If SEO at your company still means “we blog and hope for the best,” you are not alone. Most teams know search matters, but very few treat it like a portfolio of growth plays tied directly to pipeline, CAC and payback. The gap is not knowledge, it is execution.
The good news: you do not need a 15 person content team to run meaningful SEO programs. You need a handful of focused plays, tightly aligned with revenue and supported by just enough process. These 11 examples show how high performing teams are using SEO today, with tactics you can steal and adapt to your own constraints.
1. Topic clusters around revenue keywords
One of the simplest but most effective SEO plays is to stop chasing random keywords and build clusters around the exact phrases that show buying intent. Start from closed won deals, CRM notes and sales calls, not keyword tools. Map the real phrases prospects use when they are shortlisting vendors, comparing alternatives or trying to justify budget.
From there, build a cluster around 1 to 3 core “money terms” and support them with comparison pages, use case content, implementation guides and objection busters. You are giving Google a clear topical signal while giving sales a content spine they can actually use. This is how teams like HubSpot turned “CRM software” from a vanity term into a full funnel content engine tied to revenue, not just sessions.
2. Product led SEO assets like a free tool or calculator
When you are fighting in competitive SERPs, a free tool can punch far above its weight. Think of Ahrefs with its free backlink checker or Shopify with its business name generator. These are SEO assets dressed up as product experiences. They earn links, generate brand searches and capture high intent leads.
You do not need to build something huge. A simple ROI calculator, audit grader or pricing estimator tied to a core problem will work. Ship a V1 that solves a narrow but painful use case, then treat the tool like a product with its own roadmap, experiment backlog and conversion optimization. The playbook is simple: rank with utility, earn links with usefulness, convert with smart in product CTAs and follow ups.
3. Programmatic SEO for templated, high intent pages
If your product solves variations of the same problem across many industries or use cases, programmatic SEO can be a cheat code. The play is to define a strong page template, then automatically generate hundreds or thousands of pages targeted at “[solution] for [industry]” or “[use case] software” style queries. Done well, this is how marketplaces and SaaS companies build moats around long tail demand.
The success variable is not volume, it is quality control. You need tight templates, real value on each page, guardrails for duplicate content and a workflow for pruning what does not perform. In one B2B SaaS rollout, we launched 600 programmatic pages and only kept the top 120 that drove assisted pipeline within six months.
Example SEO play comparison
| SEO play | Primary goal | Time to impact | Best owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topic clusters | Capture core demand | Medium | SEO + content |
| Product led tools | Links and leads | Medium | Product + growth |
| Programmatic pages | Long tail coverage | Long | SEO + engineering |
4. Turning customer questions into search optimized “answer” hubs
Your customers have effectively written your SEO roadmap in your support tickets, chat logs and sales objections. High intent questions like “How do I migrate from [competitor]” or “What does implementation look like for [use case]” often have strong search demand but weak content in the SERPs.
Pull a few months of support and sales conversations, cluster similar questions and turn each cluster into a search optimized “answer hub.” Include text, short video clips, screenshots and templates your team already uses. The result is content that feels eerily specific to prospects because it came directly from real conversations. In one SaaS account, this “question hub” strategy lifted organic demo requests by 22 percent in a quarter, without publishing a single generic blog post.
5. Refreshing decaying content instead of only chasing new topics
Most teams have years of content quietly decaying in the background while they obsess over new articles. A very unsexy but effective SEO marketing play is a structured refresh program. Identify pages that still bring some traffic or links but have seen steady declines over the past 6 to 12 months.
Then run a quarterly refresh sprint. Update examples, add new data, improve internal links, tighten CTAs and align the piece with current user intent. Do not be afraid to consolidate thin or overlapping posts into a single stronger asset. For one B2B company, a simple refresh of 18 mid funnel articles drove a 27 percent increase in organic demo form fills over 90 days. No net new content, just smarter stewardship of what already existed.
6. Combining SEO and paid search to dominate key SERPs
SEO and paid search often sit in separate silos, which wastes a lot of potential. A high leverage example of SEO marketing is to treat the SERP itself as your battlefield and coordinate organic and paid to own as much real estate as possible for your highest value keywords.
Start with a short list of “make or break” queries. For those terms, align ad copy, sitelinks and organic title tags so the whole SERP tells a coherent story. Use paid to test messaging, then roll winning angles into your SEO titles and meta descriptions. Conversely, use organic search term reports to find cheaper long tail queries worth bidding on. Teams that run search this way often find better blended CAC across channels, even if individual ROAS metrics fluctuate.
