0 to 116,000 Organics / Month

In 2019 I started Doggypedia.org, my third project to grow from 0 to 100,000+ organics/month. 

Building Doggypedia not only gave me my 3rd big win in SEO.

It also allowed me to understand how to distribute content on other platforms.

The Doggypedia YouTube channel has generated 3,400,000 visitors from 10 videos.

And my Doggypedia Pinterest marketing automation generated 47,000,000 impressions and 60,000 link clicks.

⚡ TL;DR

1. In 2019 I was leaving the agency where I learned SEO
2. Built Doggypedia.org & grew SEO traffic from 0 to 116,000 organics/month in 13 months
3. Grew the Pinterest account to 46,000,000 impressions
4. Grew YouTube to millions of viewers
5. Tried to monetize the traffic & failed
6. Sold the brand for $30,000 to AlphaPaw.com

🔎  Background

If this is your first piece of ContentDistribution.com content, here’s what you gotta know.

We’ve taken 5 projects from 0 to 100,000+ organics/month without building backlinks.

Without technical BS.

Without shortcuts.

And without hacks.

We did it by creating the highest quality, most relevant page of content Google could show for the keywords we wanted to rank for and doing that over and over again.

Basically, good content at scale. 

And we’ve documented exactly how we do it: 

1. 0 to 103,000 organics/month (first big win)
2. 0 to 119,000 organics/month (subscription DTC)
3. 0 to 166,000 organics/month (second big win)
4. 0 to 1,500,000 organics/month (biggest win for A16Z startup)
5. Baby fat graphs (not quite big enough for their own case study)

I started Doggypedia for a few reasons: 

1. Continue to develop my understanding of SEO 
2. Turn Doggypedia into a standalone business
3. If that failed, use it as a case study to grow my SEO agency
4. Tell Tinder dates I was a puppy influencer

This is part of a four part series. 

1. The 100,000+ organics/month website (you’re here)
2. The 3,400,000+ views YouTube account
3. The 44,00,000 impression Pinterest account
4. How I sold Doggypedia for $30,000

📈 Approach

Based on the goals above, I needed to find a niche where:

1. The competition was low, and I could rank a brand-new domain quickly
2. The traffic potential was high, and I could get a fat graph
3. The content was easy to template out, and I could re-use one template for all pages

When I analyzed the puppy niche, I found a huge content vertical that had:

1. High volume
2. Low competition
3. Super easy to template out

It was mixed dog breeds.

Think Husky Corgi.

Or Corgi Retriever.

Or Labrador Retriever.

It turns out there are about a billion different types of mixed breeds.

If you take the top 100 dog breeds and assume each breed can mix with every other breed…

100 x 100 = 10,000 different mixed breeds of dogs.

Using Ahrefs, I found that the search volume for these mixed breeds was crazy high.

With almost two million keywords representing 11,000,000+ searches per month.

And the keyword difficulty was pretty low, too — generally less than 20.

🤖 Keyword Research

Alright, so we have millions of keywords representing 12 million searches a month.

There is an easy way to do this.

So let’s do it the easy way. 

Click ‘Export’ on the keyword list.

And export the top 18,000 keywords.

Then I’m going to import the CSV into ClusterAi.

And I’m done!

It’s time to sit back and relax while ClusterAi does its thing.

While I’m sipping my coffee…

ClusterAi is crawling Google for each keyword.

It’s scraping the first ten results.

And it’s comparing the URLs in common between keywords.

If at least 3 websites rank for ‘keyword A’ and ‘keyword B,’ you can rank for both keywords with one page.

And ClusterAi groups them.

If there are two or fewer websites that rank for ‘keyword A’ and ‘keyword B,’ you probably can’t rank for both keywords with one page.

And ClusterAi will separate them into discrete pages.

After ClusterAi is done doing its thing, I’m going to get a file that looks like this.

Every row represents a unique page of content.

It contains the main keyword with the most search volume in the group.

And every variation of the main keyword that can rank on the same page.

And the total search volume of all of the keywords the page can rank for.

We use this keyword structure to drive on-page optimizations, too.

1. URL = Main keyword
2. Meta Title = Main keyword + something clickbait
3. Meta Description = Main keyword + something clickbait
4. H1 = Main keyword + something clever
5. H2s = Use variations of the main keyword
6. In-content keyword usage = Swap for variations of the main keyword 

It seems simple.

But this trick allows us to publish thousands of pages.

Without our writers and editors “knowing SEO”

They just focus on creating the most valuable page of content Google could show for the keywords we want to rank for.

Then we make them sprinkle on a little “SEO” during the editing phase.

Et voilà — thousands of perfectly optimized pages.

Without needing an SEO to touch each one.

This is a good thing because on Doggypedia I was the SEO.

And today it’s a great thing because a team of two SEOs can support 25 writers and editors. 

If you’ve read our case study on our most recent 0 to 100,000+ organics/month, you’ll know my philosophy on SEOs.

The fewer SEOs you know, the better.

🚀  Join thousands of marketers automating their keyword research with ClusterAi. 

Want more information on ClusterAi? 

Watch the video below.

Then sign up to ClusterAi for free for more details via email.

📓 The Content Series Template

You’re probably familiar with a content brief.

It’s a brief that SEOs create for content writers.

Basically, it’s guard rails for content writers to ensure their work/effort will end up ranking and generating business impact. 

@contentdistributioncom

Want to remove the guesswork from your SEO agency’s processes? SOPs are the answer! Documentation can drastically improve your team’s output. #SOPs #AgencyLife #ProductivityHacks #AgencyGrowth #seo #contentops #seoagency #contentagency

♬ original sound – NickFromSeattle

It generally includes things like:

1. Keywords
2. Headings (H1 / H2s)
3. Internal links
4. External links
5. Messaging / Positioning

Here’s an example from BestWriting.com

At ContentDistribution.com, we think content briefs are for people with too much time on their hands.

We have to write a lot of content.

But we don’t want to create a lot of briefs.

So we developed a concept we call a ‘Content Series Template.’

It’s like a content brief.

But for every page of content under a specific sub-topic. 

ClusterAi told me there are thousands of different mixed-breed articles.

But they’re all basically the same article.

A side benefit is if we’re only creating one CST for hundreds of pages.

We can spend a lot more time on it.

Do it meticulously.

And eliminate as much variability from the research process as possible.

🚀  How we built a culture of documentation

Today we’ve used the Content Series Template concept to publish 14,000+ pages of content across 268+ content verticals.

We’ve gotten it down to a repeatable process that enables us to come into any vertical, run knowledge transfer with stakeholders, and then create content like we had direct access to their brain.

Doggypedia has about 220 pages spread across 3 CSTs: 

1. Specific Mixed Breeds
2. Mixed Breeds
3. Dog Memes

🚀  See an example CST on a 0 to 100,000+ organic/month project. 

Specific Breed CST

This CST focused on keywords like:

1. Lab German Shepard Mix
2. Pitbull Lab Mix
3. German Shepherd Pitbull Mix

🚀 See Example: Lab German Shepard Mix

Basically, every keyword is structured like this: “Breed 1 + Breed 2 Mix.”

H2s. These articles are in the same format regardless of the keyword. This allowed me to pre-write the H2s. I included the main keyword in 40-60% of the H2s and left the remaining H2s unoptimized. I also jumbled the order of the H2s and the specific words in each H2 to avoid duplicate content penalties. 

Images. The dog niche is visual, and every H2 included an image. I provided instructions on how to source images from Instagram. Sourcing photos from Instagram resulted in a handful of angry emails from accounts I didn’t cite, so I created instructions on how to attribute images found from Instagram.

Tables, lists, and bullets. Structured data is easier for humans and for Google to consume. I R&D’d this on Doggypedia, and four years later and with 10,000+ pages published, all of our content includes tables, lists, and bullets. 

Internal links. The more internal links you have, the easier the content you link to will rank. Think of it like a vote that tells Google how important a page is to your website. The more internal links to a particular page, the more important it is to your brand, and the easier it is to rank. The opposite is also true. Pages with 0 internal links will be almost impossible to rank. 

