Inspired by the SEO strategies employed by Adobe and Canva, I began researching featured pages and the potential for leveraging unbranded keywords to increase conversions.
A few months ago, I started creating SEO “swipe files” for SaaS and software brands, ranking first page on non-branded keywords for those feature pages.
Initially, this was intended to be a simple project. Give some examples and use this in your work with clients and colleagues to show what is possible.
Later it became clear that many websites were not using this strategy and after digging through hundreds of pages we found 30 winners.
In this article, we’ll explore why using unbranded keywords for your landing pages is a profitable strategy and break down some SEO myths about building optimized pages.
Leverage non-branded keywords on landing pages
Landing pages aren’t usually an area where SEO experts yell at them. The reason for this is that the content is considered thin and has a low word count that makes it unrankable. Also, landing pages are not as good for backlinks as other content.
Let’s rewind and clarify what the landing page means.
Viola Eva wrote an excellent article on landing page SEO for Ahrefs, defining a landing page as “a web page designed to convert traffic into leads.”
This includes feature, product, and solution pages, but also competitor pages, use cases, and lead magnets.
All linguistics can be argued, but the point is that solutions, industries, and feature pages can be optimized for organic reach.
We dug into over 100 featured pages to see what it takes to rank on the first page, and the results are pretty compelling.
Disclaimer: I work at Flow SEO and supported this research through my access to Ahrefs. Some of the companies included in the list are our clients.
Identify opportunities for unbranded feature pages
Unfortunately, it can’t be Salesforce or Oracle. People know you by name and search for products with branded queries.
Optimizing feature pages for non-brand keywords is an opportunity to drive organic traffic to those who are not yet brand loyal. This is your chance to really let your product’s features shine.
Should every function receive a page? Probably not.
We recommend creating one all-features page as a hub, and a top-candidate feature page.
So how do you identify the right featured page?
We dabble in keyword research and search engine results pages (SERPs).
This is an exercise in “putting themselves in their shoes”. Make a list of all the words or phrases related to that feature and imagine what you would search for if you were in the market for that product.
How is it used? What industries does it apply to? What problems does it solve?
Now create a list of potential keywords and use them to research whether the search intent indicated in the SERPs matches your website’s feature pages.
Tips for identifying pages and keywords:
- Features such as reports, SMS notifications, or other standard features are ambiguous as queries. Unless you have a niche hook (i.e. industry, size of business, etc.) you are unlikely to get ranked.
- Use action words to get creative with keyword options For example, “Find Influencers” or “Plagiarism Checker”. You may be ready to use and convert these queries at the moment you need them.
- Avoid keyword trademarking and branding, especially if you are relatively new to SEO. Below are the top non-branded keywords found in my research.
Author screenshot, December 2022Now, just because you’ve seen other brands have a featured page on the first page doesn’t mean your site does too.
Click through the pages and try to understand your target audience and industry.
It’s not difficult.
One of my favorite ways to do this is by asking the client about the product, looking at specific phrases and language used, and asking how the client is using the product or specifics about its functionality. Also ask for feedback.
Interviewing a client or target audience is the single best way to connect through a common language and perspective.
SEO tips for optimized feature pages
These recommendations are based on a survey of countless feature pages, resulting in a final list of 30 SaaS and software feature pages with first page rankings for unbranded keywords. rice field.
No recommended word count
I mentioned earlier that some people may not see landing pages as an SEO opportunity.
One of the main reasons for this is the erroneous belief that a page needs a lot of text to rank.
According to my research, this is a completely false assumption.
Author screenshot, December 2022The estimated word count for the 30 featured pages studied ranged from 170 to 2,600.
As you can see from the graph above, ZenDesk features pages have the most words.
This page is in the bottom half of 30 in terms of total keywords and referring domains.
Grammarly and Adobe dominate the total keywords, but the word count is relatively small.
Ahrefs screenshot, December 2022Breaking this down even further, the chart above shows the top ranking sites for unbranded keywords.
Again, the word count is in the 170-970 range, so the word count is not very important for ranking these pages.
Rather, this suggests that those pages are content-specific and adequately answer someone’s query.
Backlinks don’t make or break your page
The good news goes beyond word count reduction.
The research also shows that referencing domains is not a priority or necessary.
A minimum of 1 featured page had 3 referring domains and a maximum of 2,400.
Author screenshot, December 2022The table above may look familiar, but this time I put a line in the URL to refer to the domain.
Interestingly, it does not show a strong relationship with the total number of keywords on the page or the number of words.
create a free tool
One of the things that stood out to me the most when doing this research is that leveraging the functionality of the entire product and making it available as a free tool is a great strategy.
This free tool doesn’t have to have all the same features as the paid tool, but it should have enough features for people to actually use it.
Grammarly is a great example of this strategy.
Our dedicated page on plagiarism has free tools for scanning documents and texts, and is the first thing you’ll see when you get there.
Screenshot from Grammarly.com, December 2022This page doesn’t stop there, it continues to explain “why use a plagiarism checker”. End with a call to action (CTA) that says, “Check your text now.”
This is a common strategy used by other well-known companies such as Adobe and Canva.
It works because visitors to your website are immediately presented with solutions without having to sign up.
It creates a positive user experience with your brand and starts the dance of reciprocity.
Schemas help generate rich results
Since the featured page is a landing page, we want to convert it.
You want to catch the eye from the first moment your search results appear.
With schema or structured data, you can make your featured pages stand out in the SERPs by adding rich results. These rich results can provide visual review ratings, carousels, prices, or other visual elements.
It doesn’t cost you anything to implement, but it provides a robust SERP entry beyond a single blue link and helps you stand out from the competition.
No popups – we have a chatbot
Of the 30 websites we studied, only 1 had pop-ups on the page, 16 had chatbots, and 14 had neither.
I’m not the only one celebrating the death of popups.
Pop-ups are not only an intrusive feature that most people don’t like, but also contribute to sensory overload for many people, making them inaccessible.
Domain reputation is important
Out of the 30 feature pages studied, the average domain rating is 82, ranging from 57 to 96.
The chart below shows the keyword totals and domain ratings.
URLs with the most keywords tend to have higher Domain Ratings, but this chart doesn’t show a very clear relationship.
Author screenshot, December 2022We know a strong Domain Rating of over 50 can help, but that doesn’t mean you need 96 to rank on the first page for non-branded keywords.
Non-branded keywords for the rest of us
Unfortunately, most companies do not have brand recognition.
So while big brands may not consider removing feature pages and optimizing for SEO, others should get creative to get better quality leads. need to do it.
We identified potential feature pages for optimizing for unbranded keywords and dug into our research to see what it takes to reach number one.
This is a solid framework for putting this strategy into action.
We would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, especially if you have successfully implemented this strategy.
Other resources:
Featured Image: Amgun/Shutterstock
