Content is KING! And when you publish in-depth content that your readers rave about, Google absolutely LOVES it.
So, when BrowserStack, a wildly popular software testing platform, used the strategy of publishing highly technical, in-depth guides, the result was 500K+ monthly users from Google!
This article is a deep dive into BrowserStack's SEO strategy and a reminder that high-quality content is key to SEO success. Read on.
Firstly, what is this BrowserStack? And, how did they get started?
BrowserStack's success story is a tale of persistence.
It started with two IIT Bombay students with a dream to buildd their own company one day. They dappled with 2 solid ideas which failed to generate any excitement in investors.
After trying for 3+ years & not raising a single penny, these dreamers had to go back to holding their day jobs. But, they didn't give up!
While working on their third company the duo came across a problem. Both the founders absolute hated testing software. They got into an argument over who would be testing that day. But, out of that argument came a billion-dollar idea.
You see, when a developer buildds a piece of software, they have to test it on different devices, browsers and platforms, to make sure the software function properly. Before BrowserStack, this process was a complete hassle.
In fact, in 2011, when BrowserStack was still in conception, the founders found some 100 people complaining to Microsoft about how difficult it is to test their websites on Internet Explorer. This served as a validation for BrowserStack & the duo set out to buildd the world's software tester!
Today, BrowserStack is a one-stop cross-browser testing app that was bootstrapped for 7 years to $50M revenue and $40M profits!
Lesson ➝ Your startup doesn't need to fail fast. It can succeed slow.
So, how are they doing SEO-wise?
SEO so far has been the most effective marketing channel for BrowserStack. According to Similar web, ~60% of BrowserStack's traffic comes through "Search".
So, let's see how they are doing!
- BrowserStack gets 528,000 monthly visitors & it ranks for 192K keywords
- Moreover, it has a DR of 83, with 945K backlinks! 🤯
- Their most popular subfolder is their "guides" blog, which we will learn more about in the next section.
Great! So, what's their SEO strategy?
Now, the most direct way users could discover BrowserStack is:
i) Searching for BrowserStack's page directly
ii) Searching for cross-browser testing tools
But, only a handful of people search directly for BrowserStack (20k+) or for "cross-browser testing tools" on Google per month. So, there should be some other way to get these users.
Understanding your target audience
With any SEO strategy, the key is to accurately understand who your users are and what they want.
For BrowserStack,
- The target audience is primarily developers. They are highly technical and appreciate in-depth tech content.
- Secondly, testing is a frustrating activity for developers. So, they would not go the extra mile to research multiple sources to find the best way to do anything in testing.
Given this, BrowserStack took a leap to create highly technical, in-depth guides for their developer audience. Rather than just having simple how-tos or short blogs that address only specific queries.
Now, creating guides is no easy task. It takes a lot of time & effort and may seem counter-intuitive when your primary objective is to drive traffic via SEO.
But, BrowserStack's key goal was to appeal to a specific audience and wow them. By doing so, they hoped to get great conversions to paying users.
Lesson ➝ You don’t need millions of traffic, but only thousands of visitors converting to paying users.
BrowserStack's SEO strategy!
So, BrowserStack's approach to SEO looks something like this:
- Find relevant queries related to software testing and specifically their product.
- Create detailed guides to wow tech folks, so that they rave about the content.
- Of course, optimise for SEO and hope Google picks up the signals to rank them for even difficult keywords.
Sounds simple, but it's the execution that's intensive.
And, what was the result?
All of these guide pages come under the browserstack.com/guide subfolder, which brings in 304K traffic to the website per month. That's ~58% of its total traffic!
Moreover, the keywords these pages rank for have extremely high-intent & hence high-conversion rates!
Over time, writing these in-depth guides has helped them establish unparalleled authority in their field and as a result, they win on all fronts:
a) SEO traffic
b) Getting backlinks
c) Ranking for high-intent keywords with high-difficulty
What are the key takeaways for us?
So, what can we learn from BrowserStack?
Well, there are a few hidden takeaways that founders can learn through this strategy:
- SEO is not just about getting traffic. You should also plan for conversions and building brand & authority.
- Writing in-depth guides in your industry is a tedious process — requires a lot of time & effort. It will also take you time to see results, but it’s the best way to establish long-term authority in your field and be able to rank for high difficulty, high intent keywords
- A great SEO strategy would be to have a mix of these initiatives —
i) Targeting low-difficulty keywords to drive traffic & see medium-term results
ii) Targeting high intent keywords & writing in-depth content to establish long-term authority
