How
Monday.com
Scaled Search
Traffic
1,000 Articles in 12
Months
www.thefxck.com
Pre-IPO Monday.com scaled
content production to 125 blog
posts per month.
#moatbuilding paid off.
The traffic growth was stoopid
good.
And the story behind the scale is
an operational masterpiece.
Monday.com
Search Profile
Keywords
Organic Traffic
298K
1.2M
(35k in #1-3)
(Traffic per page: 115)
Domain Rating
Organic Pages
88
10,418
Referring Sites
34.9K
www.thefxck.com
Headline Results:
100K to 1.2M monthly organic
visitors
Subheaders:
• Top 1 for "Project Management
Software" (51K Monthly Searches)
• Top 3 for "Project Management"
(300K Monthly Searches)
You know the SEO-attributed
conversions be wild.
(...sorry Asana )
So, "how on earth do you write
1,000 articles in a year?"
—literally me
Digging into the 'how' behind
wild organic growth stories is
what I DO.
Dialing in Brad Smith from
Codeless.io (agency who did
this)
I had him on the How the F*ck
podcast this week.
Content operations. Let's dive
in.
Three things made this
successful:
1. Documentation. Lots of it.
2. Writers. Lots of them.
3. The Planning-Predictor
Framework. (An SEO beast)
Let's break these down.
Documentation
Yet, critical.
15 writers. 125 blogs per month.
You need to be on the same page.
Success comes from making the
subjective, objective.
You live and die by accurate,
detailed documentation.
Here are the docs you need:
(...next slide please)
"If all this relied on us just being
brilliant, that would be bad. I’d
probably still be broke.”
—Brad Smith
No freelance writing team will
perform like an in-house team
without documentation.
Give them:
• Style guide
• Voice/tone
• Resources to use
• Terminology (Don't use "X")
• Unique points of view
• Internal link guide
Importantly:
Freakin' awesome templates.
125 blogs. Lots of patterns
between them.
Create your very best template
and hand it out.
One for each:
1. What is X?
2. How to do X?
3. X Alternatives
4. X vs Y
5. X tools/software
SEOs know the drill. Template it
and get everyone on one page.
Writers
1,500 were vetted to find 15.
Monday didn't just get any ol' Joe
writing their content.
Writers were:
PMP Certified
Well-versed in project mngmt
Given access to internal
xxxexperts (SME research
)
Trick to finding quality writers?
Finding great writers is a six-part
process.
(yes, I said 6)
1. Advertise for them.
Get your paid and organic
billboards up. And be specific.
Monday.com advertised for
writers with a background in X
(where X = the topic cluster they
would write).
(the 7th one isn't really a step)
2. Ask for examples
If your writers can't give you
published examples in your
niche.
They're out.
3. Disqualify aggressively
Ask writers to submit samples in
specific formatting. If they don't,
will they really listen to your style
guide?
They're out.
4. Paid writing test
Yep, paid. We love writers. We are
writers. No cheapskates, pls.
Pay the writers to do what they
do. If they deliver the quality
you're happy with.
HOLD 'EM TIGHT.
(next step, scale them)
5. Ramp them up
They've written one beautiful
article for you.
What's their max capacity? Start
them slow and build them up to
max.
6. This is KEY. Create a buffer.
You need 100 articles per month?
Build capacity for 150.
Surprise: people get sick. things
go wrong.
We've covered documentation (1)
and writers (2).
But, how did they choose which
topics to write about? (3)
Monday doesn't just choose
random content to write
They're smart about it.
Introducing: The Planning
Predictor™ Framework
Let's break it down:
Planning Predictor
Framework
Choosing keywords (content to
write) can be de-risked.
There are patterns. Things that
work every time.
Choose wisely with this
framework:
Firstly, no great SEO or content
plan can begin without the
customer.
Who are they?
Why do they buy from you?
What outcome are they
looking for?
No such thing as a marketing
strategy w/o customer research.
(well, there is, it's just called
shouting nonsense into an empty
cave)
Now, on to your keywords.
1/4: Harvest Demand
Every buyer starts with a pain
point. Then they search.
Use this template kw:
[Customer segment vertical]
+
[problem or pain point]
Example: "How to create a construction
management plan."
Repeat for every vertical/pain
point.
2/4: Pick low-competition
keywords first
Pick a keyword.
1. Enter it into a tool like Ahrefs
2. Review the SERP overview
3. Look at the domain ranking
(DR) for the top 5
If those sites are higher authority
than yours, it's going to take you
+12 months than you expect to
rank.
Choose keywords where the
SERPs themselves are full of low
DR sites.
They're easier to win and it will let
you build your topical authority.
3/4: Build topical authority
Monday didn't choose one from
here and one from there.
They went DEEP.
(next slide)
There were times when the
content team wrote 10s of
thousands of words on one topic.
One article had 18,000 words
Each topic was built in cluster
formation.
Content was thought through
holistically—the funnel, the
authority, the interlinking all
mattered.
4/4: Think about payback period
No problem in going after
competitive keywords, but
they're going to take longer to
win.
How much time can you afford?
Always start with your quick
wins.
Win buy-in. Then write hard-towin stuff and wait it out.
That's how you write 125 articles a
month.
(and ACTUALLY win competitive
keywords and drive growth)
Want to deep dive this story?
Find the full strategy deep dive in
the thefxck.com Premium
community.
(you can also listen to the
podcast, it's freely available)
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