How Orb Ranked #1 on Google Without Backlinks (Topical Authority Strategy)

you are you are an SEO killer. I mean you're So can you okay can you give your background? Yeah, sure. Um I actually like started off in strategy. Um so I did strategy consultancy um at the start of my career. Um rolled into uh brand marketing as part of like a large financial services company. um where um my first goal was to like establish this large insurance brand as a something that was like compelling for technology. Um and um that amongst others involved u building out and hacking our way through like building a huge community um of um insurance technology followers here in the Bay Area. um we actually managed to coin the term insure techch um and um made that a um a real thing. Um and so that was a really a really cool start and um maybe also um like a first kind of like introduction to the idea of like growth hacking and um after a couple years I um I joined like um the kind of like AI companies um full-time. So my first company um was um Instabbase where um I did two different things like one was um to translate like AI workflow automation to like lots of different sectors initially into insurance but then also like how what does this mean for transport? What does this mean for CPG? Um and um as the company grew and um wanted to uh develop more of a PLG motion um I basically said like cool I think I can do that. So let's let's you know let's let's go build it. And um and so like that's um also the first time when I um met David Quaid um who uh has been a guide and a mentor on my own as a SEO journey. I felt that um that that is really important to like surround yourself with you know people really great people who are equally datadriven and um you know like just say make sense with what they say and um and so that was the first time when um I like grew like a website um from like literally marginal numbers to um in that case was a little bit over 20,000 um um um visitors a month. That was in about six months. So, it was a pretty pretty steep journey. That was for Instabase. That was for Instabase. Exactly. And Instabase was later valued at like $2 billion, right? That's correct. Yeah, that's right. Wow. Um so yeah it was it's a really really cool journey and um at that point I was um leading uh vertical and growth marketing and um company got to a stage in my own personal career came to a stage where I felt like hey I I actually want to be in a position where I can build all of marketing and um so I really challenged myself to look for a company that was at a very very interesting junction point um and um like could really benefit from like structuring like a growth story and um um and so like I found Orp. Um Orb is um uh where I joined head of marketing about 18 months ago now. Um where I joined I inherited one fantastic growth marketer who is still um with me. Uh but other than that there was basically no infrastructure. There were no systems there were there was just like no messaging structure. There was just nothing from a marketing perspective. And so so really really fun challenge and um and so um yeah like obviously a lot of things needed to be built but and one of the core aspects of that was also like hey we we need to get traffic on this site man like so we we just we just need like inbound volume needs to get going. Um the company had like a a a really founded at sales motion to till that point and um yeah like the especially on the smaller side of the company covers SMB all the way to enterprise um but especially on like the SMB side it was really important to get like an inbound motion going um and um so yeah that's that's how we started building the site. Yeah, I was uh I'm looking at Orb right now on Semrush. And when did you join Orb? About 18 months ago. Yeah. Oh man. So basically since you joined, you can correlate you you coming you joining Orb to this crazy spike in SEO traffic. Like it literally just correlates exactly with you joining and your SEO traffic just shooting up. Thank you. Yeah. Uh it was a it was a really great um it's been a great journey. Obviously we're not quite done yet. Um but um yeah like some of the the core things that um we started with was um a like realizing that so maybe I'll just introduce very quickly what ORP really is and then um kind of like that explains the strategy. This method of marketing is so effective I had to make sure it wasn't against Google's rules before I kept doing it. It's a form of SEO I call compact keywords. Whereas most SEO focuses on putting up articles to answer questions, how, what, when, compact keywords focuses on putting up dozens of pages that sell to searchers who are actually looking to buy. These pages rank on Google and convert so much better than normal that when I discovered this years ago, I couldn't believe this was allowed. It's less work, too. The average compact keywords page is only 415 words. Compact Keywords is a 13-hour deep course on getting sales with SEO. A customer recently said, "Each lesson is dense with information. You're giving years worth of experience boiled down into 15 to 30 minute lessons with no filler or fluff. I feel like I'm gaining a new superpower. Compact Keywords is about setting up an SEO funnel that brings you sales for years and years and years. It works with AI. It's less work than traditional SEO and it makes way more money. You can get it now at compactkeywords.com. Back to the podcast. So, Orp is a usagebased billing and pricing company. So, um when um thinking about that, um you know, we see this all around us nowadays. um when um different AI companies whether they are like legal AI companies like Harvey or um um companies like um writer or you know companies like them that have like AI um as a c you know core component of their value prop um they tend to um price their their business in terms of tokens, credits um things like that instead of seats and um and so like in order to price and monetize that you need to have like a completely different system um that is also a hell of a lot more flexible and ORP is um providing this type of um infrastructure. That's what we sell. Um that's a core that's a really cool product. Um so um I'm not going to lie, we probably benefit quite a bit from um the fact that this has become very popular over the last 18 months. Um so that in part explains that traffic growth. Um but it is also still a very niche product and um and so like as a result when you're thinking about like an SEO strategy um you know like we you know like there's like different ways in which you can go about that like when I was at Inspace we had a um you know it was an an AI automation uh a workflow automation tool that was really what um Inspace was which could be applied to pretty much any industry and lots and lots of different workflows. And so your SEO strategy is going to be very broad, you know, like um you're going to have like lots and lots of backlinks. You're you know, like you just you just want to have traffic traffic because you know, like it almost in any case you could do something for them because the product was just so broad. Um for um Orb, it's very very different. Like Orb is a niche product. We're very very specific on a particular niche for a particular persona. And so like the strategy really was to it was a cornerstoneing strategy where um we you know just to try to build like really deep clusters and topical authority on monetization topics, billing topics, um invoicing, how do I price and um yeah as a result of that we you know we we just got like a pretty high topical authority score which now allows us to like I think this double benefited us actually um because not only was that anyway the right strategy Um but over the last 18 months we saw of course the incredible rise of large language models and where you know this type of like deep expertise in a particular topic got like disproportionately um awarded and so like we were a bit lucky there as well. I can see the mentorship that David Quaid has provided. David David is so awesome. He's been on the show so many times uh talking about topical authority and and uh and cornerstoneing you. So yeah, you're ranking number one for things like well the amount you're ranking number one for like 800 keywords uh for things like technology company operating expenses, how to do pricing or how to do pricing packages, rate increase letter for services, price raise