testing is highly effective for both SEO and user value because it targets a specific, highly relevant topic for their core audience of developers and QA engineers. But anyone who doesn’t know what regression testing is likely isn’t very experienced with web testing, so we know they’re aiming for a more junior slice of the audience with this article. That’s why the definition is worded in concise, simple, and helpful language.
As a bonus, structuring the definition of a key term like that is the perfect way to get your text in a featured snippet in Google.
This article specifically has featured snippets for 17 keywords, including high-volume and targeted ones like “regression testing”. This means that a quote from and link to the article take up a huge amount of real estate on the SERP. Take a look:
But just one good section isn’t enough to explain why this article is performing so well. It’s also well-organized, including sections on benefits, challenges, and questions relevant to the subject matter. It links to relevant tools, gives a clear example, and uses accessible language to do all of that.
For example, this list of tools in the article is detailed, comprehensive, and not too self-promotional:
It also provides comprehensive coverage of the subject, including definitions, methodologies, tools, and examples, making it a one-stop resource.
This depth and breadth of information not only help the guide rank well for relevant search queries but also ensure that visitors find valuable, actionable insights, like reminding the reader to regularly reassess what developers need and update their test designs accordingly.
By addressing common questions and challenges within the topic, the guide engages users more fully and ranks for more keywords.
You can see the same pattern on their next two highest-traffic guides: test-driven development and requesting a desktop site. These articles answer related questions, use clear and simple language, and stay focused on providing helpful information.
Exploring BrowserStack’s Low-Volume Keyword Strategy
Their focus on providing helpful information to the audience informs how BrowserStack chooses which keywords to target.
Of course, if you’re making almost 2,000 articles, some of them will inevitably focus on low-volume search terms.
But it’s also true that these long-tail keywords are highly specific topics that BrowserStack’s audience wants more information on, and not that many sites have helpful resources discussing them.
You can see that from the amount of traffic going to each article, as discussed above, as well as the fact that the keywords aren’t especially tough for BrowserStack to rank for — not many other sites are trying.
For example, this BrowserStack page on PHP web development doesn’t bring in a ton of traffic — only 337 visitors a month — but that traffic is worth about $2,500 because it’s targeting a high-value keyword.
Targeting low-volume keywords allows BrowserStack to capture highly specific and engaged segments of their audience, often with less competition and higher intent to engage or convert.
Such precision targeting means the traffic these pages attract may be more valuable on a per-visitor basis, aligning closely with potential customers who have specific needs or questions. This strategy complements the broader reach of high-volume keywords, ensuring comprehensive market coverage.
Paid Traffic Strategy
BrowserStack also strategically deploys pay-per-click ads in order to get the best possible outcomes for their money.
Each of these three tactics could be a useful part of your own paid traffic strategy, so let’s dig into how BrowserStack executes each one.
1. Surgically Targeting Key Competitors
BrowserStack currently runs 68 paid Google Ads across 73 keywords. That means they’re making separate ads for almost every keyword they pay for. That’s a high level of precision and customization, and it makes sense when you see the first way they use paid ads: targeting their competitors.
They put paid ads on keywords like “browserstack alternatives” and “testrail pricing”. The former goes after competitors more broadly, but the latter is an example of precisely targeting one of their competitors for a keyword with a high buying intent.
That intent and its value are reflected in the cost per click of $13.53 for “browserstack alternatives” and $3.62 for “testrail pricing”.
For “testrail pricing”, BrowserStack personalizes the ad to go after their competitor:
Clicking on the ad brings you to a personalized landing page that draws attention to TestRail’s, and comparatively BrowserStack’s, quality rather than price:
These kinds of optimized and personalized ads target people who might otherwise have a high intent to buy a competitor’s product.
It’s worth asking when this strategy is worth the cost. Their ad for the keyword “testrail pricing” gives BrowserStack approximately six visitors a month out of a total search volume of 200. That’s about equal to what the 11th-highest article on the SERP gets, at the total cost of $21.72 a month.
In this case, it’s pretty low-impact in terms of budget and benefit, if they don’t plan on keeping the ad in place for years on end.
But, ranking organically might be the better strategy for a keyword like “browserstack alternative”, where BrowserStack doesn’t have an article in the top ten SERP results and pays $189.42 every month to get just 14 visitors. At that cost, you’d be better off paying a professional to write an evergreen top-ten article — it would likely pay back your investment in under a year.
What’s the lesson here? While BrowserStack’s personalized ads targeting competitors are certainly worth learning from, it’s just as important to pay attention to when ads are worthwhile and when you might be better off with an article.
2. Defending Against Others Doing #1
BrowserStack isn’t the first company to think of the strategy above. In fact, their competitors are buying ads on search terms like “browserstack” and “browser stack”. That means BrowserStack needs to play defence, and they do it by paying for those same keywords.
Of course, almost anyone searching for the company’s name directly has a navigational search intent — they’re looking for BrowserStack’s website specifically. That means they aren’t very likely to be attracted to ads for other products.
We see that reflected in the statistics for those SERPs. For example, the keyword “browserstack” gets over 19,000 searches a month. That SERP currently features two ads. The top ad, by BrowserStack themselves, only gets about 853 visitors. The second ad, by BrowserStack’s competitor SauceLabs, gets 426.
Those numbers pale in comparison to the 18,000 visitors that click on the top SERP result (BrowserStack’s homepage). But by buying the top ad at a total cost of about $7,400 a month, BrowserStack bumps their competitor down to second place.
Try searching for BrowserStack yourself. The ads may vary because of Google’s personalization, but it’s likely the top of your SERP will look something like this:
If it had a competitor’s page at the top, that’d both look bad for BrowserStack and be a funnel for the competing company.
3. Ranking #1 on Tough SERPs
The third part of BrowserStack’s paid traffic strategy might be the most obvious one. Some SERPs are tough to crack, and even getting a top-five position isn’t a guarantee that you’ll bring in much traffic.
If there’s a keyword you see a lot of value in ranking for, but you can’t seem to get your page to the top of the SERP, it’s worth considering buying an ad.
For example, the top-ranking result for the keyword “automated browser testing” has more than 150,000 backlinks. It would take quite a long time to build up a backlink profile that can compete with that. So, BrowserStack’s strategy is to put down a little money to capture some traffic with an ad. They have an article in second place on the SERP, but the ad captures additional traffic on a keyword that’s core to BrowserStack’s business.
Discover More Leading SEO Insights
BrowserStack’s SEO strategy has a lot that you can learn from. Not every company has the resources that come with a valuation of $4 billion. But you can still look at BrowserStack for an example of how to design pages that top SERPs, create a wide SEO style, and target your PPC ads effectively.
Interested in how other industry-leading SaaS companies use their content marketing to fuel growth? Here are three other breakdowns of how Airbnb, Cargurus, and Bankrate built impressive SEO moats of their own.
