How Podia Uses Clearscope as Its One-Stop-Shop for SEO

Download a PDF of the case study to take with you and share.

Your website needs to show off its SEO chops when you're a content creator platform. It’s why many brands turn to Clearscope for their SEO needs. For Podia, an all-in-one platform for creators to build websites, sell courses and digital products, and host communities, Clearscope was the ideal fit for creating top-of-the-funnel SEO content.

But more recently, Clearscope has also played a critical role in helping Podia update and optimize its competitor pages.

List of relevant terms helped Podia optimize their competitor pages

In June 2022, Podia launched a free plan. The content team at Podia decided to revamp their competitor pages to ensure people looking for all-in-one creator platforms could find Podia and its new free features. It was a massive undertaking that involved using Clearscope’s list of relevant terms to update, rewrite, and add new content to a collection of more than 40 pages.

The team started by identifying the pages already driving a lot of traffic to the website with the highest market potential or that needed expansion. Next, they checked to ensure the content on those pages was updated to reflect their new free offering and that those pages were SEO optimized.

Next, they reviewed their alternatives pages. These are pages that compare Podia against its top competitors, especially those whose audience would be an excellent fit for their new free plan like "Kajabi Alternatives" or "Patreon Alternatives."

"Clearscope was really helpful for us to figure out not just what to include on those pages but which pages to build," says Janet Choi, Director of Content at Podia. "And so it was really helpful to be able to see what other products Clearscope surfaced on those lists of terms and make sure that we were covering them on the alternatives pages."

To ensure that their pages have all the necessary information to convince people to choose Podia over its competitors, they used Clearscope's Term Map and Competitor Map to determine what information to highlight and when to include in-depth article-like description sections.

Although it has only been a few months since the new competitor and alternatives pages went live, Podia has already seen more traffic to those pages. The team has also seen the number of clicks for phrases like "Podia vs. Kajabi," "Podia vs. Thinkific," and "Kajabi Alternatives" increase.

In less than eight months since making these updates, the updated set of pages has collected an SEO value of over $80,000 — money Podia saved for ranking organically for keywords versus paying for the clicks.

"I think this is a clear example of how SEO can play a powerful part in feature launches and product awareness for people who are pretty close to that buying decision," says Janet. "We've heard people say, 'I found you guys through the competitor page, and it was so helpful to my decision, and so that's why I went with Podia.'"

The Keyword Discovery tool helps nail search intent

Fun and SEO are two words you wouldn't expect to find in the same sentence. But the content team at Podia finds Clearscope to be a fun research tool that helps them discover what people are searching for and how many people are searching different variations of a topic. In particular, the Keyword Discovery tool removes any uncertainty and ambiguity so writers have a clear idea of what to write from the beginning that will match search intent.

"We can put an idea in the Keyword Discovery, and it'll show all these related ideas and different phrasings," says Nicola Wynn, Content Marketer at Podia. “And sometimes, we find that after switching two words around in a phrase, the new term has double the traffic and half the competition, and that's a much better term to target. You wouldn't know that unless you had a tool like Clearscope."

Having visibility into what phrases and terms people are searching for also helps the team generate ideas for content.

"It can be surprising what terms get more searches than others. For example, when we researched keywords for an article about how to make an online community, we learned that phrases like "build an online community" and "create an online community" had more volume than "make an online community," Nicola adds. "It's really nice to be able to go into Clearscope and see real data and just explore. I feel like every time I go into Clearscope, I always walk away with ten more ideas I'm excited to write about.”

The list of relevant terms has also helped the team assess their keyword strategy to ensure that it matches search intent. "There have been times where I'm like, 'oh, I must not have the intent right for this because these terms aren't matching the article in a logical way,'" says Nicola. "It's a good tool for prompting me to go back and say, 'okay, if there's a ton of terms that are being recommended that don't make sense with what I'm trying to write, this is the wrong intent, and there's probably a better way to phrase the target keyword word."

Clearscope is a one stop shop for content

Writers spend more time planning and preparing to write than they do writing. The topic and keyword research process can often be exhausting and time-consuming, especially for writers who have to write multiple articles. Rachel Burns, a Content Marketer at Podia, describes what her process was like before Clearscope:

"I'd start by opening an incognito tab in Google. And then, I'd type in a keyword and see what the top results are. Next, I'd go into a keyword planner or Ahrefs and figure out how to reconcile the different information. I'd also spend a lot of time reviewing those top 10 articles and pulling out the terms I saw most often just because I didn't have a tool to do it for me." Rachel calls this process the "DIY version of Clearscope."

Clearscope simplifies content research, creation, and optimization. In addition to the Keyword Discovery tool, they also use the Competitors tab to perform a competitive analysis. This tab shows the current top-ranking articles and the article’s content grade.

Clearscope's integration with Google Docs has also been a lifesaver for the Podia team. "I think a lot of content writers spend most of their days in Google Docs, and having that integration is so helpful. It saves you from copying and pasting your entire article into a different platform for it to analyze your keywords," explains Rachel.

Once you pull a report in ClearScope for a specific term, all you need to do is put the link to that report in your Google Doc extension. It will give you your content grade, highlight the relevant terms in your article, and include a list of the missing terms.

“I haven't seen another tool that makes it that easy," adds Janet. “The score and added context make working on the SEO of a piece more fun instead of a chore or random guessing game.”

The team also loves Clearscope's new Content Inventory tool. This feature monitors the Content Grade scores for an article's terms. "That's a really beneficial feature because we can make updates accordingly, " says Nicola. "We'll know if an article no longer has an A++ score or if something starts performing really well."

Streamline your content creation and optimization process with Clearscope

There's so much that goes into creating top-performing content, from keyword and topic research to content creation and optimization and continuous tracking and updating. It's enough to make your head spin.

Don't do it all yourself. Clearscope can help you every step of the way. Create an account or request a demo to get started.