SEO Case Study: The “Zendesk Alternative” Microsite

Transcription: 

Hi, I’m Chris Long with Go Fish Digital, and welcome to another edition of “60 Second SEO”.

Today I wanted to talk about a really creative approach to branded SEO.

Now, in SaaS, in particular, “alternatives” queries are typically the bane of SaaS companies’ existence. So if I search “mailchimp alternatives”, I can see a bunch of different articles, generally from competitors that talk about MailChimp alternatives and generally why their product is the best.

So Zendesk solved this problem, and they had, a while back, a really creative approach to this. So if you search for Zendesk Alternative, they don’t quite rank in the number one position, but they do rank a domain. They own ranks number two above some of their competitors.

When you go on this domain, it’s actually a site they set up of a fake band, an alternative rock band called Zendesk Alternative. And they did a really good job. They have some images here, actually give a little bit of information about the band, created some navigation links of lyrics, merch, and tour dates. I don’t think they go to anything, but basically a whole site dedicated just to this query of “zendesk alternative”.

And what they were effectively able to do is push some of their competitors down, so at least they’re owning a little bit more of the conversation. So a really strong approach to stop competitors from being able to claim at least the number two position by creating this microsite and kind of protecting some of their brand identity and mitigating some of the risk posed from having competitors ranking on their own brand keywords.