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How To grow Your Traffic From 40k to 1.6 Million Monthly Users
54 Plays11 months ago
In this episode, Ashley Segura chats with Jeannie Assimos, the Head of Content/Brand at Way.com, about how she scaled Way.com's traffic from 40,000 to 1.6 million monthly users.
Jeannie shares her methods for achieving such growth, such as her strategic approach to content creation and how important it was to partner with SEO.
Together Ashley and Jeannie chat about understanding audience needs, expanding content topics beyond the core business, and the importance of high-quality, well-researched articles. Jeannie shares insights on creating engaging content, from trending topics to evergreen, and the impact of consistency and quality on traffic growth.
Tune in to hear about the benefits of content syndication and practical tips for smaller teams to achieve significant traffic growth.
Subscribe now for your bi-weekly dose of content wisdom, direct from the content marketing experts to your kitchen table.
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Transcript
Importance of Brand Identity
00:00:00
Speaker
Because people want to know what your brand stands for. They want to know what you're about. They want to know who they're doing business with. That's just the reality of today. What drives you is an opportunity to just, it's just a nice sort of like side, a side to our business. So I've interviewed all sorts of interesting people who really achieved like high levels of success. And I wanted to know how they got there.
Introducing Jeannie and Her Content Strategy
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome back to Content in the Kitchen, where we gather around the kitchen and chat about content marketing. Today, we're diving into the world of content growth with Jeannie, a seasoned expert who's been a driving force in the content arena for nearly two decades. Starting her career at entertainment tonight and moving on to a VP of Content Physician at eHarmony, Jeannie is now leading the charge at Way dot.com as the head of content and
Expanding Content Beyond Core Topics
00:00:49
Speaker
brand. Jeannie's impressive track record includes growing Way.com's traffic from 40,000 to 1.6 million monthly users. So we're very lucky to have her on today as she shares insights, strategies, and the key steps that she took to achieve such remarkable growth. So grab your favorite cup and let's dive into the conversation with Jeannie.
00:01:16
Speaker
So getting traffic share content is huge. It's a ginormous piece of the conversion puzzle. And you seem to have cracked that code by growing 40K monthly visitors to 1.6 million. How did you do that? What did that time frame look like? What made that work for you? So when I started at way dot.com, it's an auto app and the team was very focused on working on content to just support the business or in the parking business. So they would write a lot of parking content, localized, broader parking tips. So they were really staying in line with the, the auto app and just everything that, that the site or the company would offer.
Leveraging Trends for Content Growth
00:02:00
Speaker
So when I joined at the same time that the head of seo new head of SEO joined, so we sat down and just said, we got to blow this out. We got to do a lot more than just writing about parking because it is high in 10 and it can lead to conversions, but like our SEO content can handle that. So let's Let's look at the opportunities within everything in the auto space. So we're parking, we're transportation, where people are flying, so let's like travel. So we really just looked at the opportunities. It all starts with researching, looking at what's going on in the news, what's trending, what are people searching for in around these spaces. So we just really, I'd say we like started in this very narrow lane and we just like this and just opened everything up.
00:02:44
Speaker
For example, when we started, there's catalytic converter theft was like a hot topic at the time because it was happening. yeah So bad. So we just held on. We saw others opportunity here. We could rank for this. This is not something that, you know, as you explore when a topic, you look to see how difficult it will be to rank. um Are there opportunities? Are there things people aren't writing about? So we started writing like a local city, city articles about catalytic humor theft in San Jose and San Francisco. And mine next is about, you know, you can really find a bunch of things if you dig enough. There's like reports on different types of thefts going on in San Francisco and and it would cover that. so
00:03:24
Speaker
That was one area where we grew also just fun topics that aren't necessarily like high intent, but just bring brand awareness. Like what are people naming their white cars? Like what's a popular black car like they like stuff like that. So that stuff did well. Road trip music. Yeah. There's like a there's a huge I feel like and it's never ending. Right. There's that we also had because we park for events. There was like event parking. So there was like the Taylor Swift concert, her concert starting. And this is all the park, everything you need to know about the Taylor Swift concert and in your city. So we would write like different lungs if she was in Chicago or New York or wherever, or like those music festivals.