notice. So just so many keywords you ranked number one for Orb. I mean and Orb has literally just Orb three letters you rank number one for it. Um, can you talk about can you walk through cornerstoneing? Like imagine that you were talking to just a complete beginner at SEO, somebody who maybe they like read a few articles, watched a few podcasts or something, but they're still very new. Can you walk somebody through like what cornerstone is, cornerstoning is, how you do it, and why it's beneficial? So um so like when so like we we'll get to like the the orb keyword um in a second. So like I think that we benefited from multiple other strategies when it comes to like that um ranking for like just that brand keyword. Um but when it comes to like the like the the core um keyword that we really want to rank for and that we want to like get visibility for is usage based building, right? And so um that's the um um variations on that keyword is like where we really what is the keyword usage based billing. Was that was that really competitive? Um at the moment it is. Yes, it's it's actually really competitive right now. Um cuz um there are about five flag companies that are like pretty big in this. Um so um and they you know they've all like they've all hired their own people. this is a really popular type of um uh space right now. So yeah, it's very very competitive. Um and I think the additional thing here is that um you know like a lot of these companies like if you have a company like Stripe for instance that also provides stripe billing and also provides usage based billing and they um you know benefit from like also like a like a much larger wallet. So like when it comes to paid you know you compete with that as well especially in a world where you know you now have about three spots to compete for uh because everything else is being you know like occupied by paid ads and by um you know like large language model answers. Um so like it becomes like even more important to rank in that kind of like top three now. Yeah exactly. Um and so um like looking at um like like where um how we were thinking about uh this this topic was to like organize ourselves around usage base building and subsequently think about like what are all of the different types of associated um uh terms that are either adjacent um to directly to usage based billing or um the audience for that particular um keyword um would be interested. in um topics that are somewhat similar or related. And so like a um like an example of that for instance is that um the types of people who are interested in like monetization and billing and things like that, they are very frequently also interested in um in pricing generally. And so like one of the um like most successful uh things that we uh that we built was a um uh was basically take the like 30 40 or so like um largest SAS companies in the world analyze their pricing page and write um like blogs on their particular pricing um like how that um um you know what they did like uh how to explain it and uh things like that. So that gave us two important advantages like one um was to um uh get like a high visibility on uh large language model answers as well because these types of like how-to and comparison articles and things like that they they perform really well. Um and um secondly it um got this um a audience that was also interested in like building a monetization for themselves. And so like you address like a topic that is already interested in pricing for a problem that um they they really is really relevant to them and uh gets that traffic to the site. Um now like um like so like when when I think about um cornerstoneing strategy I basically take like um topics like that. So whether it is like AI pricing or like um um usage based billing or um like and a range of like other topics like that and um write like a core articles that sits around that and um then write related articles around that in order to create that topical authority and clusters of content. And so like the idea being then that uh we have like um like a a long list of like core um um keywords that are all somewhat kind of like related to each other um that and have all are strongly interlin with each other as well in order to like create that uh that deep um deep authority. How do you do how are you doing information architecture? How are you structuring your subfolders when you're doing cornerstoning? And to what extent are you going after non-competitive keywords to just like rank fast and build topical authority? That's a cool a very cool question. So the um so like when when um when we started off like some of like the um so 18 months ago when we started off like some of the earliest and simplest things was to see like cool you know like we have like a bunch of competition. we have Stripe um as one of our main competitors, you know, like they've been at this for like a while. So let's literally just like compare and contrast and see like what what what they are doing. Um now um the the interesting thing there was is that that is like something that we could like realistically just copy um and um you know organize ourselves like pretty pretty quickly there. Um but when it comes to um um like longer tail keywords, that's where where it actually gets really interesting. And so um like one of the core things that we u noticed was that um um when it comes to billing, the the kind of like click-through rate for topics that were related to pricing um was actually much higher than um everything related to like core billing. And so um and specifically when it uh when it came to like AI pricing. And so um as we started like um um thinking of combining some of our core keywords with um pricing and um AI pricing and like how to do AI pricing. Um that was actually one of the things that really um started driving a ton of traffic for us. um just hijacking um like an existing trend and also identifying something that our competitors were not ranking for yet. And so um like I think that is also like when people are like starting on their okay like their SEO journey like the basics of like hey I just need to make up like the gap with my competitors that's like often times like the you know the the f the first thing you do and that's a good thing. Um, but I think that the um like identifying like what do your competitors not rank for at all and like what is actually a a core like source of traffic is is even more interesting and in our case this this was AI pricing something that we like started hearing a lot more about um at conferences and in the conversations with our customers and we decided like hey let's just try this out and so like this high iteration of like looking through like hey let's try out a couple of terms that um that we are hearing and that we um that our competitors are not ranking for at all but actually unlocked um like a significant additional source of traffic. That's interesting. You're doing keyword research by actually talking to people and getting like hands-on hands-on experience and knowledge. That's right. I mean, um, a lot of people they like to say that they do datadriven SEO, but, uh, and and and I'm a huge fan of that, but the reality is is that you you need to have some data in order to be data driven. Um and um so like testing things out rapidly and like and finding out new keywords from wherever they could come because that ultimately what all of the algorithms are doing is predicting human behavior and like trying to serve up what uh what it thinks is like most um relevant and interesting to you know the searcher. And so um tapping into that by literally just talking to people um is um is a is a relevant additional source of like identifying like hey what's actually happening um in this market what is relevant what are people talking about and writing towards that and guess what actually given the fact that um um like search algorithms are trying to serve up most relevant information it turns out that if you actually put like your ear to to the around to understand what's really happening in your core market actually really helps. It's really so important. Like I like doing keyword research. I like learning and going down different rabbit holes and hearing a term that I didn't know about and then and then then you like you hear a term and you're like, "Oh, that's interesting." And then all of a sudden you just start noticing that term being used