The Challenge
Practice helps client-based businesses track sessions, reconcile billing, and consolidate communication — all from one place. As a new entrant in a crowded space, they have established themselves as a fast growing challenger brand, creating a more streamlined experience for both coaches and their clients.
From the beginning, Practice was keen to invest in SEO as a key growth driver. The founding team previously experienced the pain of being overly reliant on paid channels for growth and wanted to establish a more sustainable and defensible strategy from day one.
Despite SEO being a longer term strategy, the team decided to invest early in the channel and ultimately chose Graphite as their partner to help them hit their ambitious goals.
As a venture-backed startup, time is the most valuable resource. We can’t afford to fail on a channel due to bad execution, especially with SEO. Graphite gave us confidence that we were executing with velocity and precision.
EVA TANG, HEAD OF MARKETING
The Solution
Establishing Topical Authority for coaching
When the engagement started, Practice had a basic website with very little domain authority. Using the Graphite Platform, the team identified content pillars that would help Practice build topical authority around coaching. The initial pillars (i.e. “Resources for Coaching'' and “Coaching Development”) had three characteristics: the topics were relevant to Practice’s core audience, there was sufficient topic search volume, and the topic was relatively less competitive in the SERP, giving Practice a chance to rank quickly.
The team also leaned into the word “Practice”, which happened to be a relevant keyword (e.g. “Resources for your coaching practice”). In the first 6 months, the team published 150 articles targeted at these content pillars.
Doubling down to create a halo effect for new and existing content
Practice began to see traction within the first 3 months with multiple articles starting to rank on page 1. As articles began to perform, their Topical Authority for coaching related topics also increased. This kicked off a snowball effect. Doubling down on what worked led to an increase in Topical Authority, which led to faster growth in traffic. During months 6-12 of the engagement, Practice saw a 10X increase in traffic, going from 1,500 to 15,000 visits per month. This also translated into a clearer picture around ROI and what content was actually leading to trials and revenue.
Driving ongoing SEO velocity with the Graphite Platform
With strong traffic and conversion signals, Practice had a repeatable playbook to continue growing their SEO. In June 2023, they started using the Graphite Platform as a self-serve customer. The platform empowered Practice to continue driving results while remaining lean.
As a one-person marketing team with a few contracted writers, it was important for Eva, Practice’s Head of Marketing, to protect her time. One feature that was particularly helpful was Topic Explorer.
“Researching the right thing to write about takes a ton of mental effort. Graphite proactively suggested highly relevant content opportunities in seconds”– Eva Tang
During the following 6 months, Practice kept their SEO velocity high, adding another 150 articles and nearly doubling their traffic from 15,0000 to 28,000 visits per month.
The Results
SEO has become the biggest channel for traffic and trials
While SEO is typically a longer term strategy, Practice’s investment has already paid off. Within a year and a half, SEO has become their primary driver of traffic and trials and Eva expects this to continue to grow.
Practice is on a healthy path to becoming ROI positive
In Q4 of 2023, SEO drove over $100k worth of deal flow. With each passing month, articles continue to deliver additional revenue opportunities with very low upkeep cost (i.e. occasionally updating the article). The team plans to increase their SEO investment over the next 12 months.
SEO continues to provide value despite changes to Practice’s business model
Recently, Practice made a business decision to change their business model and target teams instead of solopreneurs. In many cases, across other channels, this would have led to a big disruption in distribution since they now had to target a new customer. SEO proved to be resistant to this change, driving several of Practice’s first team customers without any significant changes to their content.
BY THE NUMBERS
2.15M
increase in impressions
(gsc data)
32.7K
increase in clicks
(gsc data)
>$100K
increase in quarterly deal flow
(directly from seo)