00:04:10
Speaker
We always had to make sure we had enough parking and inventory as a business. That's right. That's because otherwise say you're writing a blog and no one's going to do anything then because we don't have
Enhancing Content Structure and Interlinking
00:04:18
Speaker
the supply. So there was a lot of, I would say. separating into buckets the content opportunities and then looking, researching the the actual traffic impact, potential difficulty, and then ranking it from there. Okay guys, these are all these trending topics. Let's start with the ones that we have the most potential to rank for that aren't that difficult. Go. So we'd have them right on that trending stuff. We'd have them right on travel stuff. We'd have them also right on things that will impact our business like event parking and airport parking. So there's always like a blend and a mix.
00:04:51
Speaker
And we were writing, we scale, I think we doubled the team when I started. So I think we had 15 writers dating between 150 to 200 blogs a month. And it's not just like a 500 word blog. This is like a very well-researched thorough blog with a table of contents with FAQs, which all the things that people are searching for related to that topic. So the idea is, somebody's going to come to this article and like everything they want to know, you're going to find there. You're going to find data points.
00:05:23
Speaker
I think charts and graphs and things like that. one you can When you have those, when it makes sense, give us like TSA waiting times. That was another one. We saw opportunity. People are searching for that. And there wasn't a ton of content on us. Let's go find out what they are. Let's integrate that into a pit and SEO page. and Let's write blogs about it. It's just looking for opportunity out there. And it's surprising that things haven't been tapped into so much. And then going from there, I think also being consistent, writing high quality stuff. interlinking, having a good like site architecture with like subcategories and all that, making sure that you've got all your bones
Engaging 'Boring' Industries with Content Trends
00:06:00
Speaker
there for. Cause I've seen, I haven't had friends that have launched blogs. I look at my blog and I'm just like, Oh my God, this is a mess. There's no organization. There's no, there's gotta be structure and organization. And first, I think if you could just have all these random like articles written everywhere and there's no. Nice hierarchy. I always think of like content and SEO is almost like a tree.
00:06:21
Speaker
right like I've got this like base of your tree with your main topic, and then you've got all your branches with your like subtopics and all your different... It's like thinking about just the architecture like that. It's just a very important piece of the puzzle for if you want to rank. Yeah, 100 percent. Creating huge pieces of content, which you're checking that box. Great. But being able to have a very clear user flow of what they should do next from this piece yeah or how to even find this information or where within this they can find the specific questions that they have. And I love the Taylor Swift example because parking isn't the
00:07:01
Speaker
prettiest of industry. It's helpful and informative and we need the information but there's not really glitter on it and I always get clients that come across and we're really niche and our industry is a little boring or it's not, we don't know how to spin it or create new content that's exciting that people are actually searching for right now. and like that That's a perfect example of how You can take something that's currently trending right now that's relevant yeah and then incorporate your brand with it without it being a stretch. This is very relevant. If you're going to a concert, a festival, you're most likely you're going to need to know rideshare options and parking options. What does that look like? And so you talk about a perfect opportunity. I know.
00:07:44
Speaker
And then there's other you can delve into thought leadership, too. And you really want your brand to stand for something like I started the series called What Drives You? And because I just wanted to have I wanted to have a well rounded content arena like within our not only have the informative and the parking stuff and the whatever like the travel or even car insurance stuff, but Thought leadership too, I feel like is so relevant now because people want to know what your brand stands for. They want to know what you're about. They want to know who they're doing business with. That's just the reality of today. What drives you is an opportunity to just, it's just a nice sort of like side, a side to our business. So I've interviewed all sorts of interesting people who really achieved like high levels of success. And I wanted to know,
00:08:27
Speaker
How they got there? What drove you? Were you like that as a child? but So those have been really well received and very fun to do for me as well. But those have also given us some awesome backlinks, which you and I talked about a little bit, which is also really helpful to growing your business. And just the more of those you get, I think we all of us marketers and PR people, and we all understand the power of a backlink from like a high domain authority site.
Boosting Visibility with Backlinks and Syndication
00:08:51
Speaker
So I was mentioning this earlier. that another way we've grown is to syndicate our content out. So once we've got enough content and it's like newsy or trending, and another reason to do that is that you can syndicate it. And there's a company called Stacker and they syndicate content out across the United States. So now we appear on like and msn dot.com or Miami Herald or yeah, all these sites have to post.
00:09:19
Speaker
And that's been really great, too, because I think it's really raised our brand visibility. It's rained our it's definitely raised our domain authority but significantly in six, eight months. That's been amazing, because that just gives you the overall halo lift for your whole site, which is important. I think we increased by eight or nine points, which is a lot. that's ah Yeah, that's significant. It's been a very valuable partnership. I enjoy it. It's fun to see our stuff out there. in it And it's fun to stretch our writing team, too, just to keep it interesting for them. So I feel like, You could find any business that might seem super boring. Say it's just, I don't know. I don't know what would be boring. If you're making trash cans, right? Yeah. It's okay. There's got to be a fun spin to it. 10 moments in your life. I don't know. Things you found in the trash that were insane or I don't know. It's always like recycle, like the craziest recycling story or you can always find a way to be creative and have fun with it or just play off a theme or something. But.
