Create an SEO moat with your product
Create an SEO moat with your product
An SEO moat is a sustainable competitive advantage in organic search that's difficult for competitors to replicate
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by the Digital PR agency Search Intelligence, which uses PR methods to grow a link portfolio and North Star Inbound, which is a recommended agency for SEO and content strategy. See their case studies linked in the newsletter.
When I started my SEO career, I was obsessed with daily rank checking, hoping that a minor change in page content or a new backlink would boost my desired result ahead of the competition.
That sort of daily movement was rare but not unlikely at that time. Now, I experience most competitive results to be stable even with or despite the minor changes in the background.
[SPONSORED by Search Intelligence]
Digital PR link building tip:
Use advanced Google search operators to find Digital PR ideas that are most likely to be picked up by popular outlets.
Here is an example:
"site: publisher_domain intitle:revealed intitle:most"
This search will give you the articles that a publication wrote, which contain the words “revealed” and “most” in their title.
The best offense is a great defense
Building a moat is essential for achieving a stable result or on a set of queries unless the algorithm changes. An SEO moat is a sustainable competitive advantage in organic search that's difficult for competitors to replicate. Examples abound, but notice how Amazon dominates many e-commerce queries. Zillow does the same for real estate, and Tripadvisor does the same for travel. Each of them has a moat that is very difficult to cross.
When the moat is built around length of content, quality of content, or even backlinks, it’s not a moat; instead, it is a creek that can be traversed with creative approaches.
Ideally, you focus on Product-Led SEO, but this approach isn’t for everyone and every category. So, even if you are writing content for SEO outcomes, you can benefit from a moat.
This moat becomes more formidable when built around your product's unique features.
Identifying your product or company's unique features
I always find it baffling when I meet a startup that pitches its company as a unique solution to a wide-ranging problem but then builds an unfocused SEO effort that only addresses the biggest top-of-funnel keywords.
For example, an e-commerce startup that attempts to compete with Amazon can’t just do SEO as an e-commerce site because its point of differentiation from Amazon has to be much bigger as a general business model, or it will be unable to survive.
They should include in their SEO strategy the business model nuances that they believed to be different and that motivated the founders to start the business.
Whether the value prop is broad selection, high customer service, or low prices, which would, of course, appear in all other marketing channels, there is no reason that SEO shouldn’t focus on it, too.
Moat building
The first step in building an SEO moat is identifying what makes a product unique. This could include:
1. Proprietary technology or algorithms
2. Exclusive data or insights
3. Unique user experience elements
4. Innovative product features
5. Specialized expertise or methodology
These will often be obvious and don’t require much brainstorming. It is only a matter of framing the approach. When I chat with founders, I ask them why they differ from their competitors.
The answers usually flood out, and then I am forced to ask why these essential features are nowhere on the website.
Leveraging unique features for SEO
Once you've identified your product's unique features, it's time to leverage them for SEO. Here's how:
Within content
Develop comprehensive content that showcases a product's unique aspects. This content may have a lower overall search volume than those big top-of-funnel topics, but because it is so focused, it shouldn't matter; it will convert at the highest rates.
Write detailed blog posts explaining how your unique features solve specific problems. I once consulted for a company outranked on Google for all its product features by Reddit posts with tips on using its products. Almost magically, once we produced the same content, we outranked Reddit.
Create case studies demonstrating the real-world impact of your unique features. Unsurprisingly, these are much easier to write than keyword-rich content.
Produce whitepapers that explore the technology or methodology behind your unique features. When I was at SurveyMonkey, this type of content was among our highest-converting pages.
This admittedly lower-funnel content targets relevant topics and positions you as an authority in your niche, which helps create that moat.
Create diverse media content
Develop diverse content types that showcase your unique features. SEO shouldn't just be about visibility in Google search but also include a presence on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc., since these are search engines, too.
Produce videos demonstrating how your unique features work. Transcribe those videos into human-readable content, which can also be blog posts.
Create infographics that visually explain the benefits of your unique features. Graphics are far more likely to be shared and linked than written content.
Host webinars or podcasts discussing topics related to your unique features. I always find that some of the best material comes out of unscripted, off-the-cuff conversations rather than being forced to research and write about specific topics.
This multifaceted approach caters to different user preferences and adapts your moat to layout changes, providing something other than the standard blue links.
User generated content
In the early days of Web 2.0, UGC was the cheap way to generate content. But now, the content is far less expensive, so UGC has a far higher bar to clear. Motivate users to create content around your unique features by giving them a place to share.
Forums, review boxes, Q&A platforms, or even embeddable social media. The expectation from UGC should not be that it will “rank” on competitive queries; instead, it should help with broader queries you might not have ever thought of.
This might not necessarily involve using your features to create an SEO moat, but your users are uniquely yours, and you can use their collective input to help grow.
Implement a community forum where users can discuss and share experiences with your unique features. Many great examples, including Dell and Adobe, can be replicated.
Encourage customers to leave detailed reviews that mention specific unique features. This might not increase search traffic, but strong reviews will help existing pages convert. Think about how often you scroll to the reviews on an Amazon product page.
Leverage unique data
This topic was the beneficiary of a full newsletter, but I want to reference it here quickly. If your product generates unique data or insights, use this to your advantage:
Using unique data that you produce will help build your brand and generate backlinks. If you have created a new term like Zillow’s Zestimates or Moz’s Domain Authority, you will need to build awareness, but then once you have that, you become the verb people use.
Additionally, unique data is one of the best ways to build organic links as media sources for your unique insights. We are in an election season, and every unique (credible) poll that is released instantly attracts many links.
Maintaining the moat.
Building an SEO moat is not a one-time effort. It would be best if you continued investing to maintain and strengthen what you have built.
Stay on top of people's questions and related searches to keep your content prevalent on everything pertaining to your unique features. Often, when companies decrease an investment in SEO, they don’t bother to monitor it. If you have built content around your features, monitor it to ensure it stays visible. Continuously research to uncover new insights or data that can fuel your content strategy.
Building an SEO moat around your product's unique features is a powerful strategy for long-term organic search success. You can create a sustainable competitive advantage by thoroughly identifying what makes your product special and leveraging these unique aspects across your SEO efforts.
You need a castle behind the moat
The goal of SEO is not just to rank well for specific keywords but to drive business value. Even if it does not drive direct conversions, content that seems everywhere in a niche does help grow the business.
As you implement these strategies, always keep your users' needs at the forefront because if you don’t align with users, their intent may shift, and your moat may become worthless. Your unique features are uniquely yours, and that is your advantage.
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