Off-Label SEO - Brighton San Diego 2025 (Short Descriptive Deck)

Transcript

1. September 2025 Jenn Long Lead SEO at SolarWinds – Ex-Zoom Off-Label SEO Jenn Long
2. Hobbies A vegetarian, avid gamer, dinosaur fanatic, science fan, movie enthusiast, friend of the earth, Francophile, wine drinker, Mustang driving, super nerd. I have more than 11 years of SEO experience working in-house and in agencies. I’ve worked on SEO strategies in a variety of industries including B2B SaaS, e-commerce, franchise, small business, editorial, healthcare, and more. I am a firm believer in the fact that SEO touches most aspects of marketing beyond the website and can be a valuable research tool for other marketing teams. About Me Jenn September 2025 Jenn Long
3. Off-Label SEO is a term I’ve coined for the approach of using search interest to influence the change or planning for products & services. It’s different from traditional SEO because we’re working backward. We’ve identified something our products/services are lacking with search volume behind it, and since we don’t have it, we can’t create website content about it. So we need to get it added. What is Off-Label SEO? I like to think of it like the off-label uses for medications that would require testing and experience. September 2025 Jenn Long Examples • Influencing innovations in your company's product and services • Inspiration for product and feature names • Discovering audiences not currently being targeted or new use cases
4. Whisker Biscuits September 2025 Jenn Long Whisker Biscuits is a fictional brand that makes and sells their own cat furniture, toys, and accessories online. Their cat tree product will be our example to walk through the steps of Off-Label SEO.
5. Step 1 Learn everything you can about your products or services including: • Features (current and planned) • Audiences • Regions sold to • Languages offered • Competitors (company specified & organic) Learn Everything September 2025 Jenn Long Whisker Biscuits has many competitors, covers most regions and languages, so we’re going to focus on features and target audience. Features • Product warranty offered • Weight capacity: 66.14 lb. • Wall anchors • Non-skid base • Fleece fabric • Padding • 15 cm thick scratching post Audience • Cat owners Example
6. Step 2 Make an exhaustive list of your competitors Don’t just look at the competitors with the biggest market share or most well known, look at any you can find. Sign up for email lists so you can keep a running tab of new competitors. Start to note the same kinds of information you learned about your own products/services so you can use it as a reference. Tip: If you work in SaaS, software review sites can be handy for quickly finding this information. Competitive Analysis September 2025 Jenn Long • Catastrophic Creations • Cozy Cat Furniture • Habitat Haven • Armarkat Cat Trees • Cat Tree King • Petsmart & Petco • Chewy • Amazon Example
7. Step 3 Cross examine the information you gathered about your products/services with your competitors to find gaps. These gaps could be all sorts of things, so get creative, but some common gaps include: • Features • Compatible integrations • Regions sold to • Audiences & use cases • Languages offered Find Gaps September 2025 Jenn Long Features • Hammock or bowl • Litter box • DIY/Modular • Outdoor-friendly Audiences • Small critter pet owners (ferrets, chinchillas, and opossums) Example If you have access to the product, try to perform the same functions competitors offer and see how they compare.
8. Step 4 Now that you have your gaps, start compiling search volume for them. If one of your gaps is an untapped region in a different language, pull the data for search volume in that language and region. And I would include search volume for competitor branded queries for the audiences or features you’re proposing, for example, if you were suggesting a litter box cat tree, you would include searches for your competitor “Kitty Kastle Litter Box Cat Tree”. Search Interest September 2025 Jenn Long • diy cat tree (7,000 global MSV) • outdoor cat tree (3,000 global MSV) • cat tree with litter box (1,500 global MSV) • cat tree with hammock (500 global MSV) The new audience we discovered doesn’t have much search volume at the moment, so we’ll leave it out. Example
9. • Find the right team (product managers, marketers, engineers, etc) to present your findings to. • Explain to them the volume potential of the gaps you’ve identified. • Help them prioritize adding new features, expanding to new regions, or targeting new audiences. • Make sure they keep you in the loop for future changes or new launches so you can do the same gap analysis. • It only takes one team to agree to pursue your strategy. Then you’ll have data to back up the approach with other teams. • Position search interest as the valuable metric it is, a barometer for what people are looking for. • Use your research to influence product/service positioning and messaging. Share Your Findings Step 5 Tips September 2025 Jenn Long Why wouldn’t we have something our customers are looking for related to our products or services?
10. ▶ Reporting Reporting on the success of your strategy is relatively straight-forward. Once the gap has been addressed and you have added content to the website about it, start tracking the keywords you identified in your analysis and report back to the teams you worked with in monthly or quarterly updates. Jenn Long September 2025
11. ▶ ✨ Thank You!