00:10:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think again, at the end of the day, we're all trying to create, if we're doing if we're content marketers, we're trying to create content that is going to make the end user very happy. It's going to be everything they want. So you want to be really well thought about what you're writing. about what you're offering? Am I giving the customer what they need? Is this answering their questions? Is it giving them information? Is it giving them data? Is
Balancing Creativity, Clarity, and User Intent
00:10:37
Speaker
it fun? Is it interesting? Is it engaging? I've got to check all those boxes because it's it's competitive out there. so just It's a thoughtful process. It's not something where I just sit down and write something in 30 minutes. but's I guess it all depends on what your intention is. But if you try to- Google traffic. Yeah, yeah. If you're training for a friend you and they you want Google to be friendly with you, not have all that stuff. in there period
00:10:58
Speaker
Yeah, and in the age of helpful content, like what helpful content is... Fairly clear that we need to be addressing exactly what the user intent is. So if that's from an informational standpoint, that means not burying the answer five paragraphs down just to keep them on the page more. Because yeah really, they're leaving. They're bouncing off because they're not getting that right away. yeah And I love that you mentioned Table of Contents and FAQs because that is so vital and such a big part of the helpful piece of content. Because especially for these longer pieces that you produce,
00:11:32
Speaker
you can skip over right to the information that you want. Understand the writing style, understand the info, maybe be more curious as a user and then engage with the full content. But is there anything else that you're doing other than those two elements to really ensure that all of these pieces of content that you're creating are like really fleshed out? I think like a visual representation. So if you can do a web story, I feel like those are getting picked up
Data-Driven Content and SEO Collaboration
00:11:58
Speaker
a lot. I Google those are great. Just a visual slide show. If you can include data, charts, stat statistics, I was mentioning Statista, which is this night where you can get data. They release data every day on all sorts of topics from everything, from
00:12:13
Speaker
the presidential race to our people, like, how are people doing around the world? Are people smoking more or less or globally? There's an endless offering of data there. So like finding sites like that, that I've been using them a lot the last few years, especially once I've i've come to way. so and you It depends on what business you run. When I worked at eHarmony, we had a lot of data on our customers. We had a whole like research yeah a research scientist team that I could say, hey, what are people what are people mentioning in their profiles? what is what's a top what's thing What is something that you're seeing now that you never used to see? it I remember when politics started becoming something that was a common topic they would bring up in their profiles that we would write our own. about that. And data points, I think, are also super valuable. So wherever you can find them, whether it's internally or it's through a government site where they have data that relates to your business or like a statistic, I think that's also super valuable for your content.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's huge and really helps prove the point from an information standpoint and really helps that maybe secondary intent that a user has is they're trying to get an answer to something or get more information about something. And it also allows that curiosity to start because it's like, oh, wow, there's actually, a for example, say a 10% increase in people smoking. I thought it would have been a decrease. I'm going to keep reading because of that stat that's in there. Yeah. It's yeah easy. I think easily digestible, too. Like, I think there's something to keeping it simple. I think that's why listicles do so well, because yeah you're just keeping it simple due to to ten ten things you need to know about summer festivals or whatever. or ten The ten hot nail has colors of the summer. Like, I feel like that
00:13:55
Speaker
simplistic, listicle, like there's a reason that's so popular. There's a reason the BuzzFeed did so well for so long. So I feel like that is also just the simple. And I think something that like young content creators do, I've noticed, and I'm sure I did this too. you You feel like you've got all these great creative fun ideas. It's word games that you can play or just, I feel like a lot of times I'll notice just a lot of fluff. In an article, and I know you're creative and I know this is for you. It's fun to floss that content muscle that you have. Yeah. But let's get to the point.
