They Got Acquired - How we're leaning into SEO 📈

June 21, 2022
​Read on web​

Addressing your own need can be a great launchpad for a business.

That's what led founder Amira Valliani to build and later sell the podcast monetization platform Glow.

In 2017, Valliani launched Backyard Cambridge — a podcast on a city council election in Cambridge, Mass. — and struggled to monetize it.

Through the process, she realized that podcasters lacked simple solutions to offer paid subscriptions for listeners. So she built a platform to address the problem.
​
By 2021, she'd raised funding, grown Glow to a team of seven people, and had helped nearly 75,000 podcasters monetize their podcasts. The company was acquired by Libsyn for $1.2 million.

🎙 Podcasters wanted to sell subscriptions, so she built a platform to help them monetize​

Sponsored by

Tiny buys wonderful businesses.

For over a decade, Tiny has partnered with founders of profitable software companies to give them quick, straightforward exits that protect their team and culture and keep their businesses operating for the long term.

Think your business might be a fit for Tiny?

Reach out at hi@tiny.com.

Behind the business

One of the growth strategies we're using is SEO. That's search engine optimization, or helping people find us through Google.

There are a few metrics we watch to see how we're doing with SEO, including traffic from search and our DR, or domain ranking. Here's where we're at, according to Ahrefs, the SEO tool we use:

We have a long way to go with our DR — the last content site I worked on had a DR of 72 when I sold it — but I'm pleased with 25 for this early in the game, especially since it continues to steadily increase.

Here are a few things we've done to improve our traffic from search:

✅ Launched our domain early. Months before we were ready to push our full website live, we put up a simple landing page to collect emails. Remember this?

Not only did that landing page help us collect email subscribers early, it also allowed our domain to start gaining some credibility with Google.

✅ Lots of podcast appearances, which usually come with back-links. I didn't do this intentionally, and I haven't pitched myself to podcasts.

But as the opportunities to be a podcast guest have rolled in, I've said yes, and it has grown into a natural link-building machine.

✅ Keyword optimizing our content. We focus heavily on keyword optimization for what we call our "resource" posts: posts that offer advice or information on how to sell your business. Before we write each post, we look at how we might help it rank well in Google. And while we focus most on topics we believe our readers want, occasionally we'll write a post around a topic we notice has SEO potential.

For stories on companies that have sold, we add just a thin layer of optimization, making sure, for example, that the name of buyer and seller companies are in the SEO headlines and H2s.

✅ Write great content. Sometimes I forget to mention this in SEO conversations, because to me it's a given, the foundation upon which everything else is built. We rely on a roster of excellent reporters, and we go to great lengths to make our content not only informational, but interesting to read as well.

Of course, DR is really a vanity ranking. What matters far more is whether ranking higher in Google brings more people to your site, and whether you're able to convert that traffic to reach your revenue goals.

We still have work to do to convert more of our visitors into email subscribers. But little by little, we're getting there.

See you next time,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​
​

​
P.S. Hundreds of subscribers have downloaded our report on 21 companies that sold in 2021. It's free, so take a peek if you haven't already!

✉️ Want to subscribe?

If a friend forwarded this to you, you can subscribe here.

About us 👋

Our mission is to redefine startup success by showcasing companies that sell for $100K-$50M. Learn more about us or follow us on Twitter.

​