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Imagine your dream customers coming to your site everyday.
They have a problem and your product helps them solve it.
Your content helps them make a decision and they decide to go with your product.
You now have a steady stream of sales coming in without hiring extra SDRs or spending a fortune on ads.
The goal of this guide is to show you how to turn this into reality for your SaaS company.
We’ll be covering:
You can have the best content in the world but if you’re targeting the wrong keywords you are WASTING your time.
This is why figuring out what to write is the most important step of your content strategy.
Here’s what marketers usually do:
But here’s what happens.
Once everything starts working and traffic goes up, the amount of conversions doesn’t increase.
The reason this happens is this strategy prioritizes traffic over revenue.
Unless you’re a news publisher or media business increasing traffic that doesn’t convert isn’t going to increase revenue.
So what’s the alternative?
Start with your customers' pain points first THEN find keywords and topics that discuss solutions to the problems they are trying to solve.
SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush will usually say these pain-point (a.k.a bottom of the funnel) keywords have tiny amounts of search volume.
Like under 20 searches per month.
Ignore this.
Search volume data from these tools are estimates. They often underestimate the amount of traffic you could generate if you rank for these keywords.
For now we’re only interested in bottom of the funnel (BOFU) keywords with high conversion intent.
It’s not uncommon for a BOFU blog post that gets 100-200 visits per month to get more conversions than a search volume focused page that gets 1000-2000 visits per month.
Note: Some BOFU keywords can have massive search volume and be super competitive.
Before we go into how to find bottom of the funnel topic ideas. I want to share five frameworks (or article types) that you can use as the format for the ideas you find:
1. Comparison posts: Compare your product or service to your top competitors. E.g. “monday vs asana”
2. Best product or service lists: Create a comprehensive list of the different solutions the searcher could use in a specific category. E.g. “best employee onboarding software”.
3. Alternatives to ‘X’: Searchers are looking for other options to your competitor. Show them your product plus other valuable alternatives. E.g. Paperform targeting “zapier alternatives”.
4. Pricing articles: If your competitors aren’t clear with their pricing, show the reader how much it will cost. Use this as an opportunity to compare your product’s pricing to your competitor. E.g. Monday.com explaining how Pipedrive’s pricing works.
5. Product or Service Use Cases: Help searchers solve a specific problem they have then present your product or service as a solution. E.g. “how to identify B2B sales leads visiting your site”.
6. Integrations: How your software plugs into other tools, e.g. “Best Xero CRM integrations”
The BOFU approach starts with the customer's problems first.
How do you find what these problems are?
By speaking to your best customers.
This alone will put you miles ahead of your competition. They’ll be focused on traffic while you’ll be focused on helping your customers.
Here are some questions you can ask your customers to uncover pain point keywords to target:
1. What was the problem you were looking to solve before stumbling across our product or service?
2. If our product/service were no longer to exist, what product/service would you use as an alternative?
3. How would you describe our product/service to a friend who knew nothing about us?
4. What are the top 3 benefits that you receive from our product/service?
5. If you were to research our product or service, what would you search for?
Your questions should be open-ended so you don’t lead your customers to an answer. Aim to interview 20-30 customers. Prioritize ideas around recurring patterns or themes that are brought up by customers.
Note: There’s still value in targeting keywords that help customers who are at the top or middle of the funnel. Although, the reason I recommend covering all of the bottom of the funnel topics first as these are the 20% of pages that will drive 80% of revenue.
In this screenshot we can see that out of the top 10 pages by search traffic, the three highest converting pages are using one of the frameworks we mentioned to target bottom of the funnel keywords.
The difference in conversion rate isn’t small either. We’re talking 5x to 10x higher than other pages.
Now you’ve got a list of high intent topic ideas. Let’s start writing.
Before we can start writing great content, we need to understand what makes great content “great”.
We need to think of our content as the answer to someone’s question.
Google’s job is to put the best answers at the top of the search results.
If users spend more time on your post, click into things, and thus display “on page behavior signals” that tell Google’s algorithm your piece is fulfilling their users search intent.
