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About ClickUp
ClickUp is a highly-rated all-in-one task absorption solution for teams of each sizes. ClickUp allows selling and SEO teams to collaborate successful aggregate views, store institution knowledge, and summation productivity. Over 800,000 teams are presently utilizing its robust platform.
Business Challenge
Chances are, you’ve heard of ClickUp.
We’re the ones with those arguable Jira smackdown videos, comic Youtube ads, and Lord of the Rings-like airdrome billboards.
But not excessively agelong ago, erstwhile you searched connected Google for phrases specified arsenic “best task absorption software” oregon “best Gantt illustration software” and galore different searches related to our halfway offerings, ClickUp hardly made an appearance.
This is due to the fact that we were caller connected the country and astir of the ranking articles were published respective years prior, often written and ranked earlier ClickUp was adjacent founded.
I’m rather passionate astir getting ClickUp placed connected these articles, due to the fact that arsenic a platform, it perfectly blows distant the different options. I’ve utilized Asana, Monday, and Notion extensively, and cognize it lives up to our claims—ClickUp truly does regenerate them all.
Enter Surround Sound SEO
As a marketer, this Surround Sound SEO strategy – getting different pages already connected Google to urge ClickUp – made implicit sense. Not lone should our ClickUp contented fertile crossed these competitory terms, but we needed to get ClickUp mentioned successful each different ranking article.
But arsenic an SEO specialist, nexus gathering is lone a fraction of my regular relation and the Surround Sound SEO strategy conscionable 1 of many.
In essence, our tiny but mighty squad of 3 radical faced respective challenges:
- Competing nexus gathering strategies
- Lack of impactful concern metrics to person different teams and stakeholders
- Time consuming processes to place the astir promising nexus targets
Competing Link Building Strategies and Prioritization
A communal extremity among nexus gathering teams is to person a “link quota.” Based connected my acquisition and reports from outreach managers I’ve spoken to, this ranges from 20-50 links per period for each SEO hire. At ClickUp, earlier we prioritized Surround Sound, I was liable for generating 40 links per month, but lone astir fractional of my clip was dedicated to that effort.
To efficaciously conscionable our goals, we had to prioritize the astir businesslike links and walk our clip connected the ones that worked champion and that we could execute quickly.
“Normal” editorial nexus gathering similar Skyscraper oregon broken nexus outreach doesn’t instrumentality overmuch time. After establishing an statement with webmasters, they’d usually hold to update their article. The process could often beryllium completed successful conscionable 24 hours. But Surround Sound nexus placements necessitate a spot much clip than emblematic outreach:
- We request to constitute a tiny blurb astir ClickUp to assistance them recognize however it acceptable into the discourse of their article—not indispensable with editorial links.
- Because we are targeting pages that fertile for high-intent keywords, we often request to get much bargain successful than usual. For example, immoderate webmasters request support from their manager oregon contented squad to marque specified a disposable alteration (compared to simply adding a link).
- The webmaster whitethorn besides request to tweak the contented we nonstop them to lucifer their marque voice.
So I had to inquire myself—if I could gain links faster done editorial nexus building, wherefore would I walk much clip and vigor to get a Surround Sound link? More connected that later.
This led to my 2nd problem.
Lack of Metrics That Tie into Business Impact
Given the other clip required—are Surround Sound links adjacent worthy it?
Intuitively, I knew that Surround Sound links are overmuch amended links than modular editorial placements. After all, from a marque perspective, wouldn’t we alternatively person an full conception astir ClickUp successful an objective, 3rd-party nonfiction alternatively of a nexus connected anchor text?
Still, successful bid to successfully standard the Surround Sound strategy, we needed our contented squad afloat connected committee due to the fact that they’d beryllium the ones liable for penning each the ClickUp blurbs to lucifer the intended article.
We besides needed to person selling enactment of the worth down the Surround Sound strategy to get the indispensable resources. And it tin beryllium hard to necktie nexus gathering efforts straight to concern metrics similar revenue, conversions, oregon adjacent traffic.
Stakeholders recognize referral traffic, but extracurricular of that, there’s nary metric. On apical of this, adjacent high-traffic spouse blogs make precise fewer referral visits arsenic measured by the Google Analytics referral traffic.
These referral clicks don’t instrumentality into information different benefits specified arsenic marque visibility, accrued branded hunt and nonstop traffic, and impressions generated.
Time Consuming Process to Identify Target Pages
Anyone successful nexus gathering volition archer you—finding opportunistic placements connected spouse domains is clip consuming. Sometimes you request to usage a scraping instrumentality similar Screaming Frog, sometimes you usage Google hunt operators to find peculiar keywords successful blog content. And if you’re truly going for quality, that process besides involves screening these opportunities done a instrumentality similar the Semrush On-Page Checker.
You mightiness adjacent request to repetition this process aggregate times to hunt further spouse domains. All of this leads to a agelong probe process and delayed negotiation.
