Case Study: How SelectHub Used MarketMuse to Establish a Content Strategy

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Summary

SelectHub, a platform that allows users to objectively assess different types of enterprise software, needed an SEO boost. In fact, they needed a boost from the ground up, because while they had a great product, their organic traffic prior to summer 2015 was practically nil. Enter, MarketMuse, which allowed them to assess their current situation and build their online authority and dominate SERPs.

About Our Client

SelectHub was built out of a need for businesses to evaluate enterprise technologies in a way that’s unobstructed by marketing messages and lets them determine the best software for their unique needs. Enterprise software can be expensive and time-consuming to implement, so it’s important for companies to do extensive research, comparisons, and evaluation when choosing one – and SelectHub helps them do just that.

Challenges

Prior to July 2015, SelectHub’s main methods of customer acquisition included direct sales, webinars, and pay-per-click advertising. These were successful to an extent and allowed the business to build a name and reputation for itself. But in an industry where many people are doing their research online, organic traffic was an untapped goldmine.

SelectHub’s current content marketing manager began in the summer of 2015, and from day one had MarketMuse in his toolkit. The main challenges he needed to overcome included building the site’s content to, first, serve potential customers’ needs and, second, gain SERP rankings. Since SelectHub had no content strategy prior to him being hired, he was starting from scratch. As you’ll see, this was both boon and bane to the task in front of him.

How We Helped

Using MarketMuse, SelectHub was able to develop its content strategy with the benefit of having millions of data points on topic and keyword use. Once they developed an initial content plan and their content team was close to finishing the groundwork, they used MarketMuse again to evaluate what was done and determine what topics to cover next.

Additionally, using the Content Analyzer solution, they assessed the quality of each piece of content before posting to determine if and where it needed work. This helped them ensure that they were never wasting a content opportunity.

SelectHub had another clever trick up its sleeve: They created user intent profiles based around certain keywords. For instance, they determined that search queries containing the type of software plus “comparisons” or “checklists” were likely to come from people who were in the right part of the funnel, or customer journey, to be relevant to SelectHub. Those who were higher in the funnel probably weren’t ready yet, and those who were deeper were past the point of evaluation. Those in the middle were just right, and a prime target for SelectHub.

As such, their team started creating content for each category of software, relevant to keywords and variants that indicated users had the intent to use a software evaluation platform.

Results

Here’s a graph of the improvements SelectHub saw in traffic 30 days after optimizing their content with MarketMuse. Multiply this by hundreds of articles, and it represents a significant increase in traffic to the site:

Additionally, they saw significant increases in rankings, both for established keywords and new related topics that MarketMuse was able to identify. The graphs below illustrate the boost in rankings for different keyword categories, not just individual keywords.

HR software keyword group:

ERP keyword group:

CMMS keyword group:

Michael Shearer, VP of Marketing at SelectHub, said that MarketMuse not only made improvements in traffic and rankings possible, but that the solution saves him a full day out of the month. Without MarketMuse, he said there would be no way to efficiently collect the kind of data he needs to maintain his content marketing strategy.

“MarketMuse is at the core of how we make our content the best possible,” Shearer said.

One Year Later

SelectHub continues to reap the benefits of integrating MarketMuse into their content creation workflow. Over the past year, they have seen a significant increase in keyword rankings and traffic, as well as an overall shift in their customer acquisition approach.

They have:

• More than doubled keyword rankings from 10K keywords to 23K.
• Generated 10x content, starting with 2 blog posts created per month to now more than 20 per month.
• Improved MarketMuse Content Score from 31 to 44.

For more examples, read How MarketMuse Helped a Property Management Company Secure Top Spots in Google and How MarketMuse Content Optimization Software Helped Neil Patel Double His Traffic and Rankings in 2017.