This means (a) Google is likely to rank you higher and (b) the searcher is more likely to feel your brand “gets” them, and thus is more likely to give your product a chance and convert.
So how can we make sure that we have the best answer on the Internet?
Step 1: Analyze the top 10 search results
By looking at the results on the first page of Google we get to see the type of content Google is rewarding and thinks is answering the searcher’s query best.
This will tell us:
The goal here isn’t just to copy whatever is on the first page of Google.
We need to look at these pages as the benchmark we need to beat.
Our page needs to be more valuable, useful and easier to read.
Here’s the process you can follow to analyze the top search results:
a) Review the titles, page types and websites ranking on page one. Titles and page types will tell us the types of content ranking for the keyword. This tells us the type of content Google thinks is the best format for the keyword. If you think a different format will meet user intent better you can try it. In general, I recommend sticking to the format that is in the top results. Google has already spent the time and effort to figure out what searchers want to see (they’re usually right).
b) Review the topics being discussed in those pages, make a note of recurring themes or topics. Pay attention to what is shown above the fold, the subheadings used, FAQs (if they have them), images or videos used within the content. If the same topics or themes keep popping up, this is a sign you’ll need to cover it too in order to rank.
c) Look at what the current results do well AND do poorly. This is where you can start to see gaps that your page can go after. As well as things that are working well that your page should include too.
d) Understand the intent of searchers typing in the keyword. The goal here is to figure out the problem the searcher is trying to solve. This is the reason why your page exists.
Step 2: Choosing the post type, unique angle and structure of your article
A) As we mentioned earlier - it’s usually best to use the post type seen on page 1 of the SERPs.
B) You can come up with your unique angle after analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the pages currently ranking. Think about the motivation behind why someone searched for the keyword. Do the top results address this?
C) Before we start we need to come up with the structure for the article. List the subtopics we need to cover to answer the searcher’s question based on our previous SERP analysis. Is the structure logical? Is it easy for the reader to scan through? Do they include the relevant keywords?
Step 3: Write content that is original, unobvious and naturally mentions your product or service
Doing the research for an article is straightforward.
Writing a great article is the hard part.
We see a lot of SaaS companies hire agencies or freelance writers who don’t have authority or expertise on what they’re writing about.
This results in them producing generic, high level content that regurgitates what the top search results are saying on the topic.
This can cause a ton of damage to your brand and business.
Potential customers that read this type of content will be underwhelmed and in some cases turned off using your product or service.
People writing these articles don’t have a deep understanding of your business and customers so it’s hard for them to build a compelling case for the reader to use your product or service.
The worst part is they waste your time and resources while your competitors get ahead.
So how do you create content that’s really specific, original, and compelling?
Write it yourself or hire someone with expertise (or able to interview people) in your industry, product and market to produce it.
People who have genuine experience with what they’re writing about are able to share insights and ideas you can’t find from a quick Google search.
This way your article will be unique, detailed and useful.
Readers (and potential customers) will:
What this looks like differs for each business. There’s no “one size fits all” approach.
If you’d like us to do this for you book a time to chat to get started.
Stick around because in the next chapter we’ll show you how to find talented writers.
Step 4: Follow on-page SEO best practices
Run your initial draft through an SEO writing tool like Clearscope, Marketmuse or Frase.
These tools use AI to analyze your content to make sure you’re mentioning the relevant keywords, can be read easily and meets user intent.
These tools make it easy to spot any gaps in your article.
Note: If one of these tools says you’re missing keywords, look for ways to include them naturally. Don’t jam them in just to tick it off the list. This will turn readers and Google off your article.
Once you’ve polished off your draft, here are some final SEO hygiene steps to follow:
Great, the article’s finished. We’re done now right?
Almost.
Step 5: Promoting your content
Your new article might be a work of art.
But remember there’s a good chance the keyword you’re targeting would also be valuable to other sites/businesses.
They’ll be working hard on getting their pages to rank too.
To give your article the best chance to rank on page 1 you need to promote it.
