SEO is Not Dead: The Power of Free Tools

LinkedIn is flooded with posts claiming ‘SEO is dead.’ But let’s face it—that couldn’t be further from the truth.

While many are chasing shiny new trends, some are quietly crushing it by just focusing on the fundamentals. Take Submagic, a bootstrapped AI startup that went from 0 to 150K daily visitors in just 10 months—using nothing but smart SEO and free tools.

Léo Blanc, Submagic’s Head of SEO, is here to share how they cracked the SEO code to prove the naysayers wrong—and how you can apply these strategies to grow your traffic and conversions too.

Enjoy the read!

From Stagnation to Success:
Our Journey to 150K+ Daily Visitors
by Léo Blanc, Head of SEO at Submagic

I’m Leo Blanc, Head of SEO of Submagic. My job at a bootstrapped startup is to conquer an all-too-common challenge: increasing traffic and driving conversions.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve learned the ins and outs of SEO and have propelled our startup from the lowest ranks to the first page in the SERPs. 

The secret?
Meaningful free tools.

I’m excited to share my insights and how I did it with you.

The Challenge: Tackle Stagnation and Increase Conversions

As marketers at startups, we all face the same challenge: how can we increase traffic and conversions?  Without an appropriate conversion strategy in place, your efforts are worthless. 

The wrong conversion strategy can lead to:

• A long stagnation in traffic
• Fewer conversions
• Slow growth
• Lower revenue

It can be frustrating to realize your content and conversion strategies aren’t working. However, with the right resources and fully understanding your customers’ needs, you can increase your conversions and grow your audience base. 

The Journey: Rethinking Our Conversion Strategy 

It’s not uncommon for bootstrapped startups to rethink conversion strategies on a regular basis.  Submagic was no different.  Our initial strategy focused on quick wins—getting new backlinks and publishing fresh content. Yet, despite an extensive resource library and consistent SEO efforts, traffic and engagement weren’t hitting the targets needed for revenue growth.

However, before we made changes to try to increase traffic, we took a critical look at our current conversion strategy. It was helpful to outline elements such as:

• Audience personas and their needs
• CTAs and copy
• Keywords
• Competitors

I knew that I needed expert advice to help me rethink our strategy. I reached out to Irina Maltseva, SEO expert, to ask for help with identifying appropriate keywords. With Irina’s help, we determined our strategy was focusing on the wrong keywords, leading to poor search results, and, ultimately, fewer conversions.

I personally like checking out the competitors to get a clear idea of what is working for them. Although competitor research can take a significant amount of time, it often helps identify gaps in your own conversion strategy.

By analyzing our competitors, I noticed they offered users access to free tools. These tools were designed to help make the video editing process easier. 

After taking a critical look at Submagic’s keyword strategy and our competitors, I realized we had an opportunity to provide value and create trust with our users by offering free tools, too.

However, we didn’t just want to offer a one-and-done kind of tool, and we certainly did not want to copy our competitors and offer the same kinds of tools. Instead, we spent time considering the complete road map of tasks our users have while editing and creating videos and starting new YouTube Channels. 

This helped us identify tools we could create that weren’t necessarily focused directly on the editing process, but other aspects of content creation, like starting a YouTube channel and naming it. In total, we created a list of 25 ideas for free tools to help our customers through every stage of video content creation. 

 We suspected that offering these free tools and focusing on low-hanging  keywords would increase traffic to our landing pages and blog. Once on the tool’s page, we’d need to rework our CTAs and create stronger copy to entice users to try out our product and keep them coming back to Submagic for their video editing needs. 

What We Learned and How it Paid Off

We published our suite of free tools in less than a month after brainstorming ideas. Using our new keyword strategy that focused less on the highly competitive keywords and more less competitive ones, we started seeing an increase in traffic within the first day of going live. In fact, we exceeded our traffic goals with well over 11k visits on day one.

Within a few months, we began consistently hitting more than 150K visitors each day.  The increase in traffic helped boost our authority score, which increased traffic to all of our pages, including our blog articles and sales landing pages.

Visits, however, are not the only indicator of success. Instead, we needed conversions. The free tools proved to be an enticing offer.  We saw a 120% increase in purchases from our landing pages once we began offering free tools as entry point.

Today, we have $700k ARR that can be attributed directly to organic traffic and SEO efforts. This all within a year and half.

Our Best Advice for Encouraging Conversions 

Offering free tools is a great way to get new leads and, ultimately, turn them into conversions. While we realized our initial keyword strategy wasn’t hitting all of our marks, our existing content became increasingly important as our authority score improved. 

Spend some time working on your content library before offering a free tool.  We would not have seen an increase in growth, particularly around YouTube-related content, without our landing pages and 40+ existing articles focused on specific keyword clusters. 

Keep in mind that providing  free tools can become expensive, especially if you need to hire a developer. Do your research to find tools to help you create free products for your users. There are several free no-code platforms available that do not require the expertise of developers or coders. You can use those platforms to help you test the waters with your audience and stretch your budget.

Remember, every action you take to improve your conversion strategy can lead to more traffic and revenue. Free tools are a great way to get new users into your product. Create tools your users need, provide valuable content, and watch your traffic and conversions grow.

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