Building Topical SEO Authority: Achieving 10M+ in ICP Traffic

The comic is a little unbecoming, isn't it?

Unfortunately, a little too familiar in SaaS.

More often than not, you'll see orgs increase traffic for the sake of it.

Non related keywords, non responsive content, same ol' umbrella-technique research, blackhat backlinks..

Like I said, all too familiar.

I kid you not, this is an actual conversation I had with a Fintech founder (YC-backed)

Founder: Our organic funnel is our main point of concern. Good thing is we have steadily growing 40-60K traffic. So this should be an easy project to take on.

Me: Awesome, let's optimise for business intent first? Can get started with product pages first.

Founder: No, start with our blog. It has the highest traffic. 60% of entire website. actually.

Me: Umm.. what would be our top pages there?

Founder: Well, "best beaches in India" is one.

As you'd imagine, traffic took a dip as soon as the next GSC update rolled out.

The Irony of it all

I'll let you in on something.

Playing the right way might just be the easiest trick of em all.

You want:

• To get traffic?
  Focus on your niche- It's better for your content anyway. You have the expertise and first hand results/feedback. Don't target unrelated keywords- Google hates that.

• Higher Domain Authority?
  Be a thoughtleader. Collaborate with your kind. Say something they can't help but quote back to. Make it fun and make it quirky.

• Organic MQLs?
  Go with the intention of helping your ICP. Teach novel ideas or techniques, be a storyteller, emphasize your tool's mission. (not just it's features)

What Topical Authority Does Differently?

As a marketer, I follow Koray Tugberk GUBUR's Topical Authority framework.

In simple terms? It's crafting your website to be the go-to destination for everything related to a specific topic.

Then you bring in- Crystal Clear Central entity, Responsive and representative queries, query semantics, sequence modelling and more.

This philosphy would take hours to explain so I'll focus on my experience here.

Watch out my original frameworks and honest results.

Achieving 10M+ Traffic with SEO Topical Authority

Till now, I have implemented with 4+ odd organization.

I am attaching my experience with some of them here.

Here is a snapshot of Keka growth over a period of 1 year:

"Did it actually convert into revenue?" might be your next question.

Well, yes.

We almost doubled the value of organic traffic from $79,494 to $143,739.

Here is the GA Organic growth Dashboards of another B2B SaaS company I worked with. We were able to generate a revenue of 70 mil from organic and direct traffic alone.

Since GA dashboards are subject to copyright, the name shall remain undisclosed)

A Glimpse of my Proven Frameworks

In this section, I will try to explain methods that have worked for me.

This will also give you good idea about how I approach Content Marketing in general,

A pillar, that can make or break all your marketing verticles.

First things first, GREAT marketing cannot compensate for a bad product.

If you're reading up until here, you must have your product USP, ICP, targeted audience and brand narrative ready. In technical SEO terms, Central Entity and Source Context and Topical Map is ready.

Then, we head on to achieve our first objective:

I will be taking the case study of one of my previous work experiences. Here are some of the results and how we achieved it.

Objective 1: 35% avg QoQ growth in organic search traffic

• Ensure Entire Topical Coverage.

• Thorough Keyword research (go beyond competitor gap analysis. Talk to leaders, customers, sales. Experiment).
  Also, don't trust 3rd party tools blindly. Here is a traffic snapshot of a keyword that showed 0 traffic potential on AHrefs, Google keyword planner)

• Keep an eye on your SERP rankings- esp for high business intent page. Update and refresh content regularly.
  Here are the top pages of Keka and Cashfree- all refreshed and optimised regularly. (handled organic strategy end to end here)

Objective 2: Improve keyword rankings Enhanced Content Quality

The "staying in SERP Top 5 game is exhausting.

But it sure is fun.

You gotta be on your toes. You never know when an Google Broad Update drops, and its game over.

But after playing the field, Here's one common truth all adept SEO specialists accept.

If you truly aim to help your Target Audience, you'll get rewarded. Try to use blackhat, and you'll be punished.

To improve your keyword ranking from a content perspective, I have one advise:

Create easily-understandable helpful content.

Hell, even the latest Google update is titled Helpful Content Update. So, here's some tips out of my own framework

• Do NOT limit yourself to google for research. It's outdated. It does NOT work. Go for boolean search. (Filetype:pdf) Read research papers, books, podcasts, hang out in reddit chats and more. Google Scholar can be a surprisingly handy tool.

• Create original frameworks, tools, school of thoughts. Build Trust and Thought leadership. Here's a snippet of HRMS Maturity Model I created for Keka:

  
  

  

  
  

• Understand query semantic. Categorise content into Intent Types (Is the reader willing to buy, learn or just navigate?)

• Use critical thinking. Structure and copywrite your content so it sticks. This is the only thing that seperates you from AI.

• Consistency is key.

• Be innovative. Play around. Let your customers learn through interactivity. Here's a Interactive Tool repository we planned for Outgrow.

  This helped us generate 120+ MQLs per month:

  

• Track your average time spent on page. Ensuring engagement is important. This is your true passageway to conversions. Inculcate storytelling. Tell your Brand's story, the way it was supposed to be said.
  Here's a comparative 6 months increase in average time on page. We updated the top 90 pages. Increased storytelling and readability. Never had a abetter ROI on effort put:

  

   

Objective 3: Improve Backlink Authority from 20 to 52

Domain authority is unlike keyword rankings.

It is rigid, rather difficult to budge and take years to create.

For you to gte backlinks from trusted sources, you have to create trusted content.

In addition to all the things mentioned in first objective, you should:

• Create original reports. They seem to get highest backlinks. Here's one we created at Keka. Lead gen pro max.

• Create frameworks and models that your ICP will find helpful

• Create free tools. Here's one I created for Keka

• Create shareable content assets such as infographics, case studies, and expert guides.

• disavow toxic backlinks if necessary.

Objective 4: Increase Conversion Rates and Revenue

Arguably, the most important objective of all. :D

Conversion rate is directly proportional to your readability.

Tell a story. Talk about its impact on your customer. (NOT its impact on you)

Don't sell features, sell emotion. Focus on their painpoint, not your feature. Exhibit A:

Educate and mold your narrative to hit your ICP's pulse. Here's an example.

• Now, Optimize landing pages for conversion by improving messaging, design, and user experience. Implement A/B testing to experiment with different page elements and CTAs.

• Study heat maps, scroll depth and CTRs. Analyze user behavior using heatmaps and session recordings to identify barriers to conversion.

• Build a Data-driven attribution model. What's your first an last touch point? How much weightage does each touchpoint hold in your lead attribution?

  
  

  Objective 4: Technical SEO Optimization

  Essentially, the operational work you can't escape.

  
  

  In my professional opinion, 60% of these tasks will be phased out by AI by 2027.

  
  

  Nevertheless, here are some pointers that def deserve a mention:

1. Improve website loading speed. Conduct a technical SEO audit to identify and fix issues such as broken links, duplicate content, and crawl errors.

2. Increase mobile usability score. Optimize website performance by compressing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript, and leveraging browser caching.

3. Ensure proper indexing and crawlability of website content. Implement responsive design to ensure a seamless user experience across devices. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and Mobile-Friendly Test for performance optimization.

Phew, that brings us to a completion

Thanks for staying till the end.

Well, that's it folks I hope this was able to add some value to your content creation process.

Have some thoughts on my framework? Don't hesistate to forward them to thoughtstoetee@gmail.com