You can do this by:
a) Running retargeting ads to your blog post
In order for this to work you’ll need to add the Meta Pixel to your site.
From there all you need to do is post the article on your business’s Facebook page then select “Boost Post” and your retargeting audience under “Custom Audiences”.
This will show your post to people who’ve visited your site in the last 30-60 days.
b) Posting on LinkedIn
Unlike most other social platforms, LinkedIn still has decent reach for organic posts.
You’ll need to “sell” your article (i.e. get people excited and/or a reason to read your article) in the LinkedIn post before sharing the link.
Brian Dean from Backlinko does this really well.
You can get tens of thousands of impressions from doing this.
The best part is it's completely free.
c) Sending it to your email subscribers
If you aren’t turning people who visit your site into email subscribers you’re leaving money on the table.
The ROI is insane.
According to Litmus, (on average) email generates $36 for every $1 spent.
All you need to include in the email is:
That’s it.
You don’t need fancy banners and designs.
Keep it simple and clean.
Less noise and clutter makes it easier for someone reading the email to take action.
d) Posting in relevant industry groups or communities
Niche communities and groups can be a great way to find potential customers while building awareness of your brand.
For example, let’s say you offer a SaaS tool that helps salespeople close more deals.
I would come up with a list of all the Facebook groups, Slack communities, subreddits and Discord channels that are focused on sales.
Spend time in each community and see which posts get engagement.
Take note of any recurring themes or patterns.
Then use this as the foundation to brainstorm ideas that are related to your blog post.
A safer bet can be to summarize the key ideas or lessons from the blog post then offer to drop the link to the full post if people are interested.
Note: Before sharing any links, make sure to check the community guidelines to make sure you’re not violating any rules that could get you banned.
e) Contacting journalists or influencers in your industry
Make a list of the blogs and thought leaders that your customers follow.
(You can use tools like SparkToro to find this out).
Then connect with the writers from these sites on Twitter and LinkedIn.
You can cold email them too but I’ve found sending DMs on Twitter/LinkedIn to have a better response rate.
Take some time to learn about who they are, what they care about plus any content they’ve recently published.
From there you can put together a short and personalized message.
Make sure to include a link to the article plus why you think it would be valuable for their audience.
Example:
Hey [Name]
I’m a big fan of [blog name/company]! I’ve bookmarked at least 3 of your articles on [topic]. I actually learned how to [skill] after reading this article you wrote [link].
I recently wrote an article on [topic] that I think you’d like.
It goes through how:
[key lesson 1]
[key lesson 2]
[key lesson 3]
You can check it out here [link].
Is this something your audience would be interested in?
[Sign off]
Even if they don’t share it with their audience it can be a great way to start building relationships with influential people in your industry.
You now should know how to:
1. Pick a high intent topic to target
2. Research your article
3. Structure and format your post to meet intent
4. Write original and compelling content
5. Implement on-page SEO best practices
6. Promote your content
Further reading: This B2B SaaS SEO case study shows you how Runn.io went from 1,000 to 24,000 monthly visitors in less than 12 months.
The goal here is to find writers that have domain expertise in your industry, who have the ability to interview experts and can come up with ideas and execute them autonomously.
So where do we find them?
Here are some helpful places to start:
The Writer Finder
The Writer Finder is a side project from Nat Eliason who runs an SEO agency called Growth Machine.
Over the years Growth Machine has worked with thousands of writers to produce content for clients.
These writers are professional writers and content marketers that have a wide range of experience and areas of expertise.
The platform allows people (for a flat fee) to request a writer based on their budget and area of focus. From there their team will send you a shortlist of writers from their database based on your criteria.
The best part is they’ll keep looking for writers until you’re happy.
Pros:
Cons:
Superpath
Superpath is a free + paid community for content marketers.
It’s free to join their Slack community but they also have a paid premium membership for $500 per year.
I personally haven’t used the premium membership and to be honest I don’t think you need it if you’re just looking to find writers.
Once you get accepted into the free Slack community (it can take a couple days to get accepted) check out the #work-freelance and #work-hire-me channels.