in lots of different places, but it's still like a relatively new term and other companies aren't optimizing properly for it. And then you can own something like that. And it's and you've also like you are able to make better product decisions. You're able to go deep on topics that nobody else is going deep on. Actually doing the keyword research yourself is like it's really amazing. That was one of the things that David told me that that like you are very hands-on with the SEO that you do. Well, I I think um I think that there are like two ways to approach this. Um, one is to as a um head of marketing um conceive of everything as like technical functions that are separate um and then like SEO sits in one bucket and then you have like demand gen sits in another bucket and like you know you're organized that way and and I think that that is approach can work um um especially like in the beginning when you need to build up um very very quickly Um but it it doesn't unlock that additional layer of um of growth like where um I think that um when I think about SEO and this is also like you know interlinks with that um AI pricing example I and especially with the um with the advancement of like how algorithms try to serve up like most relevant information and how large language models work. Ultimately, what you're really trying to do is you try to tap in into like human behavior and how they interact with your product and brand. And so, I think that SEO is just the is is just the like the technical reflection of that uh of that motion. And um and so as a result um needs to be and is a core marketing um um uh um motion to to work on and because like what it does is actually really really awesome because when you are like take this AI pricing example for example the um we we heard this literally on a conference like um you're you're at a conference I was talking to a lot of people a lot of people came through our booth and um you know like We had like usage based billing and billing and invoicing type of things like on our like banners and things like that. And everyone who came to our booth wanted to talk about pricing. And I thought that's so fascinating. And so um so you know right there I formed the hypothesis like I think this is going to be a much hotter topic. Um if I want to drive traffic probably I should try out something like that. And so now this allows me to be like extremely um iterative because um there is like in addition to paid ads which is another um hobby of mine but you know between paid ads and SEO there is like the most quick the quickest way in order to test out like hey I got this hypothesis let's see if it works you know like it doesn't um especially SEO almost cost you nothing. the marginal cost of like trying something out is almost zero, right? Like especially today when generating new content is so so easy and so fast to do. Um you can like roll out a couple of additional uh terms, you know, like uh build out um um a new cluster around that and see if it works. And if it doesn't, cool, no worries. Like um and if it does, like then you've just unlocked like a new a new little well. And so I think that the why um you know like where David comes from um and like where he and I connect is just basically being relatively fearless uh in trying out new things. And so that applies to like both like um new terms. It also applies to like new um new new tech new tactics, you know, like um so like one one thing um that I hadn't tried out before. Um and um I'm really excited to to see how this is going to perform. Um so I I didn't need like exact match domains before. like u it was something that I you know like at Insabase we didn't need that because we were at a much broader kind of like um um strategy and so I didn't need that but right now I'm in um I'm selling a product that is far more niche and so it's actually really interesting to um to like try out an exact match domain um strategy and see like hey you know like can we can we drive um like additional traffic that way and um you know like um and and I I I have like I feel really good about this because the additional thing is that you know with large language models we need to have like a higher share of um of visibility um and uh having additional like places where um like where we show up um that and that kind of like um tell our story and like how we compare um you know that benefits us two ways that way. Yeah, a lot of people are really into exact match domains. So you you're how many how many EMDs how many exact match domains are you using for orb? Right now we are literally trying our first one. So, we have um something called meteredbuildings software.com. Um and um it's you know like the reality is is that our um I should probably hopefully our competition doesn't listen to this but um like we we we've seen most of our competition doesn't have a super like um um advanced like SEO strategy and so um we we are able to like iterate really fast try out like new things and um basically make this work for us and like out compete um our competition with higher iteration. So you get an EMD and then like what's the strategy for building that out? You're going after basically just as many keywords as you can within within the niche, the specific topic that the EMD is in and linking like and then what percentage of those pages are you linking back to your money site as well. So the um so what um the way that I'm conceiving of this is that we are going to build this out as a portal. side um where um we basically take the the metered building software which obviously is something that is like an exact match very closely related to um our our particular product um and um we are so the draft page that we currently have um has like lots of um lots of similar types of blocks that we already had on our money site um and with um like that are explanations that um about certain like terms about like how to-do building um like all of these types of things. Um um that um would like work really well also like in large language model searches. Um and actually um not um we very purposefully do not uh brand the this portal website with with our brand or like put like very obvious links on um to to or like on the main page. Um we let that like rip in its own way. um um but start like working um um the the links into like the the deeper uh blogs and articles. So like when people um reach the site, they kind of like read about it, they you know everyone feels that it has like high authority um that you know it it all reads very kind of like impartial but obviously like then in the kind of like down um in the deeper articles when you get through um we start um integrating links towards back to orb to to say like hey you know like and this is um like great companies that do this well um are for example and and the kind of flag like list a couple with or being the first one. Yeah. Okay. So, you're also you're link you're also linking to competitors. So, it's not like you're not like making it super obvious whereas like you could just kind of like do a screaming frog crawl of the site and see that the most linked to outbound link is, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's cool. Um, can you walk me through the different types of intent that you go like are you going are you going after every intent with the SEO that you're doing for orb? Are you mostly sticking to top of funnel? So, so this is actually a really relevant topic that I'm um currently evaluating to see if I need to rebalance myself. Um so uh like a little bit um ear so like I mentioned this AI pricing topic um um a little bit earlier this year um we started running with that drove like very very high traffic um which is great um but the the reality was that a very high share of of that traffic was um like didn't have was moreformational intent rather than commercial intent and so um now I So I'm going to approach this actually from two angles like um one is um I um I'm going to like push somewhat like try to rebalance a little bit in terms of traffic like um so um really the kind of like core usage based billing that has like very high uh commercial intent and some uh competitive articles um where um we had slipped as well a little bit. So we are like rebalancing there in order to um to get that high commercial intent traffic back. Um but also and this is maybe a little bit um you know I don't know maybe it's a hot take I'm