00:14:29
Speaker
So why are people reading this? They're not coming to read Jeannie's thoughts, ah trying to be clever. No, it's sort of a little bit of humanity and your you know personality into it. But I think you need to be very clear. This is not about me. This is about providing information for the consumer. So I think that's just something to keep in mind that I've noticed with a lot of my younger team members that sometimes they'll do that. I'm like, you don't need all this. You don't need all this, you know? so not Yeah, it's just funny. I think it's maybe something that we all tend to do. um Yeah, and in that backstory, that's not 100%. Yeah, totally. ah You mentioned at eHarmony having a data team, which is an amazing resource to have. And at way.com, having a pretty decent sized content team. There are a lot of brands who
00:15:18
Speaker
If they have a content team, it's one person who's got head of content and also the individual contributor and and managing a bunch of writers. Or there's a single blogger who is the single creator of everything. Like, do you think that achieving traffic metrics and the growth that you did is achievable for smaller teams like that? I do. If you're very like. ah thought out and you're researching what you're writing about because it just takes one article to perform well and that can bring you so much traffic. You don't need a hundred articles. You just need one. So for example, when I was at eHarmony, I was managing a bunch of different content sites. The eHarmony at that time was like, oh, I want to help people to different stages, dating, relationships, getting married, parenting. And there was a site I managed called JessMommies.com, homegrown, very small site for moms that were like sharing their tips.
00:16:14
Speaker
And there was one, it wasn't a big site by any means, but there was one article every month that brought in like 40 to 50,000 users. And it was something long-tail about the placentia eruption. I can't remember exactly, but I always laugh without some gifts that keeps on giving. So yes, you can absolutely rank them if you do your research. Oh, wow. Some people are searching for this. Maybe a 5,000 people are searching for this. The key word difficult or difficulty is low or difficulty to rank is low. Then, OK, yeah, I think we could do well on this one. So I think it's just being very thoughtful and intentional about opportunities. Right. Like you're not going to want you're not going to just start writing.
00:16:50
Speaker
like I gave Motor Trend as the example. I'm not going to have my writers for we dot.com try to write car reviews and compete with Motor Trend, like our car and driver. Because those guys, they've been around forever. Their authority on this topic is way higher than will probably ever be. Why? I'm not going to try to compete there. I'm going to compete in areas where there's opportunity and that I know we can do well. So I think that like needs, I think working with a either having SEO knowledge yourself or working in tandem with your or partnering with your SEO team is really important.
Syndication vs. Traditional PR
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah, because you can't it's such a helpful tool to be able to to understand where you can where those are opportunities to rank.
00:17:32
Speaker
Oh yeah, definitely. Content Yum topic ideation is our first service, but we have so many people who come to us and they're like, oh, we have ideas of what we want to write about, but we just need the content outlines and we've gone over what makes a piece of content helpful. but it really starts with that initial topic of is this something that people are actively searching for right now? Does it have to do with your niche? Can you authoritatively talk about it versus just jumping on the bandwagon and putting on some random expert hat that you should not wear? There's very fine line with that. and
00:18:10
Speaker
You talked about authority with, you can develop authority over time with increased content. and like I would love to dive back into there because the whole concept of getting published on bigger sites help increase your domain authority is a great way for even small teams to be able to increase traffic to their site. So are you creating content on sub-stack? as ah It's on silo and on your site and blog separately or how does what does that process look like? So yeah, so we'll create the blog on our site. Okay. Like for example, it was like May's mental health month. So I wrote a blog about mental health month and I'd interview this woman who sorry wondering you out here.
00:18:50
Speaker
but this lauren who was one of those sort of like self-help. She'd written a book about how she on her journey overcame horrible things for her childhood to become like a talk show. So she's doing well. She had these like great tips for mental health every day. So that was written on our blog. And then I, we syndicated it out. So yeah, it's on our blog, but it's also on stackers blog. And then they syndicated out across the country. So I have, I like the cool thing is I think that one got, there's pickups. It gets picked up by X amount of publications. And like they say anything over 150 is good. And I think some of our stuff has gone like three, 400 pickups. Wow. So it's been great. It's been a great partnership. It's really helped elevate us from the authority perspective. Now,
00:19:33
Speaker
If you ah were a company and you wanted to syndicate one article out a month, you could do that. you don't need to You can do one piece. We do four a month. Okay. I think it costs around 10K. So it's not cheap. Yeah. like like and you want to be if you want Yeah. It is a good investment and it's like a a quick way to get a ton of high quality backlinks, which is very hard to do. It's such a granular It's a grind, especially if you're like a PR person and you're trying to get, you could get maybe two or three a month with PR efforts. You're going to get, you could get 200. So it's definitely, I feel like war we're at the investment to explore content syndication. Yeah. Especially from a financial investments. That's pretty in part with a lot of PR companies that will go out and do that. So, and you're getting as many. Yeah, totally. For sure. There's no way they could get as many.