The #work-freelance channel is where you can post a link to your job openings or write a short message on what you’re looking for.
Interested writers will then respond within the thread of your post.
Pros:
Cons:
Peak Freelance
Peak Freelance offers a free + paid community and a niche job board where you can post writing jobs.
The price to post a job ranges from $99 to $199.
The platform is used by fast-growing SaaS companies like Softr, Harrison.ai and Memberstack.
Peak Freelance doesn’t have a community as big as Superpath but the quality is high.
Pros:
Cons:
AngelList Talent
AngelList is a gold mine for finding writers.
Not only is it free to post jobs, the type of people that use AngelList to find jobs are usually smart and tech-savvy.
The likelihood of applicants having experience in SaaS or tech is significantly higher than some of the other options I’ve gone through.
They also have a free applicant tracking system (ATS) that makes it easy to stay on top of multiple candidates/job openings.
Pros:
Cons:
Now you’ve got a shortlist of promising writers.
But how do you separate the good writers from the great writers?
The process is super simple:
Give them context
To make sure you only work with writers who are a good fit you need to make sure they understand exactly what you’re looking for.
To do this we’ll put together a Google Doc that goes through:
Share this document with writers who you’re interested in working with (make sure it’s read-only).
This will get them up to speed and align expectations from the beginning. If they’re still interested after it, you can progress them to the next stage - the writing test.
Send them a writing test
This step is where you’ll find out how good of a writer they are.
Before you start, let the writer know that if they pass the test you’ll pay them for the post. If they don’t pass they have complete ownership over the post and can use it however they like.
Writing test part one:
The first part of the test is seeing if they can come up with interesting ideas.
Ask them to send you (or your content manager) three headlines based on what they read in the document you sent them. Ask them to include a short description on how they came up with each headline.
Why this step is key: You want writers who can come up with ideas on their own with little guidance. If they can’t come up with three solid ideas the likelihood is that the content they’ll produce for you won’t be great.
If they fail this step thank them for their time and say they aren’t a good fit for what you need.
Writing test part two:
If they passed the last step, pick one of the headlines they pitched and ask them to write the article.
Why this step is key: This is the real test. From here you’ll see how well they write, their attention to detail and if they can produce engaging content.
What success looks like: The post they send you should be at a level where you could publish it to your blog without making any major changes. If it’s at this level you can go ahead and pay them for the post. Then start the process of onboarding them to work with you/your team.
What failure looks like: If the post is flat, unclear, and needs a lot of editing, thank them for their time and let them use the article however they like. Let them know they’re probably not a good fit for what you’re looking for.
Review and select the best writer(s)
To decide which writer to hire most people will interview the writer and look at some of their writing examples. They might even get them to write a test post.
This approach is flawed. It doesn’t actually qualify writers on the things you need to care about:
The beauty of this process is each step filters out writers while testing them on each of these points.
So at the end you’re only left with the best writers who understand what you’re after and are willing to put in the work.
When bringing on writers, it’s best to let them decide how much content they want to produce each month.
This can change month to month depending on their capacity.
Make sure they give you an estimated completion date whenever they pitch a new blog post.
That way you can easily manage your content calendar.
The ideal setup for a writing team is 3-5 writers that focus or specialize in different areas.
For example:
This prevents you from having a content bottleneck if you were to rely on a single writer. It also means you can have a steady stream of content in the pipeline so you can publish articles consistently.
Hiring writers is an “always on” process.
Over time some might want to change jobs or you might want to bring in more experienced writers as your blog matures.
Regardless, you can keep following this process so you always have a stream of talented writers to work with.
It’s possible to rank on Google without backlinks.
But it’s a hell of a lot easier if you have quality backlinks.
And if you’re in a crowded niche you DEFINITELY need backlinks to compete.
Most marketers take an outbound approach.
They use strategies like guest posting or the skyscraper technique that requires them to send outreach to other sites.
Don’t get me wrong you can still build backlinks using these approaches but if you’re competing against sites that have thousands of referring domains while you have fifty it’s going to take a looong time to catch up.
