Curious about Grammarly’s secret to growing its traffic?
The quick answer is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
However, the secret to the company’s SEO success lies in expertly capitalizing on the needs of its target audience.
But first, here’s a brief on what Grammarly does:
Grammarly is a SaaS company that provides an AI writing assistant to over 30 million daily active users. Its online target audience comprises everyone from students, content marketers, and all streams of professionals who need help with writing.
How does the company address this mixed audience’s needs and convert them into users?
Let’s take a look at Grammarly’s playbook to see how.
This Article Contains:
- Grammarly’s Challenge to Building Search Traffic
- Grammarly SEO Strategy: Using Solutions to Earn 26.5M+ Organic Traffic
Let’s get started!
Grammarly’s Challenge to Building Search Traffic
Grammarly is a SaaS tool for correcting grammar errors. ✅
It can be used to edit assignments, essays, business documents, SEO copywriting and content writing, material, and more.
The company has a web app, but it also offers browser plugins and app integrations to help users identify errors as they:
- Type in a Microsoft or Google Doc
- Create social media captions on Twitter or Facebook
- Send instant messages on Slack or Discord
But this convenience comes at a cost.
Since Grammarly works on other apps and web pages, users don’t need to visit its website.
So, how does the site gain all that organic traffic?
Grammarly SEO Strategy: Using Solutions to Earn 26.5M+ Organic Traffic
Grammarly needed a way for potential customers to find its website and learn about its tool.
Here’s what it did to overcome its organic traffic challenges.
1. Making it Easy to Find The Grammar Tool
Grammarly has done a lot to build its brand over the years.
And now, it’s an online tool that almost anyone uses.
Not to mention, its Freemium model makes it an accessible tool for everyone to use.
That’s probably why one of its biggest drivers of organic traffic is its branded keyword “grammarly”.
The keyword brings in a stunning 3 million organic traffic!
What’s more?
Grammarly, a writing assistant, stays true to its value by capitalizing on an incorrect spelling of its brand — “grammerly”.
This misspelling is Grammarly’s second most effective keyword.
Take a look at the Ahrefs data about those two keywords.
With such search engine results, it’s unsurprising that its homepage is its most popular page. In fact, the homepage itself garners 8.4 million monthly organic traffic, about 32% of its total website traffic.
Plus, Grammarly capitalizes on misspelled renditions of its names via paid ads.
The outcome?
Anyone searching for Grammarly, regardless of how they spell it, is almost guaranteed to find the tool they’re looking for.
Check Out These Inspiring SEO Case Studies to see how successful companies reach the top of the search engine results page.
Key Takeaways
- Branding is an important part of SEO optimization.
- Branded keywords are a great way to earn organic traffic if you already have an established brand.
- You can capitalize on misspelled versions of your brand via organic keywords and paid ads.
2. Solving Grammar Doubts via its Blog
Grammarly’s tool helps users write better through its virtual assistant.
However, the SaaS company has taken it a step further with its blog. Grammarly’s aim to address grammar woes goes deep — by providing knowledge and resolving everyday doubts through its blog.
Here’s a look at Grammarly’s most popular blog pages, including topics like:
- Adverbs, adjectives, nouns
- How to write a report
- Active vs passive voice
- Ms, Mrs, miss difference
With topics like these, Grammarly’s content strategy covers various topics people want to know to improve their communication skills. The blog posts also serve as an opportunity to further thought leadership pieces, promote product updates and features, and announce company news.
But what is its SEO impact?
Grammarly’s blog is the website’s second most powerful organic traffic magnet.
And it contains a mammoth 2,060+ pages out of the website’s 3,100+ indexed pages.
The posts are also linked to other posts, building clusters and topical authority. This helps the blog bring in over 10 million organic traffic — about 39% of Grammarly’s total organic traffic.
Check out the Ahrefs data below:
And that’s not all!
Grammarly also has content hubs in the form of guides about writing, grammar, and punctuation. It offers many resources to help users excel at English communication.
But remember, creating such a large directory of resources is only beneficial if you can update and manage the content regularly (it’s a vital part of technical SEO). Blogs and guides with broken links and outdated information won’t provide a good user experience.
Moreover, you need to follow SEO content marketing best practices.
This can include content optimization strategies like:
- Doing keyword research to identify queries with high search volume and a relevant search intent to your business
- Using appropriate headlines and subheadings (with the right tag for technical SEO)
- Adding a meta description and image alt text
- Internally linking to related content pieces
- Including calls-to-action (CTAs)
Key Takeaways
- Blogs are a great resource for SEO content marketing when paired with good keyword research.
- Your blog post or content creation strategy should target topics pertinent to your audience’s needs and the search intent of the relevant keyword.
- SaaS companies can create a content strategy around promoting their solutions.
3. Providing Free Tools to Enable Error-Free Writing
Grammarly’s main product is its writing assistant, which users can access without a paid subscription. They just need to sign up for a free account.
Note: Grammarly Premium and Grammarly Business require paid accounts.
But Grammarly also offers a host of free tools that you can access without signing up, including:
- Grammar Checker
- Plagiarism Checker
- Citation Generator
- AI Writing Tools for cover letters, emails, social media statuses, and more
These tools are perfect for all kinds of English communication, from educational essay writing and SEO content writing to formal applications and business emails. Quite the wide market!
Here’s a look at how much traffic these tools bring in:
Just the top two bring in over 6 million in organic traffic. That makes this a brilliant digital marketing effort and a useful SEO optimization case study for other SaaS companies.