00:20:26
Speaker
No. no you know yeah In the PR, like the PR timeline is such ah such a long timeline. I handle PR for way dot.com and you establish relationships with reporters and then you come back to them and you come back to them again. and And then you write, they pitch things and then once every six months you're like, oh my God, they picked us up
Utilizing Surveys and Current Events
00:20:45
Speaker
or whatever. but this is Yeah, there's no guarantees. No, there's never a guarantee. And they may not link back to you either. like A lot of them just have the policy of not doing that. so And your bosses are like, what? But to be mentioned is a thing. They're like, I don't care. I just want to back. If that's your bosses, go with the syndicated content route. Look at stacker.com.
00:21:06
Speaker
Seriously. Yeah. Yeah. Sacker.com definitely sounds like a but better solution. Yeah. Yeah. And this was other ones too, but they approached us about a year ago and this say, we really like your content. You guys writing about a lot of different topics and we think and this could be something. So it's been great. That's fantastic. I feel like we've covered so many different aspects of how to grow your content, how to mass produce content, but also do so with a strategy and different resources to implement in that strategy. So I feel like we've really covered a lot of the growth angles. But as we wrap up, I'm really curious to hear what your current secret sauce is. What's that one tool or resource or strategy that is new to you that you're absolutely loving right now? Oh, that's a good one. It's not necessarily super new, but a way to create news and to create a story is to just do a survey with your, everybody's, every company has a customer base, right? So like I had our email marketing team send out a survey through SurveyMonkey and it was just, I was curious about EV ownership and it's a political party thing. Is there any kind of, is that factor in? Are there more Democrats who are interested in these versus Republicans? Does it matter on a state level? Is it a millennial thing? So you can just you can send out surveys and that can just become, you can create news, which I think is just, I think it's very cool. We've had some wins with that for sure. Yeah, because sometimes it's just not all happening. You're like, what is going on in the world and how can we be a part of that story?
00:22:38
Speaker
So I think surveys are great. We actually, I had done a survey, Eddie Harmony sort of, you know, has given me, and I wouldn't say, yeah, it's not new secret sauce, but I do think it's very effective. I've done it a few times a away, but Eddie Harmony, we did the state of relationships. in America, we ask people a bunch of questions across the country and really interesting to see what came back for Gen Z and millennials and just their communication styles and things that are just things that are always antithetical to what you would think are always like a good headline. Like totally Gen Z or a value communication more than Gen X. And you're like, what? if You never think that because you just think everyone's on our phones. But actually, they're very communicative and they understand the value of that. So
00:23:24
Speaker
Stuff like that, always looking for something that's not obvious is great too. As an externalist, the idea of creating the news just makes it so happy. Yes. That's so good. Finding a place for your brand identity, regardless of what's going on. And if you don't fit that current narrative, if there isn't like a good Taylor Swift parking narrative for you, signing up with one and not using an SEO tool to do it, but more of like traditional marketing. Yes, asking your customers. And if you don't have customers yet, serving the industry, talking to thought leaders. Right now would be cool to find out like with the whole Boeing stuff or people or hesitant. We haven't done this, but it'll be interesting to know. Like when you're booking your travel, are you looking to see is this a Boeing jet? If so, are you trying to find alternatives? Is this really a thing? And then we get like 60 percent of people saying, yeah, I'm looking now.
00:24:17
Speaker
That could be a story. and They're avoiding so like things like that, always looking at what's going
Concluding Insights on Content Strategy
00:24:21
Speaker
on. And like when Covid was happening and people weren't driving, it was like, how do you feel? Are you commuting? Are you how many people are actually working from home versus having to still go in the office? Like you can find things out like that, which tie into the story. And even now, like the working from home is still a hotly debated topic. That's a way just tapping into things that are going on. that people are interested in is always a win. Yes, even if it's not timely and trending in the snowmen, but like you mentioned COVID, there was so much in that and there's so much that you could even really bring up a lot of those conversations and make it timely now. but
00:24:59
Speaker
It's doing it carefully. It's having really fleshed out content, having a goal with that piece of content in mind, having a good internal linking strategy, having all of the elements, like you mentioned, the data behind it, the table of content, the FAQs. that All of that is really going to help get people to your site and then help them stay and understand who your brand is and what your offerings are as well. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. Thank you so much for everything that you shared. Really appreciate you having really appreciate having you on the show today. I had such a good time. It was such a great conversation. It's always fun to to take a step back and think about strategies. and When you're in the weeds every day, you don't think about everything you've learned. So that it's fun to do that. Thank you.