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) Like stories like these? Join my community at www.thefxck.com for one new one each week.