And that’s assuming your competitors build zero links in the meantime.
So what’s the alternative?
You need to create pages that target keywords where the searcher has the intent to link to your article.
Here’s the logic behind this: people that write content want to back up what they’re saying with data, statistics and studies.
Good writers know that it's crucial to link to credible sites within their articles.
These are called “outbound links” and in Google’s eyes this is super important.
When these writers and journalists are researching their article they’ll google things like:
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] study”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] survey”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] research”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] data”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] statistics”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] trends”
But here’s where it gets interesting.
If you build pages targeting these keywords you can get links from MASSIVE sites (I’m talking Forbes, Business Insider, Entrepreneur) without sending a single outreach email.
Let’s go through an example of how you could do this yourself.
Step 1: Find your “link bait” keyword
Go to favorite keyword research tool and enter each of the keywords below:
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] study”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] survey”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] research”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] data”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] statistics”
“[INDUSTRY KEYWORD] trends”
This will give you a rough idea of how much search volume each of the keywords in your industry get plus give you more keyword ideas.
Let’s say you’re a project management SaaS company.
You’ll throw your initial keywords list into Ahrefs (you can use any keyword research tool I just prefer Ahrefs).
You can also get keyword ideas by checking “Matching terms”.
This will give you a list of keywords that contain the initial keywords you put in.
This gives you 2,257 keywords you could go after.
For the sake of this example let’s say you decide to target “project management trends” as the focus keyword.
Step 2: Create the outline of your page
Now that we’ve got our focus keyword we need to come up with an outline for what the page will cover.
Rather than guessing we can find out what people are already asking.
To do this you can look up your focus keyword on Google then check the People Also Ask boxes.
Here’s how it looks with our “project management trends” example.
As you open each tab, Google automatically adds more related questions under People Also Ask.
This gives you even more ideas.
We can use these questions as the subheadings for our page.
Step 3: Collect the data
Here are some places you can use to find data for stats pages:
Bonus: You can find more data providers here.
Step 4: Optimize your page
Now that you’ve collected your data it’s time to put together and optimize your page.
Remember the easier your page is for the reader to find the information they need, the more likely they’ll use a data point and link to you.
Here’s a super simple process you can follow:
Here’s an example from Exploding Topics:
This makes it easy for a journalist writing about the SaaS industry to grab a quick stat on how much it’s worth and how fast it’s growing.
Other things to include:
Step 5: Watch the backlinks roll in
Once you’ve published your page keep an eye on any keywords the page starts to rank for.
If it’s starting to rank for long-tail keywords that’s a GREAT sign.
It can take time to start seeing results.
Usually it takes 3-4 months for the page to rank and generate passive links.
The beauty of this strategy is if you keep publishing pages targeting journalist keywords this can add up to hundreds or even thousands of passive links each year.
Hubspot uses this strategy INSANELY well.
They have over 70 statistics pages.
And have generated over 24,000 backlinks to these pages.
So that’s how you can build quality backlinks at scale.
Have you tried passive link building strategies before?
If so, how did it go?
Let me know at samuel.renotte@compoundingcopy.com
You can follow all the strategies in this guide but if you don’t optimize your blog for conversions you’re wasting your time.
Increasing traffic is cool but you can’t pay the bills with pageviews.
At the end of the day the goal of your blog is to convert readers:
That’s it.
This makes it easier to measure the ROI of your content efforts too.
But more on that in the next chapter.
For now we’re going to cover how to turn readers into qualified leads.
Whether you’re selling a consumer subscription that costs $49 per month or an enterprise product that costs $10,000 per month you need to be capturing emails from your readers.
To make sure the people giving you their email are the right fit for your product or service you need to qualify them.
You can do this in two ways:
A content upgrade is a bonus that’s relevant to the content you’re delivering.
You can offer this bonus as part of your post in exchange for the reader's email address.
Here’s an example from Drip.com
Their blog post funnily enough is about content upgrades. Near the end of the post they have a CTA for the reader to enter their email to access their library of exclusive marketing resources.
