You know you spend too much time on the internet when you can’t help but check the traffic data for every website you land on.

The other day I was whipping up some branded templates in Canva, and instinctively pulled open my dashboard.

.

..

…

Canva pulls in over two hundred million search visits each month. Over 96% organic.

That’s over 6.5 million hits per day.

Around 75 hits every. single. second.

Directly into their top-of-funnel.

SaaS distribution heaven.

I had to know more.

Here’s what I found.

— Tom

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How Canva wins SEO

Chess Move

The what: A TLDR explanation of the strategy

People looking to design something don’t search for an “all-in-one design solution”.

They start a business, decide they need a logo, and search “logo maker”.

A few sales meetings later, they search “free business card maker”. Then “QR code Generator”. Then “AI image editor”.

Canva, maker of the world’s favourite ‘all-in-one design solution’, knows this.

Breakdown

The how: The strategic playbook boiled down to 3x key takeaways

1.  Capture high-intent traffic

Canva built hundreds of landing pages for specific design tools that prospects are actively searching for.

T-shirt design. Album cover. Name Tag.

If people design it, Canva offers it.

Each landing page is an SEO goldmine, with fast-loading and keyword-rich content that ranks Canva at the top of Google’s search results page.

Unlike the Canva home page, which is probably swamped with low-intent evaluators, these utility-focussed lead magnets capture highly convertible prospects wanting to land in-product as quickly as possible.

2. Overdeliver on core Job-To-Be-Done

After creating an account Canva funnels you straight into the free tool, providing value as fast as possible:

• Free templates

• Design inspiration

• Simple tooltip tutorials

• Ready-to-use elements

But - Canva isn’t just a lightweight ‘Business Card Maker’.

It’s a powerful editor packed wth a rich feature-set that other purpose-built competitors can’t match.

Users landing in a business card template are quickly delighted with the unparalleled array of fonts, icons, borders, palettes, frames, and illustrations freely available.

Plus, the experience is so easy, from the second you try the tool, you already know how to use it.

3. Product-led upsells

Throughout the onboarding journey, Canva subtly introduces users to the universe of premium design possibilities available on their platform.

Following the ‘Product-Led Growth’ playbook, users are invariably introduced to premium assets, gated features, teamwork capabilities, and free AI credits.

All of which systematically funnel free users towards their paid offering.

Even if they don’t convert in that session, users designing a business card have a high chance of returning (and re-evaluating Canva) thanks to the templates for business letterheads / branded presentations / company merch etc they have seen along the way.

Rabbit Hole

The where: 3x high-signal resources to learn more

How to view traffic data for any website ↗

[16 minute watch]

I recorded this free tutorial teaching how I access traffic data, trends, and benchmarks for any website. Magical data for countless reasons.

Anecdotally I get a tremendous amount of value from this tactic for strategic market scans and ecosystem research:
→ e.g. getting a better sense of scale, reach, market share, and even top-line-napkin-math-revenue for companies I’m looking into.

Legendary Medium article written by founder Melanie Perkins↗

[43 minute read]

21 Questions, covering the highs, lows & lessons learned during Canva’s journey from just an idea to a $1 billion valuation.

Questions crowdsourced from the iconic Facebook Group ‘Sydney Startups’ (our stomping ground).

Honestly hard not to crack a smile at the early product screenshots, love story turned unicorn leadership, and unfiltered insights into how a hypergrowth startup actually grows.

Open Source CEO x Melanie Perkins - a deep dive ↗

[17 minute read]

Bill Kerr is a friend of the newsletter, and a ‘must-follow’ in the startup leadership space.

In this 4,000-word breakdown, he goes over the entire history of Canva, and the tactics/strategies/experiments/decisions that led them to 60 million monthly users and 85% penetration into Fortune 500 companies (!)

That’s all for today’s issue, folks!

In researching today’s piece I came across a simple but powerful notion that perfectly sums up the philosophy behind this strategy:

“When people are looking for your product it would be crazy not to let them find it.” — Melanie Perkins, Founder / CEO of Canva

Thanks again for being here.

— Tom

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