I'm also like feeling especially when you are able to hit like a particular type of topic that is really in the zeitgeist um where um like AI pricing yes like a lot of that will beformational uh traffic but um or intent traffic but there are two aspects where I think that is still very valuable like one um you can um try to um with on-site um like optimization get people into your funnel. You get them to your site. So like can I get people onto a journey um and drive them through the site um and like ideally like um like like one two three more additional pages like see if they if we can kind of like get them to to have a journey on our site either that kind like uh results in like a um ebook download or some other type of place where like newsletter sign up or like or maybe they even book a meeting um which is you know doesn't really much matter. All of these are great. Even if they don't do anything, it's still great. So, um because in parallel, uh what we've done is we've um created like a pretty um sophisticated signalbased marketing engine um where um that is backed up by both clay and um uh for enrichment and dream data in order to um see our kind of like customer journeys. And so like this now allows me to um see like how these people have, you know, like when they come to the site, where did they come from? Did they like first um have like a did they first click on an ad? Um is this the first time that they visit or are they repeated visitors? Um what other pages did they subsequently um go to? Um and um and then that allows me then to create like um retargeting audiences like wherever they came from um that I can bombard with like specific bottom of funnel ads um again. And so like how this is like how we are like interplaying these things. Um and if they um like all of these actions we um give them like an engagement score. Um I'm not a big fan of lead score. I think that as a term because that um that has like too strong a fit with you know too strong an association with just ICP fit whereas what what I'm um really after is like an engagement score did people go to the page they read it did they subsequently do something you know like um um and are they repeat visitors how frequently are they like were they did they come to our site like you know three months ago and then all of a sudden now they kind of like visited again but five times within one week I mean like all of those types the things they are really relevant that um with all of the deidentification technology that we have hanging um on on the site um we can do enrichment with clay we can actually create audiences that we then either like target um our SDRs on in order to like do direct outbounding where we know that this audience is like highly engaged or you know we put them into a uh into a sequence and see if we can get some additional signal and so like all of these things they you know like the super interesting thing that I have uh been allowed to to really work on and and build out is to you earlier asked like how do all of these things work together. I think this is like uh where how they how they you know like now join up and we are in a really cool time um where you know all of this is possible. Okay. Can you uh I want to I want to ask you about the marketing mix more um and how like SEO informs all of it, but I I also want to know just like what does this a standard conversion from SEO look like? Like the the journey from uh somebody's from discovery of like they even need this and then them going all the way through the funnel to converting in SEO because I I I like these like these wins, these success stories. is these are the the types of things where people who are struggling with their own SEO they want to hear success stories from other people and that motivates them and they learn from that. So can you talk about that? So um one particular thing and so like um um not to advertise there's like a bunch of different platforms that do this really well but uh so we but we use dream data to identify customer journeys and so um one of the biggest surprises um was the success of our of those pricing pages that I was um talking about earlier and so um like so we are talking literally about the pricing of like another SAS company and explain like what it does Right. And um I can tell you that I initially got like a lot of flack from um like my like CEO and so like well why are we why are we building these pages you know like it has nothing to do with our product like um and so um and um and and of of course he's right like it it has we were not like promoting like um um or we are also not specifically talking about um um um um like a billing um conditions or characteristics or anything like that. Um but like what you what we could see and what is a really cool journey um is that um we were able to attract audience on a problem that mattered to them and like um put that into uh into the context of Orb. So we got people to the site, they had exposure, they understood like what Orb does. We explained, you know, helped them with their problem. And so what was really interesting was to see um how many of our um converted opportunities um were started their journey with like being exposed to Orb via like solving like this pricing problem that they had got them onto the site. Then we could literally see that like a like two months later they came back via an ad. Um and um the click-through rate on those was higher than for others um because they had been exposed to to ORP already. And then like you know maybe a week or two weeks later um you see people actually then like starting to explore uh more middle of funnel type of uh blogs and um case studies um to like further inform themselves um about this product. Um and then um a little bit later that week actually convert into like filling out the contact us form. And so, um, I think that, um, gaining very deep insight into like your customer journeys, um, um, is super important, um, when kind of like constructing these types of, uh, journeys. Um, and also can create surprises like I had not anticipated that that was going to be such a big driver. Um, and it totally was. So, and um, so like we doubled down on that. So you are targeting um pricing related queries for direct competitors without promoting orb. That's right. Yeah. And they are not competitors. There are like other SAS companies. Yeah. Ah okay. Yeah. Okay. Without promoting and and so what do how do you do the information architecture for that? Like do you do you have like a hub page for all these companies like company plus pricing and then you have that hub page in your footer? How are you doing that? So um right now the those pages do not have a strongformational hierarchy. Um we should do that better. Um it's something that I think that um we can do a lot better. Um the um we more recently like u moved our site over to headless CMS that gives us like a lot more flexibility to to build these things out. Um and um so that's that's um um step two. Right now they are basically all at the same level. How long have you been in San Francisco for? I've been here for 11 years now. When you talk to marketers at other tech companies, what are the biggest mistakes that you see a lot of them make? Um I think that uh let me think about that for a second. Um I think that there are a couple of um a very simple um uh mistakes that I see time and time again. Um one is a um overemphasis on um product marketing. Um product marketing is great. I love product marketing. I have a product marketing background myself. Um but when it comes to like uh demand genen driving traffic and um um getting like converting meetings, it's you cannot only talk very beautifully about your product. you you have to be creative, highly iterative like um and be willing to make mistakes. Um do stuff that in um that maybe are a little bit off-brand, you know, like you can do that like outside maybe your your core domain, you know, like um and um you know, being being like highly experimental, open to new things and not everything needs to stick to your specific brand guidelines and your specific messaging framework. um if you're like too too stuck up there then um you're you just don't allow yourself to like explore and find out about new data and iterate faster. So I think that's one. Um I think the um the other thing is just um u general underappreciation for um like how very small things can make a