AI SEO: A 300% Increase in MRR through SEO

The team at CleanVoice — a SaaS that uses artificial intelligence to scrub out filler words in audio recordings — had a lot of work cut out for them when they decided to invest in SEO. The niche for AI-powered tools has been incredibly competitive since 2020, naturally making ranking and standing out from competitors difficult. But with the aid of Embarque, in only around six months, their site achieved some spectacular stats:

  • +30k in monthly SEO traffic
  • Average click-through-rate (CTR): 7.9%
  • Monthly average organic traffic: >40k
  • Impressions: >1M
  • Avg. position: 23

In this case study, we’ll showcase how we achieved the above results with:

  • A content strategy with a focus on trending topics that would eventually become evergreen
  • Google Search Console to optimise content for topics that competitors underuse.
  • A content update system to continuously find and optimise articles to improve their ranking potential.

The Challenge — Highly Competitive Niche, Non-Existent SEO

When Embarque took over their content and SEO operation, CleanVoice didn’t have a blog or an SEO cotnent strategy set up. This allowed us to build this acquisition channel from scratch.

That said, given the incredibly competitive AI niche, we would need to put in more work and be more creative than usual to win the case.

“I hired Embarque to strategically choose key SEO topics and create high-quality SEO content that would help us rank on the first page for important queries.” - Founder, CleanVoice

The Strategy — Targeted Content and Focus on Trending Topics and Keywords with High Chance of Turning Evergreen

We immediately established that we didn’t have the resources or time to compete with bigger podcasting tools that had more robust, long-established SEO on popular topics and keywords. That’s why we pivoted toward targeting new topics that aren’t highly competitive yet — but have a good chance of becoming trending within the next few months. For example, some such topics that have popped up over the last six months include ChatGPT and AI-related queries.

By being the first on the market to target these topics, even with a “weaker” SEO. By being the first to provide answers to these new queries, we position ourselves to rank higher over time. That’s the advantage of being the first mover.

The Solution — Conducting Market and Keyword Analysis, then Build a Content Plan Around the Result

SEO tools like Ahrefs need 3-6 months to assess the search volume of these queries. By the time they report on these topics, they’d have already become evergreen. As a result, we really need to get our hands dirty to find actionable intel on potential topics to target. For a few weeks, our team:

  • Trawl through relevant communities on social media and compile a series of topics and trends.
  • Read industry news.
  • Keep tabs on several relevant subreddits and forums.
  • Subscribe to dozens of industry newsletters.

… all with the express purpose of finding the correct topics to target for CleanVoice.

At the same time, our keyword analysts search for suitable keywords that CleanVoice could realistically rank for.

This data is compiled into a single content plan, laying the foundation for everything from the topics to target, the keywords, the style, tone, and language of each article. Even the number of articles Embarque would deliver monthly is included in this plan.

In addition to the content plan, we also lay out a content update system. This involves updating existing content to meet higher standards to help them rank better. Future content produced by Embarque may also undergo periodic updates to ensure they perform well.

The Results — A CTR That Defies Norms

In the last 3 months alone, our content has generated for CleanVoice over 1 million impressions. Thanks to a high CTR of 7.9%, we collected about 82.5k clicks out of them. This is an excellent conversion rate, especially considering how these stats only cover a short stretch of 3 months.

According to CleanVoice’s CEO, the content update system is one of the key reasons behind their dramatic search traffic growth.

“Our podcasting name generator gets thousands of search clicks thanks to their content update that targeted long-tail variations around the topic of generating a great podcast name.” - Founder, CleanVoice

Key Takeaways

  • First-mover advantage is key to growth in high-pressure markets: CleanVoice is part of a super competitive niche that’s hard to grow in, by being the first to target emerging topics that big players have not covered. This first-mover advantage allowed them to rank even with less robust SEO
  • Being proactive with your market analysis pays off: To find emerging topics and keywords, Embarque actively engages with communities, news, and newsletters. This effectively negates the long lead time that SEO tools need to index trending topics and keywords.
  • A comprehensive content plan is critical: All of our insights go into a content plan, ensuring that the content production process goes smoothly and according to plan from start to finish.
  • Ongoing content optimisation and update matters: Articles don’t maintain their ranking potential forever. A content update system helps us build and keep their performance high for months to come, contributing to CleanVoice’s growth.

Set New SEO Standards with Embarque!

Whether your market is emerging or super competitive, like in the case of CleanVoice, you can count on Embarque to create a strong SEO plan, guide you in putting it into action, and take your brand to new heights!

Reach out to our CEO at julian@embarque.com, and our team will get back to you with a clear action plan to get started!

‍