Companies like NerdWallet below pays for the keyword “Best Credit Cards” on paid, and also rank #1 organically for this keyword in the organic section. They own the highest quality real estate for very high value search term. The paid campaign also helps contribute to the organic page’s ranking success.
7. Treating local SEO like a performance channel, not just directory cleanup
If you have any physical presence or service area, local SEO is not just citations and a Google Business Profile. It is a performance channel. The play here is to operationalize local the same way you would an ad account. Define your core geo keywords, build location specific landing pages that actually convert and keep your profiles updated weekly, not annually.
A practical stack might include:
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Consistent NAP data and core categories
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Location pages with real photos and social proof
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Localized offers or promotions in your copy
Treat reviews like a KPI, with an owner, targets and a playbook for asking customers. Many multi location brands see more net new customers from a handful of high performing local profiles than from their “main” website.
8. Using digital PR and data content to earn real authority links
At some point, you hit a ceiling where on page tweaks and new posts are not enough. You need authority. Digital PR is the play that turns your brand into a source, not just another blog. Teams like Backlinko grew by publishing deep research and then proactively pitching journalists, newsletters and creators with snackable data and visuals.
You can replicate this without a huge budget by pairing simple surveys, anonymized product data or public datasets with compelling angles. Package the findings into a hero piece, then create tailored pitches for different verticals. The goal is not vanity placements; it is relevant, high authority links that move the needle for your commercial pages. Build one or two of these assets per year and they keep compounding.
At Relevance, we do this everyday. We utilize advanced PR strategies to land top-tier coverage for our clients. This coverage significantly boosts SEO performance and SERP visibility.
9. Running technical SEO as an experiment backlog, not a one time audit
Most marketers have lived through the giant 60 page technical SEO audit that no one implements. A better example of SEO marketing in practice is to treat technical work as a running backlog of experiments tied to crawl efficiency, indexation and performance metrics.
Prioritize fixes by potential business impact, not by what looks scariest in a crawl report. That might mean tackling Core Web Vitals on top revenue pages before cleaning up every 404. Agree in advance on success metrics such as organic revenue for affected templates or time to first byte on key URLs. When growth, product and engineering align on a ranked backlog, technical SEO shifts from a scary black box to a series of manageable sprints.
10. Building international SEO as a deliberate expansion lever
If you are already seeing traffic and trial signups from other countries, international SEO might be your cheapest expansion path. The mistake is adding hreflang tags and calling it a day. The better play is to pick one or two markets, commit to localized content and align everything from pricing pages to testimonials with that region.
Start with existing “pull” as your guide. Which countries already show strong usage or revenue per user? For those markets, build localized versions of your highest converting pages, not just your home page. Work with native speakers on copy so it reads like it was written for that audience, not translated. This is where small teams can move fast while larger competitors wait for global alignment.
11. Using SEO to power lifecycle and retention content
SEO is usually viewed as a top of funnel acquisition channel, but it can be incredibly effective for activation and retention. Help docs, onboarding guides and “how to get value from [product]” content all have search demand, often from customers who are struggling quietly. Meeting them in the SERP can reduce churn and unlock expansion.
Map your lifecycle emails and in product education to search behavior. For every major activation milestone, ask “what would someone Google when they get stuck here” and build content for that query. Then weave those assets into onboarding flows, CS call scripts and feature launch campaigns. In one product led growth motion, weaving SEO friendly activation guides into onboarding reduced time to first value by 18 percent for organic cohorts.
Imagine a new customer signs up for Beehiiv with one clear goal: turning their newsletter into real revenue. Because the SEO team understands that outcome, they don’t just publish generic how-to content. They create search-optimized guides that walk customers through growing a list, monetizing it, and avoiding common pitfalls. When users feel like the product and content are working with them to hit that goal… complete with concrete suggestions and next steps. Retention improves, satisfaction goes up, and they’re far more likely to stick around long enough to see results.
Closing thought: treat SEO as a portfolio of plays
The teams who consistently win with SEO are not the ones publishing the most or arguing over title tag formulas. They are the ones who treat search like a portfolio of plays, each with clear owners, hypotheses and revenue outcomes. You probably do not need all 11 examples running at once. Pick 2 or 3 that line up with your current growth stage, assign real ownership and run them like you would any other performance channel. Then keep iterating as the data, and the SERPs, evolve.