Additionally, if you’re moving a acold outreach campaign, gathering a database of pages and domains tin instrumentality a batch of time. For example, if we wanted to get ClickUp mentioned successful each articles ranking for “project absorption software,” we would person to vet each idiosyncratic effect from the SERP. Then, we’d multiply that crossed antithetic variations of “project absorption software” to physique a last prospecting list.
This takes a batch of clip and is simply a siloed effort. For example, however bash we cognize that “project absorption software” has the astir imaginable visibility for us? Zooming out, is it amended to absorption connected a “project absorption software” run oregon a “gantt illustration software” campaign? You get the idea—there’s ever different space to consider.
So, however did we hole this issue?
Solution
With the assistance of Semrush’s caller stock of hunt tool, Surround Sound, we’ve capable to formalize our Surround Sound processes and code galore of these symptom points.
Here are immoderate solutions that are moving for us:
Track Our Visibility for High-Intent Keywords
First, we needed to spot however we fared crossed each of our high-intent keywords.
We acceptable up a keyword database for nexus tracking that intimately aligned with our contented strategy. That way, we could align Surround Sound nexus gathering with our contented SEO goals. To bash this we utilized Google Search Console to export a database of each “app,” “software,” and “tool” based queries that we already ranked for.
After cleaning the data—eliminating adjacent variants, debased impression, and irrelevant keywords— we imported the last database of 900+ keywords into the Surround Sound tool.
Now we tin spot what keywords we already person large visibility for, arsenic good arsenic our top imaginable keywords. Surround Sound’s nifty calculation for potential postulation visibility factors successful your existent visibility and Semrush’s hunt measurement data.
In the screenshot below, you’ll spot that we had nary visibility but a ton of large imaginable for 5 precocious hunt measurement presumption truthful we knew wherever to absorption for contiguous impact.
Compile High Traffic Targets and Sized Opportunities
Link gathering teams usually commencement acold outreach campaigns by compiling a database of people domains and pages—and astatine first, we were nary different.
Imagine gathering a database of each pages that fertile for “project absorption software.” Then adding much pages that fertile for “project absorption tools.” Then adding ones that fertile for “free task absorption software.”
…And that’s conscionable 3 keywords. What if you had to bash that for 900 keywords?
Surround Sound’s Pages study wholly removes the request for this manual step. It aggregates each the opportunities by postulation for each domain, frankincense redeeming america hours of manual effort looking for the champion opportunities. Note: you tin besides take to presumption a database of pages if you prefer.
Grouping opportunities by domains enables you to instrumentality vantage of account-based nexus building. Rather than reaching retired individually to get placed successful articles, you found semipermanent partnerships with these domains.
Luckily, we’ve already built our partnership CRM database successful ClickUp that helps america place an existing narration with sites that look connected this list. We enactment connected those first, eliminating the request for acold outreach.
For example, HubSpot is an existing spouse of ours and we've gotten placements for ClickUp determination this year. Using “Pages" successful the supra screenshot, we instantly find 52 much opportunities for links from HubSpot.
Now I simply scope retired to my interaction astatine HubSpot to find a mode to beryllium added to these articles! Voila!
The instrumentality saves america a important magnitude of clip by grouping these opportunities and eliminating the request to spot unneurotic antithetic scraping tools oregon manual domain analysis.
Another mode to usage the Pages dashboard successful Surround Sound is for prioritizing acold outreach targets. For example, based connected the fig of pages that fertile for our keywords, and successful operation with estimated traffic, the screenshot beneath illustrates however Surround Sound helps america determine wherever we should walk the astir clip gathering relationships.
We cognize that Sprout Social is little of an accidental with 2 URLs ranking for 2 keywords and 2,873 estimated postulation than a tract similar Friday.app that has 13 URLs ranking for 86 of our people keywords and 3,697 successful estimated traffic.
So we’ll apt prioritize gathering a narration with Friday.app earlier Sprout Social.
Set Up a Workflow for Surround Sound Links
With our Surround Sound run acceptable up, we created a workflow successful ClickUp to standard the campaign.
Because outreach for obtaining Surround Sound mentions requires dense buy-in from the contented team, we had to marque it casual to petition the needed transcript and way task activity. By utilizing ClickUp Forms, the SEO squad tin petition a contented blurb and enactment indispensable details specified arsenic the spouse URL, ClickUp landing leafage links, and worth proposition.
ClickUp’s level turns these signifier submissions into tasks assigned to our contented squad which automatically populate into our Kanban view.
This workflow streamlined the contented accumulation process, creating standardized steps that are casual to duplicate for each caller notation and blurb. It besides decreased pb clip and produced accordant prime contented that matched our partner’s code of dependable and the taxable of the page. Where it utilized to instrumentality 2-3 weeks to get transcript completed, it present takes a week oregon less.
Create Reports to Show Progress
Surround Sound’s dashboard makes regular monitoring and play updates casual to work and navigate. You’ll spot changes successful the fig of mentions, coverage, mean visibility, and estimated traffic.
With this dashboard, we get a bird’s oculus presumption of ClickUp’s visibility and spot however caller placements person affected our trend.
We could besides export the information to way changes and bash deeper analysis, making it imaginable to acceptable granular goals and benchmarks. At ClickUp, we created our ain Google Data Studio dashboard to show Surround Sound information successful antithetic angles and configurations. For example, we tin show the humanities show of idiosyncratic keywords, arsenic shown successful the illustration below:
We tin besides show an full clump oregon topic.
This helps america get a pulse connected the “health” of our Surround Sound SEO for antithetic topics we’re targeting.
Results
With Surround Sound, we yet person the information and benchmarks successful spot to amusement the worth of Surround Sound beyond referral traffic. We tin besides prosecute cross-functional teams and prevention hours of enactment that would different person been dedicated to manual prospecting and reporting.
Here are immoderate results we got from leveraging this tool:
The Ability to Prove the Impact of our Work
We utilized Surround Sound information and a humanities SERP investigation to amusement stakeholders the maturation successful visibility for a illustration acceptable of keywords important to our bundle and features from a six-month play successful 2021. In the illustration below, we focused connected the summation successful visibility for six important “alternative” keywords.
For example, ClickUp’s visibility for “Jira alternatives” accrued 17% aft being featured connected spouse sites and arsenic our ain article began ranking higher.
While determination is not yet a mode to accurately property these visibility numbers to postulation and caller merchandise motion ups, I’ve travel up with immoderate unsmooth formulas that let maine to unafraid buy-in for much outreach and nexus gathering resources.
First, we request to cipher the alteration successful marque impressions owed to alteration successful Surround Sound visibility.
Using Google Search Console’s information for Keyword Impressions and Surround Sound visibility data, this is the look we used:
Δ Brand Impressions = Keyword Impressions x Δ Brand Visibility
Running this calculation connected the illustration acceptable of six keywords showed that amended visibility apt resulted successful 2,150 much marque impressions per period for ClickUp.
This is fundamentally 2,150 caller integrated views to ClickUp due to the fact that we person much visibility successful the SERPs for those six keywords.
To estimation caller merchandise motion ups from this summation successful marque impressions, we took an mean conversion complaint (CVR) of our ain articles ranking for the illustration acceptable of keywords. For this, we’ll usage a unsmooth estimation of 2.8%.
Then we utilized the formula:
Δ Product Sign Ups = Δ Brand Impressions x Avg CVR
Based connected this calculation, we tin estimation that amended visibility for these six keywords resulted successful astir 60 much merchandise motion ups per month.
Since articles tin fertile for hundreds if not thousands of keywords, and our Surround Sound run focused connected galore different keyword groups beyond this illustration set, our enactment apt had overmuch much interaction than the elemental look indicates.
Smarter Prioritization Across the Team
Our adjacent large triumph was the quality to prioritize our clip crossed the team, arsenic we tin present telephone retired existent numbers and data. Whenever a placement goes live, our reporting shows a ample leap successful integrated hunt visibility.
With the dashboards we built from Surround Sound, we tin contiguous these findings successful our biweekly SEO reports and again telephone attraction to our contented squad members. For example, this screenshot shows a ample summation successful visibility aft a palmy placement successful March connected a spouse blog generating traffic.
With this elemental metric from Surround Sound, writers and non-SEO marketers tin get excited astir nexus gathering and the opportunities it brings.
It besides allowed america to observe squad members who lend to the occurrence of Surround Sound links. We denote these successful company-wide Slack channels.
Hours Saved connected Manual Prospecting and De-Duping
For our SEO team, the “Pages” diagnostic was the biggest win, arsenic we nary longer had to excavation done Google to find opportunities with hunt operators and compiling from idiosyncratic URLs.
Now, we tin people pages and domains with the highest imaginable opportunities astatine once. This saves clip successful the probe and dialog signifier of nexus building, and eliminates inefficiencies owed to one-off exchanges and transactions. Because of the larger scope of work, the instrumentality allows america to deepen our relationships with partners.
Conclusion
Through the Surround Sound strategy, our contented and SEO squad has gotten ClickUp placed successful astir 100 articles successful the past 12 months. And these aren’t conscionable immoderate articles. They’re articles ranking for high-intent keywords that tin present customers who are acceptable to buy.
With the enactment of Semrush’s caller tool, we tin present easy way the interaction of these wins. We tin besides instrumentality a much data-centric attack to our goals, summation prospecting efficiency, and place caller opportunities. Coupled with our caller content workflow created successful ClickUp and bargain successful from different teams, we’ve reduced pb times and created a full caller absorption to nexus building.
We’re looking guardant to ramping up Surround Sound SEO successful the coming months to dispersed ClickUp’s level and ngo to prevention everyone 1 time a week!
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