By Sean Potter

User empathy is at the heart of everything we do at Hotjar, and that extends into our content strategy.

It is how we grew non-branded organic search traffic by 734% in just 3 years (2022 versus 2019). More importantly, it is also how we were able to turn this traffic into 1,398% growth in new paying customers during the same time period.

Our annual non-branded new visitor numbers are now in the multi-millions, and the heights we’ve hit in the last two years in particular are a testament to the user-centric approach we’ve applied.

So how did we do it?

We’ve been able to achieve the growth we have by painstakingly balancing the needs of existing and potential Hotjar users with the demands of search engines.

We’re relentless in our commitment to satisfying our readers, but we’re not naive to playing the search engine game. To succeed at a high level there is a great deal of nuance that goes into getting this right. For us, that breaks down across a number of areas but there are a handful of core fundamentals that stand out:

• Embracing product-led content
• Clustering content around the user journey
• Powering keyword research with customer insights
• Leveraging qualitative and quantitative data
• Nurturing your historical library

Before we go deeper though, I would be remiss not to cover the very fabric that holds all this together: without deep synergy between our Strategic and Editorial experts, the growth we’ve achieved just simply wouldn’t have happened.

The creation of a candid, respectful, and ongoing dialogue between these two areas is the rocket fuel that lit the touchpaper to the growth we’ve seen. Recognizing the equal importance between these two disciplines and fostering collaboration between the two areas will be vital to how successful you ultimately are.

With that in mind, let’s dive into those fundamentals:

Embracing Product-led Content

Product-led content can supercharge your ability to convert organic visitors into paying customers, and it’s been key to Hotjar’s organic content success to date.

Start with the common pain points for your target audience and their common jobs-to-be-done. Then, use these insights to power your keyword and topic selection. Finally, structure your content to solve those pain points, and explain why your product is key to doing that.

To get this right, you have to have a deep understanding of your product. You should also be obsessed with your customers. Without these two things, you’re unlikely to succeed.

A product-led approach is central to our guides content, where we always provide several examples of how Hotjar can help with problems related to a broader topic our target audience is interested in, like behavior analytics or website tracking.

Clustering Content Around the User Journey

The age-old principle of content clustering is a method that’s driven SEO success for many years. But you can take the traditional approach to another level by inspiring readers towards a multi-touch, connected journey across the clusters you …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron