Building upon the success of our Marketplace product, which provided on-demand content writers, we analyzed the data and discovered that 70% of our customers were primarily seeking SEO-related content. Recognizing this significant demand, we embarked on a journey to enhance the experience for this majority user base.
User Research
To delve into the world of SEO content creation, we conducted extensive interviews with our SEO users and collaborated with our internal SEO team.
Given that a significant portion of our users lacked an internal SEO team, they heavily depended on our SEO experts for assistance in shortlisting keywords and generating topics. We engaged in detailed discussions with our SEO team to gain insights into the process behind achieving this outcome.
SEO topics and keywords of all our customers
Their processes of creating an SEO blog revealed key insights:
Keyword Research: Our SEO team utilized SEMRush for initial keyword research.
Keyword Finalization: After evaluating factors like difficulty and potential traffic, they finalized a list of primary and secondary keywords.
Topic Creation: The team manually generated topics based on the selected keywords, which proved to be time-consuming.
Content Details: Details such as outlines, word counts, and tone were all manually curated.
All of the steps above easily took a couple of weeks. Understanding this manual process became the foundation for our mission to automate and streamline these tasks using AI.
Final decided flow for creation of topics and keywords using AI
Solution
Collaborating closely with the product & tech team, we aimed to integrate OpenAI and SEMrush data seamlessly into our platform. The envisioned user flow became:
User Connection: Users link their Google Analytics (GA) and Google Search Console (GSC) accounts to provide comprehensive business information.
SEMrush Integration: Leveraging SEMrush, we fetch keywords with optimal difficulty and high traffic.
Keyword Shortlisting: Users can easily shortlist keywords of interest.
OpenAI Integration: With a single click, OpenAI generates topic suggestions based on the selected keywords.
Content Creation: Users can effortlessly create content using our internal AI content editor or opt for outsourcing through our Marketplace.
Here are some of the screens of AI-powered organic marketing platform.
Content Idea lab page for content creation
Topics suggested using Open AI
Content Creation pop-up
Content editor for Pepper Users
Keywords populated using AI
Dashboard Home
Challenges
Grasping the intricacies of SEO and its terminology proved challenging. The team had to navigate through multiple platforms and reference various reading materials to gain a comprehensive understanding of SEO.
Integrating data from diverse sources posed a significant challenge, requiring meticulous stitching to ensure a seamless user experience. The time-consuming process of processing data points led to the necessity of implementing loading states for pages with delayed data loading.
Impact
The implementation of this refined process resulted in a substantial reduction of the overall time required for SEO strategy, keyword, and topic finalization, and blog outlining — from weeks to just a couple of hours. The transformative impact on the end-user experience demonstrated the power of our new organic marketing platform.
Key Achievements
Efficiency Boost: Users now save significant time on tasks that were previously manual and time-consuming. We streamlined the SEO strategy process from weeks to just a few hours.
One platform for end-to-end SEO strategy: All features from diverse platforms are now consolidated into a unified dashboard. This eliminates the need for users to navigate between multiple platforms when strategizing their SEO plans.
Empowering Content Creation: The platform empowers users to not only generate ideas efficiently but also facilitates the actual creation of high-quality content.
In conclusion, our product design changes have not only addressed the pain points of our users but have also ushered in a new era of efficiency and effectiveness in organic marketing.