very big difference on like conversion. Um, so I've had so many conversations about like why it is important to if you can kill another field on your form, you should do that. Like every every field you can kill is like uh increases your conversion rate. And um and so like the number of conversations that I've had with GTM teams and sales uh especially from sales who basically said like well we want to ask for this, we want to ask for that, we want to ask for that. And like I said, like well if you ask for all of those things, you're you're basically going to have like a zero conversion rate from that form. Like um and yeah, we can try yeah, we can try it out and can show it to you. Um but um that's that's that's like so that's another core topic. And then I think the third one is um underappreciation of brand. Um I think that especially um for for technology companies um uh like the there's like this attitude of like build it and they will come. Um and um and that's just this just not true. Like it's true maybe for like a very very small number of like absolutely explosive companies, you know, like if you're open AI. Yeah, sure. that that no problem. They will all have you know they have they built something amazing and like um millions and millions of people all over the world came which is great. But for the overall majority of software companies that is just not the case. And so um like investing in brand in um um even if you cannot measure have like direct attribution to um to like investments like that um are actually um really important and relevant and so I think even more so like in um in a world that is dominated by large language models. If you look at the share of branded traffic that we have on the site, um that's actually pretty substantial and a large part of that is because we run billboards. We u were able to um um to get onto um shows like um New York Stock Exchange TV and um those types of things. they actually really helped to also drive that branded traffic um um side of things and um also helped to like we earlier talked about the uh difficulty of like ranking for that's an um in addition to like all of the architectural SEO that was really important in order to like get to rank for orb the investment in brand was an equal component to like actually achieving that and um so yeah so those three things would be most important for By the way, you just you you basically just described why so much investor money is burned just like that. That was like the paro of why so much investor money in in tech is just lit on fire. Can you um can you talk about how marketing efforts in order to drive brand awareness and conversions with the brand a outside of SEO like you just described billboards and these are driving branded searches and then how that helps you rank for non-branded searches. Yeah. I mean um so like at the end of the day you're trying to and this is here you're getting towards like actual core marketing which is really cool and where you know in the beginning of our conversation we talked about like how SEO is a technical reflection of of like what core marketing is what is core marketing core marketing is associating um in the psyche of people your brand with a particular outcome like um and um and so that's the core thing here like so we we want the world to associate ORP with high quality usage based building, right? And so um and and it so happens that um that this is really really popular right now like usage based building and like monetization of AI. And so um brand investments of like associating and correlating those um those things in like human psyche with um billboards with um expressions in like traditional media um um um like uh PR activities and things like that. um that that kind of like starts driving that um um that branded traffic um on onto the site. But and on on top of that, if you're looking for instance like um um which is really really interesting um is that um uh for like the longest time we had usage base building in our H1 on on the site um just to make sure that we would like rank for that. And the way that got reflected is that um um for um on Google rankings um or usage based billing as like one um uh keyword um was um something that we ranked number one for like probably obviously um so after all of the investment in brand um we um uh started and a bunch of architectural SEO we started ranking number one for just interestingly ly we also started ranking number one just for the word usage based billing and so the um so the outcome of that to have like um um to rank first for ORP separately and for usage based billing separately um that's the the like how this type of thing at least for us um has been uh benefiting from like brand investment and um and so like um I took it as like the um I don't need to like combine these keywords s anymore in order to establish the connection. I have established the connection in the psyche and that is um and that's really cool. So by ranking number one for orb, you also ranked number one for usage based usagebased billing because it was it is it still in your H1 on the homepage? No, it's not anymore. Wow. But because you had it in the H1 that allowed you to rank number one for it originally. Yes. But now the um association um with um is so strong and we have built so much topical authority and like so many people who um are researching usage based billing and then go directly to ORP. I mean like all of that um um works together ranked number one for both. Yeah, I looked I looked at I I looked at it after you said it was competitive and it it really was. It was like all these huge tech companies putting in their page title, putting in their URL slug, like the biggest tech companies. Uh, so did you create a separate page for usage based billing that was like perfectly optimized? If they have a billing engine page, yeah, that does that. That's right. And it's perfectly optimized for the keyword. Like you have you have it in the page title, you have it in the H1, you have it in the URL slug. We we do all have those things as well. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh what are some um you were talking about creative marketing and I love creative marketing stories especially creative marketing stories that relate to SEO but honestly any creative marketing story in general and I think like every every like director of marketing every CMO has some like crazy things that they've done are there any that you can talk about because I there's so much fun for me that we have a really really cool one um and um you can um if you're on a desktop right now you can actually see it for yourself um I invite everyone to to do it. We do this. I'm do it on my external monitor. Yeah. Go go go go go go to our pricing page. Um so go to you know v withorp.com and then um you know you'll find the link to our pricing page in the topnav and um then towards the top of the um of that pricing page you'll see that it says x-ray of our pricing. X-ray vision. X-ray vision. That's right. Oh, this is cool. Yeah. So um so this is um something that we build as like an Easter egg on the on the side um for like particular pricing nerds. Um and so like um so Orb is all about like um uh pricing of like um AI and like how to do that. The reality is is that a lot of SAS company what we saw in the search traffic and the keywords that we rank very high for and where we get volume is like people don't know how to price like how do I price you know like how do I price my bot how do I price my new AI tool you know like I teach me like how do I do it and so we figured like hey could we create something really nice where we kind of like establish again that authority of like is a company that is really good at this and can be a great partner to um to you in on this journey. And so let's like walk the talk. And so we created like an X-ray vision of our own pricing page um explaining very precisely like why we build it that way. And like that's so awesome. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Whose idea was this? Um so this was actually an idea of my CEO. So um he um he uh deserves all the flowers um for for that concept and then we we worked it out in house uh together with our design team. Um and beautiful yeah yeah we uh that's another thing that it's a little bit unique about we do almost everything in house um in order to like meet like a very high quality bar and so we have two wonderful designers in house that uh that put this together. Yeah man. So actually uh okay is it true do you think it's true that everyone underprices themselves? Um I think that um so that I don't know. What I do know is that uh almost universally people are underinvesting um um uh resources and time in pricing. Um and um there is like significant um um opportunity to um to to gain like to get more margin by better pricing and packaging. And um the reality is is that for a lot of companies um for the longest time because it didn't really much matter uh pricing was like the um the last thing that people would do. You would look at it like once a year. So especially for SAS companies you know you would you had like you know your price per seat and it was like straightforward and easy and um you know and the marginal um um uh cost of like an additional seat was zero. So like it was actually really easy. If you already have 80 plus% margin, then you know you're not going to really care about like your your price. So most companies they looked at this maybe once a year. Um why this world is changing like so rapidly right now is because the marginal cost of like additional compute is very much not zero. And so um like uh if AI agents and um u form an important component um of your workflow and or your offering which is the case nowadays for the overall majority of software companies um it means that um if you know people start using your product a lot more your costs they spike up as well. And um and so now pricing becomes like a something that is you know far more important that you need to be far more strategic with. And so like the companies that um are like most advanced um like Replet is a great example is one of our customers. Um and um they they change pricing all the time like multiple times a year like um and um they're const they are iterating with it in the same way that you and I are iterating with u with keywords and content and like a product person iterates with like launching new product into the market. um they are like treating pricing on the exact same level and I think that's really smart. How do you measure how how do you uh if you're doing AB testing with pricing, how are you measuring it? What are you using? Um so um like there's different ways. So like what we um offer um for example um is a product called simulations. And so um what is really cool um um about ORP is that you um can actually use um all of your historical usage data. Um and so um you can absorb like any um um any kind of like usage data whether it is like number of API calls or credits used or like um website visits or like anything you like outcomes maybe like um of like resolved uh resolved conversations queries anything you like. And um what um ORP allows you to do and you can look it up on the side as well. Um you we offer a product called simulations where basically um you can uh take in all of that usage data and um simulate like what your um uh revenue would have been under different circumstances if you changed price, if you changed metric or if you changed pricing model. Um and so pricing model could be like hey I want to move from seats or from a flat fee to like a usage fee or maybe I want to do a hybrid pricing where I combine a flat fee plus a usage fee. Um um and uh maybe I want to like change the metric by which I measure that like instead of like um credits I'm going to do outcome based pricing like in terms of like resolved queries. Um, and you know, like what would my revenue be under all of those circumstances? And that allows you to actually, you know, do safe comparisons because AB testing in in live in in the world with pricing is actually pretty risky. Uh, because people could have very adverse reactions to to that and then you risk losing a lot of business. And so that's why um we had like a campaign earlier in the year that was labeled practice safe pricing. um really funny um um kind of like um anecdote and so like the simulations product allows you to do that. Yeah. I didn't I I I didn't ask you with the X-ray vision uh the X-ray vision thing on your pricing page. So how did you know that like this uh this like cool idea actually gave you some benefit? Like were you was it uh people who landed on the page saying oh like we love this and it moved us down in this way or were you looking at data like Yeah. So uh there are two things uh how um how I approach this. So like one u it's an Easter egg right and so you you you don't want to promote it on your like look we've we've done an Easter egg like and do like a social media campaign around that. So um so that is um uh because then then it's lame right? So it has to it has to stay cool like um and so um the first thing that we did was to um write to like a lot of like pricing experts in our network and I wrote literally every single marketeteer that I knew of um and to ask them to say like hey can you have a look if it is in your if it is within your domain you feel comfortable commenting on it can you do like an organic post on on on the socials about wow and um and so like we um like got like um traffic that way. And so we we measured we literally just put a tag on like the button to see like how many people would actually convert out of that. Um now that we have like a pretty pretty high um like uh rate um uh volume on that. Um the way that we are going to do this next is to actually um say like hey um um you found like a very special place um here is um a way to sign up for like uh special events um um that you know you're part of the club basically and um and so like we're we're going to try and like even more actively create a community out of people who manage to find um their way there. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. I I I like that a lot. I like how you how you kind of like had this idea for what influencers in your space would be interested in and you made that. You made that because you're like you are close to the ground. You're in the streets. You're talking to people and and you made that and then you you pitched it to them and then they actually went and made content about it. That's major. Thank you. Yeah. That's that's how it that's how it should be. And like um so you know it's I think this is an interesting follow-up question because David told me like you automate some things but you yeah like we were saying you are very hands-on. Um but now I want to ask okay for somebody who has like a pretty uh who has a a pretty who's pretty grounded in how you actually practice marketing. What are some things that you are actively automating? What are some things you wish you automated sooner and and how do you imagine automating things even more in the future? Yeah. Um, so it's a really cool question. The um like when I um the world already has changed like so incredibly much over like the last 18 months is just insane. Like um so like when I um started out um building um you know like I just did the necessity the necessary things um got like a messaging framework in place just like get going um bit um I uh automated a couple of things of like meeting booking um so got basic meeting bookers in place like Chili Piper on like um on on like the forms and did all of those types of like usual things. We had some basic enrichment. Um so over the last um like 12 months or so um um we've um been investing very heavily into like making this a lot um smoother and do like a ton more enrichment. And so one of the core things that um um I noticed was um given the fact that we have a a product an infrastructure product that is core to like a lot of companies um u is something that they don't replace very frequently um and so um the reality is is that for a product like us um ours you know people who are in the market probably like every four to five years which means that of all of you are kind of like ICP fit like only about you know 20 to 25% um is actually in the market and so uh at that point um ICP fit becomes like less important like it's um it's relevant you want to hit that but it's even more important to be able to identify like who is actually in the market and so um so some of the things that we have um um automated um which I'm like really happy about is that um we um work together with um bunch a bunch of clay engineers um to um basically make sure that everything we do whether it is like a social post on LinkedIn, an ad or a um organic impression on socials or like um people going to our site or visiting different blogs that all of those different things um were tagged and could be actually be measured. And so we could actually like take them together and like um create profiles and enrich them um in clay um and uh identify like um engagement scores on the back of that. The um so that that was like a huge unlock already. Um and um I think we did it as fast as we could like um but you know I I probably just would have started there like um like knowing like realizing now like how important of an unlock that has been. I'm I'm like, "Oh man, I gotta use Clay. Gotta get on uh Yeah, I just started a new software company. I'm like, I gota Yeah, I gotta use Clay for this." Oh, man. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um I actually think I mean just just to kind of like be completely transparent, um we have optimized and built this out on Clay and it works really well. Um if I were to start like right now completely from scratch, I may not even do that anymore. I would probably just go straight to claw um and um like optimize all of that. So like some of the things that we that we have um built already and we we still use clay as like our um our like central place for like our staging ground if you will. So like one of the things that another thing um you earlier asked about like what mistakes do people make or marketeteers make centralizing on a CRM that's like the um like a very this is a hot take centralizing on a CRM um is something that um most GTM and marketing organizations still do today and I think that in today's age for the overall majority of CRM products that's a mistake. Um I think that um CRM are great for salespeople to manage their sales journey on when the data is completely clean and enriched already. Um but as a marketeteer in this type of world, you want to have a platform that is extraordinarily flexible and that you can use as a staging ground um and like um do all of that. So for us that is Clay. You can do this in multiple other platforms as well. But um it's for us it's really really helpful to say like hey let's get in a lot of traffic. Let's make sure that we filter all of this out. Let's make sure that we enrich all of this. Um and then you know feed whatever is like clean has been enriched and has high engagement scores that we feed into the CRM. But if if you were starting new why why would you use claude instead of clay? So I think that the um um like what we already do um like almost all of the um like important actions are actually done by cloud agents by us today. And so um so like one of the things we have three um so three of the most important cloud agents that we have are uh one that is like basically looking at every single SAS website on the planet um to identify look at their pricing page evaluate whether they are potential fit um one um basically um uh filters this down and um to like those that are like specific to us. So like tries to estimate like whether um it's the right size of company leveraging our engagement scores whether they're in the market and then the third one basically enriches all of this. I'm in a place right now where clay effectively is the like database and staging ground. I could probably use any type of database for that. Um like most of like the agentic work is all done on claw. So that's that's why. If um if you were starting your own software company and uh yeah, you're starting your own software company completely from scratch, what would the first 90 and 180 days look like in terms of marketing? Let's say let's say the product was let's say it's a vibecoded SAS and you built it. Maybe it took you like it took you a week to make it just you know you made it you made the MVP in a day and then like you were did more research built it in a week. What is Yeah. What does the first 90 days and 180 days look like in terms of marketing? I don't know. Maybe you've even thought about that. You're like I'm so good at marketing. I should be doing it. I can vibe code anything now. Like I should be doing my own stuff. So yeah, what would it look like? It's it's super interesting and I have been thinking about this and so like I said I think the um my answer today is sex so different from like 18 months ago. Um so like maybe I'll draw the parallel there or the contrast. Um so 18 months ago I would have said like hey you know like you like start with like like a draft messaging framework. Um you iterate quickly on um on that um by like just direct customer conversations um and um you try to figure out like what is landing, what's not. Then you kind of like in parallel um draw content for for that. You like measure the hell out of that as well. um you have see what performs and you kind of like iterate like very very rapidly towards like outcomes um that's um that's like how I would have um started like um 18 months ago pretty kind of like conventional approach the today um I I would do this differently like um um today like I like the way that I have seen like hey I can literally like code like a claw agent in in in like a couple of like a morning that scour the entire um global internet for like potential um fit customers. Um I can um like enrich all of that information. I can create engaged audiences out of that. Um, I can like uh leverage similar agents to draft up like um um like engagement emails like um either integrate with Hey Reach or with um something like um or just a regular um like um email client um and start like really rapidly um um getting responses um out to to that large audience. I've seen uh people who were over the last few months who were in the exact same situation that you just described um and um were able to build out a goto market stack um consisting out of like four or five agents that was generating meetings for them um um without like any kind of like SDR or um um or black marketing team. So that they were like a oneman uh marketing and SDR team uh plus like five or six agents. And I think that's that's you know the the ability to to like um have agents that iterate send messages in the market like identify like what lands what doesn't. Um yeah like you could build most of this from scratch today. I think that's a really really exciting world. So that's how I would do it today. Yeah. What are you doing for email marketing? Are you and also are you getting like a domain and then 301 redirecting it to your main domain so you don't send when you you don't send cold emails from the main domain? Uh no we can anyway cannot do that because um our product also sends invoices and they are all sent from from our core domain. So like if we like um do stuff with that then um that you don't want to mess with that and go to spam. Exactly. We don't want to deteriorate our our product experience. So uh so now we have a um a separate uh domain um orbit.wbitorp.com um that we that we use for this um and um that we have warmed up um in in the in the past and that performs really well. Mhm. And so you would you would just have like if you were starting you would do something like that if you were starting a new software company and you would have AI agents running that and you'd be enriching the data. you wouldn't you wouldn't be using clay, you'd be using claude uh and everything's going and looking at that database and continuing its enrichment and then uh would you be doing SEO for that? So um I think that SEO is always going to be important in the same way that brand is always important. Um so um uh but you know you asked about like the 90 days and 180 days um and that that hearkens back a little bit to um the idea like you you you cannot be data driven without data and so like the um in the beginning um like why I would start like in those first 90 days with like let's just get let's get these cloud agents out like like let's like bring in like tons and tons of like potential ICPS let's throw in messages ing into that audience and see what works. Um, like once you kind of like get like a better idea of that, then you can start optimizing your your SEO journeys, then you can see like, hey, maybe I should like um revisit my messaging and brand framework and like start um um redoing that based on everything that I've learned. Um, so that's that that's like the 180day journey. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because if you're a new company, you like if you're a new domain, you don't have any links. And so like by actually going and doing like normal brand building and and normal marketing trying to get customers in the process you are going to be building somewhat of a real backlink profile with which to do SEO like at a better point because if you just start with SEO in the new domain it will be harder. Do you have a are you doing link building with orb or is a product just so strong that you don't need to do that? So as as you um you know previously discussed like we we have a high topical authority um that was created by you know like these clusters of information and not specifically with with link building we actually have like a pretty low number of backlinks uh compared to like the authority score that we have in the site. Um so um I'm actually uh in a place right now where I feel that we that we can do something like that. Um, but it would be like very hyper laser focused on like a couple very specific like um um related uh um domain names that u that we would build some backlinks out that we'll be willing to pay for. Um but um like the kind of like broadstroke um um um strategy is for our particular um situation probably not appropriate. What's your what's your strategy for building authority to the EMD? Um, well, like basically the same thing is that we did with our our cornerstone. So, let's say say that again. I said cornerstoneing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we'll we'll build out like the the different clusters um around like a couple of core keywords and like build that out. That's how we're going to do it. I mean, it was successful the first time around. Yeah, that's that's really cool. So like uh yeah that's something that David said which is like exactly what you said you know we are making a lot out of not even having that much like that many backlinks and it yeah it's it's it's very cool what you are doing. Um my yeah then my last question my last question is what are you most excited about with your marketing for the next year for 2026 for this year. What am I most excited about this? Like we are like in like a fastmoving startup. There like so many things happening. Um I I'm what am I most excited about? There's so many things. You can name three. Yeah. Like I I think that's So let me just do a couple then. So, uh, one thing that I, um, that I be very interested, um, in is, uh, we've been engaging a lot more with, um, influencers. And so, um, um, that we did a couple of like, uh, tryyous with that, uh, last, um, last year. And we worked together with, um, Alex Wang who's like a million followers on, uh, on, um, LinkedIn. Um here this is another example where um it was previously like not really clear like what the impact of that really was because you know you do something in one part like we we we have like an spike of like activity on social media. How does that translate or does it at all in like subsequently organic traffic and how does this come back to the site and um and so the um um um what we now know because we've implemented dream data I can now map this multi-touch um uh journey of people and like hey cool okay cool we were able to like get like I don't know like close to a million impressions out of like a couple of those um actions that were like quite a lot of people that subsequently came back to our site and then went onto our journey in our funnel. Um, and so I want to do more with that. Um, and so that's one thing that I'm very excited about. Um, I think the other thing that um that I um that I that I want to do is to I want to see if I can um create um special I I want to do like more community marketing um which I think is really cool. um the like the X-ray vision that we just talked about. Um we uh we've been creating like um um yeah, we have like a pretty engaged audience on that. And so um creating like expanding that um kind of like community feel also towards uh places like Reddit and um and um other places where you know pricing nerds hang out and like allow that to like um like build up visibility on large language models and um and again traffic is something that um that I'm excited about to try out. Um, and then, um, I mean, we're we're we're going to, um, we're going to try the the good old PR game again this year as well. Like, um, we have we're going to have I cannot say too much about that, but the coming 12 months, we are going to have like a couple of big moments again as a company. And so we are going to try and drive that home with like more conventional PR and and and you know we're we're standing ready in order to capture all of that um uh additional attention and and traffic and um um and like use that again like in our flywheel engine of like retargeting um to to use that for that. Yeah, I love that. Okay. Actually, I have one more question off the top of your head. Are there any um and maybe there's not and that's okay, but are there any marketing people that you personally aside from like David who you personally follow and just love like their posts that you get a lot of knowledge from and a lot of insights from that other people should be following? Um I think there's a couple. Um there's um there's there's there's the um a lot of pricing experts that I follow. Um so um um uh Robert Ederist is um is one of those um so I think that is interesting. Then um I mentioned Alex Wang earlier um she does like a lot um with regards to like AI um um components which I think are relevant. Um so I think all of those are important. Um the um the thing that I actually find most interesting and that I encourage uh people to to be part of is that there is a very active community around dream data and um I consider um I consider that you know like I guess that there's something similar around hockey stack maybe um we we ended up with dream data but I think that um can you explain dream data for somebody who's like new? Yeah. So I mean like actually um it's it's so much more than that but um like in the simplest way it is um a multi-touch attribution um uh tool and so um what it um does is that like um you know like if you are like a Salesforce user you're probably used to something like last touch attribution and um and so basically you only know like hey somebody clicked on the ad and booked a meeting and now I can say that that was attributed to at the reality of course is is that um um people's journeys are so much more complicated than that, right? Like people don't just find your ad and then book a meeting. They they probably went to your site a couple times. They they read a blog. They um may have clicked on, you know, had some impressions of ads before they actually clicked on something like uh and so um so so for a while already there are like this concept of like multi-touch attribution. Now what is actually much more interesting than just the attribution part is that it allows you to get insight into the customer journey. And so um and that um allows me to say like hey like if um investments in like this X-ray vision um uh thing for instance or um the um an investment in um uh in events, you know, like um like how how do those types of things translate back into traffic and how do they eventually uh convert into meetings? Um which is the ultimate goal for um for any kind of like marketing team. Um and um that that allows you to do that. And so um that if you combine that with like the huge um um enrichment um and um um other types of automations you can do with Clay and Cloud agents um you start getting towards a stack that is extremely nimble, very very uh datadriven. And I think that like hanging out with people who are actively experimenting with those types of tools are, you know, going to be your biggest teachers. Thank you so much for the time today. Thank you so much, Albert. I really enjoyed the conversation. Where uh where should everybody find you or anybody who wants to get in touch? Uh I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so you know, like um drop me a message there. That's the the easiest bit. And um of course um uh you can always reach out on our website as well withorp.com. Thank you so much. Um yeah, this was really great. This is episode 982 of the Edward Show. 982 days in a row doing this podcast. Thank you again to Boss. Boss, I'm saying that right? Right. Boss, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you again. Uh, and if you watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you again tomorrow. I now.