Content upgrades aren’t new but you’ll still find them on a lot of sites.
That’s because they convert like crazy.
There’s the famous example from Brian Dean at Backlinko where he increased his email conversion rate from 0.54% to 4.82% using content upgrades (that’s nearly 8x more conversions).
This level of conversion rate isn’t uncommon if you use content upgrades properly.
I’ve even seen some sites even hit the 20-30% range which is insane.
In order for content upgrades to convert like this they need to be closely related to what users are already seeing on the page.
For example, if your article is about “how to close a sales call” and your content upgrade is “top 10 sales trends in 2022” the conversion rate isn’t going to be great.
Whereas “10 secret sales scripts you can use to close more clients” would convert much higher.
The only downside with content upgrades is they take TIME.
You essentially need to create another piece of content for every blog post you put out.
If you’ve got the resources to do this, more power to you.
But if you don't, that's okay too. I’ll go through alternatives you can use to get similar results with a fraction of the resources.
Alternative #1: Batching content upgrades
Rather than creating a unique content upgrade for every blog post you publish.
You can create content upgrades based on themes or categories of your blog.
The logic here is if you had 100 blog posts they would likely fall within a handful of categories.
For example:
The content upgrades for each of these categories need to be genuinely useful.
This doesn’t mean they need to be 10,000 word white papers.
Here are some formats you can use:
Create a content upgrade for each blog category then add it to all of those pages.
You can set this up easily using an email software provider. I personally like using Optinmonster or Mailerlite.
Alternative #2: Converting the page into a PDF
You might think this is too simple to work.
Why would someone give me their email to download the post they just read?
It works for two reasons:
The best part is this approach is scalable.
It doesn’t require much time or resources to outsource or automate converting posts into PDFs.
If you have a lot of long form blog posts this can be an easy way to add content upgrades.
Alternative #3: Combine existing content into a mega-asset
This is similar to the first alternative of batching your content upgrades.
In this approach though you simply package all your blog posts that are focused on a specific category into an “ultimate guide”.
Lets say for example you’re a project management SaaS platform and you have a bunch of blog posts targeting the definition of technical terms used by project managers e.g. “what is bottom up estimating”.
You can combine all of these pages into a comprehensive guide i.e. “The Complete Glossary For Project Managers”.
You can package them into a PDF (again this is super easy to automate/outsource).
Then add the content upgrade to all of your technical definition pages.
I found this interesting experiment a couple of years ago that tested using pop ups to convert sales leads directly from blog posts.
The experiment led to closing 5-6 figure deals just from pop ups.
If your product offering costs $10,000 to $100,000+ and is a major purchase decision then this is for you.
Here’s how you can replicate it:
Step 1: List your pages that are ranking and have high intent traffic (If you’ve been following this guide you should have these by now 😉).
Step 2: Group these pages based on what the reader is trying to achieve.
For example:
Step 3: Create a unique pop up for each category. Make sure to set the pop up to only show after 90 seconds on the page. This is so that the pop up only gets shown to people who are engaged with the post.
Here’s an example I made for HoneyBook:
By including a field for their phone number this makes it obvious that you’re serious and a salesperson will contact them.
This rules out anyone who isn’t seriously interested in a new CRM which means the people who do sign up are higher quality leads.
Step 4: Roll out each pop up onto the relevant pages. Make sure your CRM is connected to your email marketing software. That way all the leads you generate get added to your CRM.
You now have some powerful tactics in your toolkit to convert your traffic into revenue.
Remember traffic doesn’t pay the bills. The goal of generating traffic is to turn them into customers.
In the final chapter I’m going to show you how to set up your tracking in Google Analytics so you can measure exactly how your content is contributing to the bottom line.
If you’ve ever struggled to explain the ROI of your content marketing efforts then this chapter is for you.
It still baffles me the amount of clients I see that have blogs that are getting decent traffic but have no clear approach to measuring the revenue being generated.
Proper tracking means you can easily figure out if what you’re doing is working (and actually moving the needle for the business).
The contribution you and your team are making to the company’s top line will become obvious. Plus it’ll become clearer where you might need to make improvements.