The free tools increase traffic and allow Grammarly to convert visitors into users and then into paying customers.
Notice the call to action to use Grammarly right next to the free tool’s UI.
This strategy also helps it outdo competitors like Hemingway Editor or ProWritingAid.
Note: Grammarly is not an SEO tool like Yoast SEO or AI SEO but can be used for error-free SEO writing.
Looking for other examples of how to leverage free tools?
Have a look at our Adobe SEO case study.
Key Takeaways
- Free tools can be a great source of traffic and give users a peek into the SaaS solution’s offerings.
- Free online tools can serve as a good basis to convert users into paying customers.
4. Earning Backlinks From Other Writing Tools & Platforms
Grammarly’s solution positions them as a central resource for academic, business, and marketing content writing.
It’s no wonder the company receives tons of backlinks (a Google ranking factor) from major organizations in those fields — to the tune of over 21 million.
Most importantly, these backlinks come from high-quality domains, which is important for ranking benefits. On the other hand, spammy, low-quality backlinks can lead to ranking penalties.
Here’s a look at the domains that link to Grammarly — check out their Domain Ratings (DR):
Now, earning these backlinks is more a factor of Grammarly’s business area than some digital marketing effort. However, Grammarly also earns quite a few backlinks to its blog and resources pages.
Note: Although backlinks are a ranking factor, they aren’t as important as they used to be for Google search rankings. We at Startup Voyager have created a strategy to help businesses rank high on search result pages without depending on backlinks.
Key Takeaways
- High-quality backlinks can help you earn a high domain rating.
- Creating useful resources and great SEO content can also help you earn backlinks.
5. Keeping it Fresh with 10K+ Different Anchor Texts
Grammarly uses internal links to create content clusters, build topical authority, and share pagerank benefits.
However, it also has many outbound links — over 4,000 groups across its website.
Why is this important?
These links are great for showing relevance and trustworthiness, which is important per Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines for determining high-quality content. (That’s also why Grammarly works as a content optimization tool — since it helps with error-free SEO writing. This helps boost your content’s trustworthiness.)
But here’s where it gets interesting:
Grammarly uses a wide distribution of anchor texts for its internal and outgoing links.
In fact, it has over 3,900 different anchors for external links and over 9,000 different anchors for internal links (per Ahrefs, as of October 2023).
This rich anchor text distribution helps it avoid a Google Penguin penalty (which decreases traffic) due to repetitive or spammy anchors.
Pro tip: You can also review your internal and external links and their anchor text using Google Search Console — an SEO tool from Google.
Here’s what you’d see with Google Search Console:
Key Takeaways
- Internal and external links are important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
- Repetitive and spammy anchor texts may result in traffic penalties from search engines.
6. Building Trust with a Comprehensive Support Section
Although you may not expect it, a help and support section can be a viable source of organic traffic.
Don’t believe us? Ask Grammarly!
Grammarly’s support section, comprising over 500 pages, brings in over 100K of monthly organic traffic.
Now, this may not seem like much. But it works twofold:
- Helping customers find solutions to their issues while using Grammarly’s tool, enabling customer success.
- Preventing competitors and other tech guide sites from stealing Grammarly’s branded traffic.
Plus, these pages are to the point and don’t require major content research.
And it also helps if they earn a feature snippet.
This helps Grammarly amass more organic traffic with minimal effort while reducing potential customer losses through unanswered issues. The subdomain also addresses long-tail “how” guides, which usually have a low search volume but a high conversion value.
Key Takeaways:
- SaaS companies can use their help and support section to draw organic traffic through SEO content that addresses customer issues.
- These pages help prevent other tech and review sites from stealing your branded traffic.
- Help pages also help further customer success and prevent losses to competitors.
7. Establishing its Brand on Social Media
A few of Grammarly’s major wins, like traffic from branded keywords and earning backlinks, are thanks to the SaaS company’s popularity.
But how did it gain this popularity?
It built it through the strategic use of social media platforms to build its brand narrative and promote published articles.
The company’s social media content creation strategy revolves around educating audiences on communicating better while promoting its freemium solution and free tools.
This helps Grammarly add millions of views and engagement to its bottom line metrics, like traffic and sales.
According to Similarweb, its social channels bring in 1.75% of its total traffic (67.5 million). That’s over a million from social channels.
Ultimately, as long as people remember Grammarly’s brand based on what they see on social media, they will likely add to the company’s organic branded traffic.
Plus, although social signals may not be a Google ranking factor, social profiles and links can contribute to a higher brand presence on a search engine. Remember, your social profiles can rank in Google search result pages for your branded keywords.
Key Takeaways
- SaaS companies should build their brand and audience on social media to gain additional web traffic.
- Social profiles can improve your brand presence on a search engine like Google.
- Links from social media can count as backlinks.
Create the Perfect SEO Strategy for Your SaaS Business
Grammarly’s strategic content marketing and brand-building strategy is an excellent case study on reaping Search Engine Optimization (SEO) wins. Moreover, its user-centric content approach will keep growing the company’s user base.
However, it’s important to note that the reason their approach works so well is because they’re already very well known. They already had a great base to build on and then supercharged it with an efficient SEO strategy.
What if you’re a small startup?
Then we at Startup Voyager can help you with that!
Get in touch with us for SEO services, and we’ll help you create the perfect strategy to help you rake in massive traffic and convert more customers. 📈
We’ve helped tons of startups exponentially increase their traffic in no time, including taking a fintech site from 0 to 100,000+ visitors in less than a year!
So, when it comes to building an SEO strategy from the ground up, we’re all you need.
