060: Growth Story – 0 To 100,000 Monthly Visitors (In One Year) w/Tyler Hakes

If I was asked to do what Tyler had to, I’d be terrified too.

It was late 2014. Tyler was brought into College Raptor, an exciting new startup. They have some incredible new technology. They just closed an impressive series A round of funding.

Amazing opportunity right?

Except for one thing.

They have NO traffic (they’re starting from scratch). And they want Tyler to help scale College Raptor to 1 million visitors in a year.

Piece of cake right?

Nope, that’s not all.

They were only a marketing team of three. It’s at this point I’d probably quit, but Tyler doesn’t.

Well I’m not going to give away the rest of the story, but I do have to say – you’re going to learn a ton about growing traffic. So sit back or keep walking the dog or fighting traffic.

And don’t worry, all the show notes for this episode can be found below.

Enjoy!

NOTE: I am aware the audio on Tyler’s end is not perfect in this episode. Huge apologies, and thank you for your patience. 99% of our audio quality is top notch and I intend to keep it that way and do everything possible in the future to prevent sub-par audio quality.

This episode is still very listenable!

Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

Links

• Tyler’s Website
• Tyler’s Writing Site
• Tom Critchlow’s EOW episode
• Content Marketing Is Chess
• How We Scaled a Startup from 0 to 100k Monthly Searches (In About a Year)
• Where the 114th US Senate Went to College
• Data.gov
• Google Trends
• Hidden Gems: Best Colleges that Receive Fewer Than 5,000 Applications
• Movoto Blog
• Quit Being So Damn Friendly
• Strategic Content for Each Funnel Stage
• Optimist.com

People

• Tyler Hakes
• Neil Patel
• Brian Dean
• EOW Guests – Twitter List

Agenda

Background

• University of Iowa 2010
• Journalism
• “I do content marketing.”
• Purveyor of hiphop

Content Marketing Is Chess

• “A lot of people don’t understand how to do it well.”
• Over a million visitors in one year
• “We talked to parents and students about what their process was like.”
• Young searchers —> Immediate Intent

Creating Content That Fits with Goals

• “Every piece did not have to meet all three objectives…”
• Trifecta – evergreen, link earning, viral content

Go and Get Data

• “We used a freelance designer…”
• Facebook Ad Data
• Search operators to find PDFs

Virality

• “We intended it to be a link building piece…”
• “It had a map. People love maps.”

Plan SEO from the Beginning

• “Have an idea of the SEO landscape in your industry.”
• Keyword tracking?
• Repurposing content

Quick Questions

• “You shouldn’t be afraid to have a stance.”
• Guest posting
• Personas