How Cognism Generated $441k in Revenue With Money Keywords

By late 2022, Cognism’s SEO had run into some problems.

We succeeded in growing organic traffic by 116.70% in a year, but we noticed some things that needed to be fixed.

In the second half of 2022, traffic had declined. We were experiencing more seasonal dips and losing our SERP ranking for keywords.

It was clear we needed to take a hammer to our SEO strategy if we wanted to turn the tides around.

In this article, I will tell you how money keywords transformed our SEO strategy and generated $441k in revenue for Cognism.

Sounds intriguing, right?

Then, keep reading.

Before I get into money keywords, let’s rewind the clock and show you what SEO at Cognism looked like before.

There was nothing special about our SEO strategy back then. We would find top-of-funnel keywords (prospecting, lead generation, you know, the drill) or high-intent keywords mainly based on competitors (cognism vs zoominfo, for example). Then, we’d build topical clusters around these keywords.

The goal at this stage was to grow brand awareness with the TOFU pages while capturing demand with the high-intent pages.

So far, so standard.

And yeah, it was successful — for a while. We saw our rankings and traffic shoot up, but then they started to stall.

We also noticed something else happening. Something that we hadn’t focused on before in SEO.

Our pages were good at bringing in an audience (11,750 visitors a month, according to GA4), but they didn’t take any action once they were there. Conversions were low. The ROI wasn’t showing for our high-intent pages, which was a bad sign.

There were other problems, too. We’d never had a proper, thought-out backlink strategy — and we reckoned this was why our keyword rankings had declined.

Plus, publishing new keyword clusters every month/quarter had become exhausting. We were a small team of four with too many pages to manage.

No joke — our SEO strategy needed a radical shake-up.

We hired an expert, Gaetano DiNardi, who reviewed what we were doing and presented us with an idea:

What if we stopped publishing educational TOFU content (because we maxed out on that) and instead created content that converted?

This is the money keyword strategy. It’s about focusing your resources on the highest-intent keywords, the terms and phrases that bring people ready to buy to your site.

But what is a money keyword, I hear you ask? Well, sometimes it’s easier to show you what they’re not.

An example from Cognism’s old keyword strategy would be “what is demand generation.”

While it generates a lot of traffic and has numerous backlinks, it doesn’t convert. People who search for “demand generation” are unlikely to convert as they want information.

A money keyword is the total opposite. It’s a keyword or phrase someone types into Google when they want to buy a solution like ours.

This was the process we followed to identify our money keywords:

1. Define the keyword’s business potential

The first step was to determine where our existing keywords fit regarding business potential. We drew up a list of our highest-converting keywords and sorted them according to this table:

Then, we graded our money keywords as 3s — these were the high-intent keywords where we could easily present Cognism as the answer to our buyers’ pain. An example is “b2b contact data provider”. At the end of this stage, we had a list of roughly 25 keywords that were ripe for money keywords.

2. Focus on the product

In the second stage of the process, we reviewed our existing content with a product-focused mindset.

With each money keyword page, we had to make sure they answered the following questions:

• What does our product do?

• What is it good/bad at?

• What are the benefits of using it?

• How does it compare to what our competitors offer?

The trick was understanding our product deeply, who uses it, and what it’s best at. With this information, we could position Cognism as the perfect solution for our buyers. This focus on the product led us to create different strands of money keyword pages based on our competitors.

For example, listicle content comparing ZoomInfo alternatives or “crash the party” pages targeting keywords our competitors rank for, such as ZoomInfo pricing.

However, it’s important to stress that we never wanted to bash competitors or make misleading statements unnecessarily. Instead, we wanted our money pages to accurately reflect the different tools.

We worked with our product marketing and legal teams during publication to ensure we stayed within the mark. They had to sign off every page before we hit the publish button.

3. Identify new keyword opportunities (by thinking like our customers)

This stage was all about good old-fashioned keyword research. We aimed to find new keywords we could add to our money keyword list.

The key was to think like a customer. What keywords would someone type into Google if searching for tools like Cognism?

Again, we gave all keywords a business potential score from zero to three, with zero meaning the keyword was limited in presenting Cognism as the best solution and three meaning that Cognism was a critical or essential solution to the problem.

4. Publish the content

By the fourth stage, we had a list of existing and new money keywords. It was simply a matter of publishing new pages or updating old ones. We gave ourselves some more rules to follow:

Optimizing for conversions

If the existing content generated high traffic but few conversions, we optimized for conversions (see the CRO section below for more info).

Here’s an example:

We revamped our “B2B data” page for conversions, adding elements such as forms and explainer videos. We wanted to give visitors targeted information in more interactive formats while making requesting demos on the page seamless.

Showing the before and after:

Following these updates, demo requests on this page increased by 266%.

Optimizing for search

We optimized for search if the existing content generated lots of conversions but little traffic. This involved updating the page to match the search intent, which we did by checking the top SERP results.

Here is an example of a blog we optimized for the money keyword “direct dials” — again, showing the before and after.

Following these updates, this page increased its position on Google’s SERP to 2 and its organic traffic by 236.66%.

Optimizing for conversions

To optimize conversions, we included case studies in our content. Why? Because they had above-average conversion rates but generated low traffic.

The results from adding case studies to our content were twofold. First, they supplied our customers with strong social proof. Second, they led to higher blog posts and case studies conversions.

Here’s the before and after of our “B2B sales tools” money keyword blog when we added case studies:

After we added case studies to this page, demo requests increased by 6%.

As I said before, this wasn’t an area of SEO that we’d much delved into at Cognism because we previously focused on on-page SEO.