So if you want to everyone at your company to know how awesome you and your team are at content, here’s how you can do it:
You’ll need to set up ‘blog to customer’ analytics. This needs to be a simple as possible to make sure people:
Setting up GA goals to measure “conversions”
The most common approach you can use to track conversions is to use a destination goal for your success page or thank you page after someone signs up or makes a purchase.
For example, Asana (project management software) would have a conversion goal that measures the amount of unique visitors that reach this page:
Which is the thank you page after someone signs up for an account.
If your thank you pages or success pages can vary or are created dynamically make sure your tech team is able to factor this in so you don’t miss any signups.
Repeat this process for every conversion you want to measure. This can be a success page after someone books a demo or becomes a paid customer.
You can also assign a value to these goals so you can get an estimate of the revenue that is being generated each time the goal is completed:
This tracking is the bare minimum every content marketer should have set up for their site.
Setting up multi-touch attribution
In reality most readers aren’t going to read a single blog post then convert.
It usually looks something more like this:
It’s really hard to measure the exact ROI of your content efforts.
In fact it’s impossible to perfectly measure attribution for your content.
But you can get close enough.
And “close enough” is still super useful.
In general I like to assume the amount of leads that I’m able to track and attribute are underestimating performance.
This is because it’s tricky to accurately measure the impact content has on branded search, referrals/word of mouth, brand equity and other things that contribute to someone buying from you.
These are the three attribution models you need to understand:
Yes there are other models you could use. Yes these have limitations.
But understanding these three models are the 80/20 of attribution.
Last click attribution
This is where a conversion is attributed to the last page the user visited before completing the goal.
A lot of companies and agencies tend to use this model because it’s simple and straightforward to measure.
But this can be misleading.
It doesn’t factor in the first page (or other pages) the user might have visited before visiting the “last” page before converting.
It’s likely that you don’t have any blog posts where the user came to the page then immediately converted.
This is especially true if you have a complex or high ticket offering.
Only using last click attribution can make it look like your content played less of a role (or no role at all) in a conversion.
To get a clearer picture of how your content contributes to a conversion you need to look at last click AND first click attribution.
Note: You can use this article to learn how to set up last-click attribution in GA.
First click attribution
First click attribution is when a conversion is attributed to the first touch point a user has with your site.
For example, let’s say someone discovers your business through a blog post organically via Google. They then visit your homepage after a couple of weeks to sign up as a customer. The initial blog post they visited will get the credit for the conversion.
This will give you a more accurate picture of what content was responsible for kick starting the conversion.
In saying that, it gives zero credit to any pages in between that the user visited or visited last before converting.
That’s where position based attribution comes in.
Note: Here’s a great article that walks you through how to set up first-click attribution in GA.
Position based attribution (a.k.a multi touch attribution)
In this model the first and last touch points are given the lion’s share of credit e.g. 40% each. While the touch points in between get credited the remaining percentage evenly.
You can play around with the weightings in whatever way makes the most sense to you.
This model gives you the best of both worlds by combining first and last click attribution while also crediting pages in between.
Here’s a video that walks through how to compare all three of these attributions.
Wrapping up
Even though position based attribution gives you a much better picture than looking at first click or last click attribution in isolation. It still isn’t perfect.
In reality one of the middle pages could have been the one that convinced the user to eventually sign up.
There are flaws in every attribution model since they all operate under assumptions and guesses.
Even super complicated data-driven attribution models that use algorithms to assign specific values to each touch point still won’t be 100% accurate.
Just looking at first and last click attribution will in most cases give you the most bang for buck (plus it’s super easy to track).
If you found this guide useful I want to know about it! (If you didn’t find it useful I want to know about it too)
You can email me your thoughts/questions at samuel.renotte@compoundingcopy.com
If you’re a SaaS company that needs help driving growth via SEO you can book a call with me here.
Remember knowledge isn’t power. Knowledge + action = power.
Get out there and start putting what you learned into practice.
Good luck, I’ll be rooting for you :)
- Sam