External links. Every article needed at least three links to authoritative sources. I developed a process for our writers to look up science journals published on PubMed and books published on Amazon and cite them in the content. 

🚀 Learn: Get our SOPs and templates. 

Mixed Breed CST

The ‘Specific Breed CST” above is focused on keywords like “[Breed 1] + [Breed 2] Mixes”

The next “Mixed Breed CST” is focused on all of the types of “[Breed 1] Mixes.”

1. Hound Mixes
2. Pitbull Mixes
3. Daschund Mixes

🚀 See Example: Hound Mixed Breeds

From a high level, the CST had instructions that can be summarized as: 

1. Google “Breed 1 mix” on Instagram and create an H2 about each mix breed you find
2. Use the images found on Instagram in each H2
3. Google “Breed 1 + Breed 2 Mix”
4. In each H2, write a short blurb about each type of “Breed 1 + Breed 2 Mix”

The more work you put into your CST, the better work you’ll get back from your content team.

🚀 Learn: Get our SOPs and templates. 

Dog Memes CST

This CST focused on keywords like:

1. Smiling Dog Memes
2. Dachshund Memes
3. Pitbull Memes

🚀  See Example: Pitbull Memes

This was the easiest CST of them all.

We had our writers scour social for the best pup memes. 

🧑 Hiring Writers

The #1 choice you’ll make as a content manager is which writers you decide to hire.

Because after that first decision, everything is either easy, hard, or impossible.

Hire the wrong writer and you’ll spend tens or hundreds of hours struggling through everything.

Hire the right writer, and scaling content velocity will feel like a breeze.

Hiring GOOD writers is hard though.

The problem isn’t getting writing candidates.

Post a job ad on ProBlogger and get 300+ candidates in the next 72 hours.

The hard part is filtering out the bad writers from the good writers.

1. Writing is the lowest barrier WFH job
2. Anyone can call themselves a writer
3. But even 54% of Americans read below a 6th grade reading level
4. Writers downright fake their portfolio
5. Or they use published content that has gone through a 3rd party editor, and doesn’t reflect what they’ll submit to you

When I say everyone has trouble hiring good writers.

I mean everyone.

95% of writing applicants are unqualified, how do you identify the top 5%?

It goes on.

And on.

And on.

So what’s the trick?

How do you evaluate hundreds of candidates to identify and hire the top 1%?

The trick is Workello.

The secret weapon your favorite content team is using to hire great writing talent on auto-pilot. 

Putting in the work up-front to hire the right person will save dozens or hundreds of hours of blood, sweat, and tears, trying to onboard, train, and mentor the wrong hire.

Here’s how it works.

Workello is a skills-testing platform that helps you identify and hire the best talent you can afford.

According to Harvard Business Review, skills tests are the #1 predictor of post-hire work performance.

More than CVs, work experience, and interview skills.

The skills test is #1.

So if you want to hire the best talent you can afford, you need to test as much talent as you can.

Workello allows you to skill-test hundreds of applicants in minutes.

So when you finally hire someone.

It’s not the best of a handful.

Or the best of a dozen.

It’s literally the best of hundreds of potential applicants.

You are hiring the best person you can afford.

Here’s a quick overview.

Getting Started

Signup for a free account on Workello in about 30 seconds.

Choose a pre-populated hiring template from Workello’s template library. Each template contains an optimized job description, writing test, candidate emails, and the best hiring resources to find them. 

Spend a few minutes customizing the pre-written job description, and skills test to align with your company and industry. 

Save & publish your Workello job. 

Then grab the application URL.

Copy/paste your Workello job ad URL into ProBlogger.

Pay for your ProBlogger ad.

Then sit back and relax as candidates find your ad on ProBlogger, complete their application on Workello, and stream into your hiring dashboard.

Learn: Need niche writers? Get our playbook for hiring community experts to write for you. 

From there, everything is 1-click away.

1-click reject to send a polite rejection email.