But with money keywords, we knew we had to ace off-page, too. Optimizing on-page can only get you so far — especially when dealing with competitive, high-intent keywords.

This was our process for driving backlinks:

1. Once we had our list of money keywords, we identified which ones were in striking distance of Google’s top three positions.

2. We divided those keywords between the SEO team, roughly five batches each.

3. Then, it was up to each team member to secure backlinks for their allotted keywords by outreach, guest blogging, or publishing linkable content on the Cognism domain.

4. Every quarter, we reviewed the progress of our target keywords. If a keyword had reached the top three, we swapped it out for one that hadn’t.

Outreaching

When outreaching for money keyword backlinks, we gave ourselves some guidelines to follow:

• Domain Authority of 60+.

• Preferably non-promotional, blog, or content links.

• Preferably links to other SaaS/B2B/tech companies.

• Strictly no direct competitors.

• No paid or sponsored links.

• No links to homepages.

• No rewrites of Cognism content allowed — natural link insertion in our existing content only.

• Links must not be included in the blog or page’s opening paragraph, header, footer, sidebar, or conclusion.

• No link stuffing — max one link per sentence/paragraph.

• We check every link using URLVoid; if the link fails the check, we can’t use it.

• We reserve the right to turn down any link if it matches one of Cognism’s keyword targets or if the placement is on a page we’ve earmarked as having no outbound links.

Guest blogging

Our guest blogging strategy extends our backlink strategy by seeking high-DA websites in our industry. Our most successful guest blog in 2023, regarding the number of backlinks (16), was a guest post we published on Skill Success about demand generation.

Publishing linkable content

Here is an example of a blog we published purely for backlink juice — “25+ Must-Know Cold Calling Statistics for B2B Leaders”:

Since we published this blog in October 2023, it has earned 56 dofollow backlinks organically.

In the old way of SEO, we tracked only a couple of metrics:

1. Organic traffic growth.

2. Keyword positions.

With money keywords, our tracking had to get a little more sophisticated.

We still track those traditional SEO metrics, but now they’re joined by conversions, pipeline, and revenue.

Our money keyword reporting looks like this:

1. Organic traffic growth.

2. Keyword positions.

3. The number of demo requests generated by our pages.

4. The number of deals our pages created and won.

5. Pipeline on a page-by-page basis.

6. Monetary revenue generated on a page-by-page basis.

7. The number of assisted conversions generated by our pages.

We used HockeyStack to track these metrics. It allowed us to create dashboards that show how each of our money keyword pages is doing for demo requests, deals, pipelines, and revenue. HockeyStack also gives us current and historical data to track performance over time.

Regarding backlinking, we measure performance as follows:

1. Traffic/ranking position growth for our target pages.

2. Increase in Domain Authority (as a general overview of our website’s quality).

3. Total number of do-follow backlinks per month/quarter.

4. Total number of referring domains per month/quarter.

5. The percentage of our backlink profile with high-quality (DR 60+) backlinks.

I can hear what you’re saying.

“Joe, this strategy is all well and good. But what results have you seen?”

Our page views increased by 72.1%, and our average engagement time increased by 13.6% from 2022 — 2023. This info is from GA4:

And on Google Search Console, you can see the comparison in clicks and impressions from H1 2023 to H2:

From HockeyStack, our money keyword pages generated 832 demo requests throughout 2023. They created 242 deals, totaling $3.2M in the pipeline. And of those 242 deals, 53 were closed-won, generating $441k in revenue.

Pretty swish, I’m sure you’ll agree.

We’re already looking into the future of money keywords. After all, you can only target a finite number of BOFU keywords.

A few strategies to consider include:

1. Surround sound SEO

This off-page strategy is an extension of backlinking, just a lot more targeted. Surround sound SEO aims to dominate the SERP for your money keywords.

We start by Googling our money keywords. Here’s a test search for “b2b lead generation tools”:

While Cognism may have the second place, it isn’t mentioned in any of the other top nine results. So, we contacted each website, asking if they could add Cognism to their lists.

We won’t get Cognism on every URL. But it’s certainly worth trying. If successful, we get the link juice and increase our brand awareness (this is becoming even more critical in getting mentioned by AI tools like ChatGPT, Bard, etc.).

2. Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

CRO is an on-page process where we analyze each money keyword URL through a conversion-focused lens.

This is our checklist of items to review:

1. Content and embeds — The content has to match the search intent. The intro can’t be too long and, preferably, should be optimized for the featured snippet. The page has to include the right amount of video/podcast embeds, and they have to be in the right places.

2. Navigation and menus — The page must include a working sticky menu, but it can’t be too long (10 anchors max is the sweet spot).

3. Page layout — The page has to be well-formatted for desktop.

4. CTAs — The CTAs have to match the page’s content. There can’t be too many or too few of them; they must be well-placed on the page. They must be optimized for desktop and mobile and go to the correct landing page links.

5. Forms — Any forms on the page must work and be in the right places (near the top of the page is best).

6. Chatbot — The page’s chatbot must work and, preferably, have bespoke messaging.

7. Pop-ups — Any pop-ups on the page must match the page’s content. Note: our rule is that any page with less than 100 in traffic doesn’t need a pop-up.

8. Mobile template — The page must be well-formatted for mobile devices.

By following this process, we’re ensuring that all money keyword pages are optimized for conversion.

There you have it — an in-depth exposé into how Cognism transformed its SEO strategy and produced some amazing results.

Follow my instructions, and you’ll be creating SEO pages and blogs that rank highly in search and bring in the Holy Grail of content marketing — customers and revenue.