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Services: SEO, digital PR.
How We Received 197 PR Backlinks In 6 Months and Helped to Make an Exit to a NASDAQ-listed Public Company
PEERBOARD CASE STUDY
X2
Organic Traffic
+178%
more PR Mentions
X1.8
more Leads
by Dennis Lazard · Updated July 7, 2023
Introducing the Brand
PeerBoard is a plug & play community-as-a-service platform. Founders launched the platform with the goal of allowing brands and businesses to benefit from creating their own communities. Now PeerBoard has already helped thousands of companies achieve this, but the team always dreamt of connecting as many companies as possible to their customers.
As a result, PeerBoard now offers a variety of community tools, modern forum software, real-time conversations, as well as intelligent feed, all within just one platform. The platform combines its community capabilities with Docebo (a leading learning platform provider with AI capabilities, and a public NASDAQ company) to boost opportunities for corporate companies.
The Challenges
We started off with extensive research where we were able to identify the following areas to work on:
01
The company felt stuck with both the website development and organic traffic going nowhere for more than 6 months
02
The brand had a limited budget but required PR covering and mentions from well-known brands and the press
03
Organic traffic was stuck, as all of the content produced by the team was written by their one internal content writer, who was an expert in the niche
04
The slow growth of product page traffic was due to most of the content being published solely solely on Medium.com, which is a bad practice for SEO
05
Poor connections and lack of partnerships since the company was new to the market
06
High volume of non-indexed UGC content that didn’t bring any value to the Domain Rate (DR) of the website for organic traffic
Strategic Approach
Our team developed the following approach to resolve issues step-by-step:
01
Step 1: Extensive PR Topic Research
The first step was to focus on PR research, where we found 23 PR topics that would have the biggest chances of getting covered by journalists. "Online Community Statistics" was in 4th place in the content plan and half ready, so we picked this one.
02
Step 2: Create a 5-step PR Roadmap
The next step was to develop a 5-step ‘Data Source Magnet' that allowed us to kill two birds with one stone — get mentions from journalists, big brands and other well-known Mass Media while also increasing Domain Rate (DR) for the organic traffic.
03
Step 3: Identify Traffic-Running Topics
Considering poor organic traffic to the website, the next step was detailed SEO Traffic Research. It involves Keyword Research, Keyword Grouping and Competitors' Gap Analysis. Once data was collected, we developed an SEO Strategy to prioritise traffic-running topics based on the Smallest Costs vs Potential Leads. For example, two topics — "building a community"(0.51) and "community management" (0.16) — in Google US had the biggest ROI potential.
04
Step 4: Migrate Content from Medium
Since some content on Medium had traffic, we decided to create specs to migrate it from Medium to the website blog and rewrite it to be fresh and unique content. It took about four months for all Medium content to be rewritten and migrated to the website. When it was done the organic traffic to the website started to increase simultaneously.
05
Step 5: Create Expert and Partner Collaboration
We also initiated expert and partner collaborations for the 'Online Community Statistics' report. It involved existing clients and new potential customers for citations for the report to create relationships with them and invite them to use the platform later.
06
Step 6: Index All Content on Community Pages
Taking into consideration the goal to increase content weight and links and increase mentions for higher brand awareness, we prepared specs for the tech team to index all existing content on clients' communities where possible. When it was done, we started to index Clients' pages by groups to avoid link explosion and Google penalties.
The Result
Result 1: 197 Organic Backlinks after PR Campaign Launch in 6 Months
Once the PR campaign was launched, we tracked 197 backlinks from 111 Press and other websites, such as Shopify (US, CA, UK versions — each DR 95), Bigcommerce (DR 94), Thinkific (91), Coinmarketcap (DR 90), Yahoo (DR 89), Uscreen (DR 87), Exploding Topics (DR 85), and others.
Result 2: From 42 to 59 DR Growth Within 12 Months On Autopilot
The starting point of the Domain Rate (DR) was 42/100, Page URL Rate (UR) was 9/100. Within 1 month after the PR campaign launch, the the DR was 50 and the UR 22. DR grew to 53 within 6 months, UR to 29. After 12 months the DR of the website was 59/100 and the UR was 34/100. In addition, all the backlinks growth was fully organic, meaning the company didn’t need to invest time and money in searching trusted platforms and extra link-building.
Result 3: 2x Growth in Organic Traffic & 1.8x Growth in Leads in 6 Months
Thanks to our SEO analysis, Keyword Research and PR Topics that we identified, the platform got 2x growth in organic traffic in 6 months. The result was achieved by combining both rewritten Medium content and new content based on high-value topic research plus PR campaigns. As a result, the client also got a 1.8x increase in the number of leads.
Result 4: All UGC Content is Indexed and Brings Traffic Automatically
By the end of our work, all the UGC content was in the index. We analysed the results and are happy to announce that all user content is bringing new traffic and registrations virally.
Result 5: Three Strategic Partnerships & Exit to a NASDAQ-listed Company
Regardless of the small market presence, PeerBoard as a 1-year startup had made 3 strategic partnerships with other brands by the end of our work. The platform also made an exit to the public company Docebo Inc listed on NASDAQ.
Result 6: SEO as the Main Traffic Source
Although SEO wasn’t working when we started, now it is the key traffic source for lead generation of the platform. SEO remains the biggest lead source even after the Exit to Docebo, working as a solid base for any further changes or improvements in the field.
ESA team combine both a creative and data-driven approach in performance marketing, testing around 10 hypotheses per week for acquisition, engagement and retention. Their work on developing and executing a product growth strategy for the UK and US markets has led to a 68% increase in our number of monthly clients and $1.3M raised in Oct 2019 based on our growth metrics with ESA.”
Roman Grigoriev (www.splento.com)
CEO at Splento (fundraised $1.3M)
CEO at Splento (fundraised $1.3M)
“I met Dennis and his Google team, when they pitched their startup Smartsub. We accepted them to our accelerator program in 2017, Batch 9 and they successfully passed through it. Within a short period of time they managed to develop MVP of their product, design and implement go-to-market strategy launching the product on the US market. Their broad digital business experience and data-driven approach allowed them to make things done.”
Cristobal Alonso (www.startupwiseguys.com)
CEO at SWG (funded Smartsub in 2017)
CEO at SWG (funded Smartsub in 2017)
“ESA team with their Google Ads skills, growth mindset and natural ability to mentoring are able to bring a lot of value to startup ecosystem with so many tech companies in their growth stage and businesses struggling with Google online advertising.”
Monika Synoradzka (www.hugething.vc)
CEO at HugeThing (funded Smartsub, 2019)
CEO at HugeThing (funded Smartsub, 2019)
ESA team had outperformed my expectations working with one of our main SEO clients. They delivered X2-times organic traffic growth for 12 client’s websites, working with technical, content and link-building SEO optimisation in Google, website structure, navigation, technical code and conversion rate optimisation.”
Maria Kristalinskaya (www.bbdo.com)
Head of Retail Media at eBay (GE), Techstars Startup Mentor, ex-BBDO
Head of Retail Media at eBay (GE), Techstars Startup Mentor, ex-BBDO
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