1-click test to send a request to take your writing test.

1-click to send video interview invitations. 

The best people want to work for the best employers.

One of the easiest things you can do to attract better talent is to treat your candidates better.

Workello helps you engage the top 5% of applicants to invest their valuable time into taking your writing test. 

By addressing the #1 complaint from job seekers.

Even for experienced candidates, applying for jobs feels like sending their CVs into a black hole.

Workello’s applicant timeline tells your candidates exactly where they are in the hiring process, what to expect next, and how long it will take to hear back.

Building huge amounts of trust with your best candidates quickly & automatically. 

The better your candidate experience, the more likely the best candidates are going to invest their valuable time into your hiring process. 

You wouldn’t put your sales leads through a Google Form.

Why would you treat your candidates worse?

🚀 Sign up for free in 30 seconds and join hundreds of brands using Workello to hire the top 1% of their applicants.

🚀 Performance

I’ve already told you Doggypedia grew from 0 to 100,000 organics/month in 13 months, on a new domain, without building backlinks, through a combination of

1. The best keyword research using ClusterAi
2. Crazy amounts of documentation to set up our content team for success
3. Hiring the best writers and editors
4. Using ClusterAi to optimize all of the content

Do you know what’s even cooler?

Doing it with 3x more efficiency than all of our competitors.

You see – when you follow the templates and SOPs in the Content Ops Framework.

You don’t just generate a lot of traffic.

You generate more traffic per dollar invested than your competitors.

Check it out.

I put together a list of the biggest websites in the dog niche.

I modeled their:

1. Domain name
2. DR / DA
3. Monthly traffic (via Ahrefs)
4. The total number of pages published
5. How much traffic do they generate per page per month

Basically, I divided the total amount of traffic by the number of pages.

This allowed me to develop an ‘efficiency score’.

More efficient SEO campaigns generated, on average, more traffic per page.

And less efficient SEO campaigns generated, on average, less traffic per page.

Doggypedia generates 570 visitors per month per page.

Certapet generates 170 visitors per month per page.

This means 3.3x more traffic per page of content published than Certapet.

Even the biggest website in the dog niche, DogTime, with 3.3m organics/month, is only generating 578 visitors per month, per page.

That’s the same traffic/page as Doggypedia.org.

But Doggypedia.org is a DR9.

And DogTime is a DR77.

Not all content is not created equally. 

Content generated by us, using our systems, ranks higher and generates more traffic.

If this is your first time on ContentDistribution.com, learn why we crush:

1. How Google REALLY works
2. Ranking without backlinks
3. The #1 lever to get faster SEO results

🙏 The Acquisition 

Despite my success, I failed at the most critical part.

Monetization.

I just didn’t have the experience yet.

🚀 Learn: How we drove almost 100,000 paid subscribers for an A16Z-backed startup. 

So I did what all good mediocre marketers do.

I made a humble flex post on social. 

And used my (lack of) success to build an audience.

It turns out that both I am FB friends with Sam Parr.

And the Facebook Gods blessed me with reach that day.

Four months later, Ramon wired me $30,000 for the Doggypedia brand.

Want to learn how the acquisition went down?

Read the final installment of the Doggypedia acquisition. 

1. The 3,400,000+ views YouTube account
2. The 44,00,000 impression Pinterest account
3. The 100,000+ organics/month website (you’re here)
4. How I sold Doggypedia for $30,000

🥇 Your Turn

Fully Managed SEO

Fully managed SEO for category leaders and future category leaders with huge goals and the budget to execute. We’ll do the heavy lifting, you sit back and take the credit.

👉 Learn what it’s like working with our consulting team.

Content Ops Consulting

For startups that would prefer to develop institutional knowledge and scale up in-house,

👉 Join the 100k Organics/Month Club.

Free Resources

👉 Read all of our free playbooks

👉 Join 13,197 marketers getting our best content in their inbox 1x/week

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Software

👉 Hire the top 1% of writers, editors, SEOs, VAs, designers and more.

👉 Build a topical map on EZ mode.