How Nerdwallet Built a $100m a Year Financial Blog Using SEO

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Hey all,

In my opinion, Nerdwallet, a financial blog/startup, has some of the best SEO in the game.

If you haven't heard of them, here's some background Nerdwallet:

- Started in 2009, Nerdwallet's mission is to give users transparent financial information to help make better decisions - Their business model is to create content, drive users via organic search, and make money when someone signs up for a credit card, bank account, mortgage, or whatever else they write about. - They bootstrapped the company to about $90m in revenue. Recently raised a round of funding at around a $500m valuation. - Nerdwallet consistently outranks much bigger competitors for some of the most valuable keywords. Google "best credit cards" or "best bank accounts" and you'll see that they (most likely) take the #1 spot. - They did practically zero revenue in their first couple years - They were making ~$10m a year off only 480k monthly uniques, most of which came from search.

In one talk, Tim Chen, Nerdwallet's founder/CEO lays out their strategy.

He said:

- "SEO is a slog. Takes years of work." After 12 months of starting, Nerdwallet only had 243 monthly visitors. Only 38k a month after year 2. Writing content specifically for journalists was the key driver to getting links - They didn't focus at all on web/product design for the first few years. Only links and writing content - Goal was to get 500 quality links a month - "When you're small, it's a knife fight. Learn what competitors are up to and crush their output." - After three years, they grew from 3 to 50 employees. Revenue exploded, finally.

Sources: Video of Tim's talk (http://hustlecon.com/0-1m-monthly-visitors-nerdwallet-built-massive-audience/) Tim's slides (https://www.slideshare.net/KeraZacuto/from-0-to-1m-monthly-visitors-how-nerdwallet-built-a-massive-audience) Hustle Con - the conference where Tim gave his talk (http://hustlecon.com/)