SEO Strategy of Canva – What makes it so popular.? How canva grew to a 55M monthly user base with a not-so-new product and spent not much on advertising .?

Strategy 1: Value-Adding Content

1) They make content to help users create better designs on Canva, which drives significant traffic, user growth, and retention. They offer content in 3 areas: SEO Strategy of canva

1. Blogs
2. Articles
3. Designs school

2) Design School – a resource where anyone can come for design tips + inspiration.The blog has resources like tutorials, articles to help design a brand, build templates, and more to not only teach people, but help build skills(all will help users get better at using Canva)

3) They also share blogs related to marketing, branding + photography.These are the areas people use Canva for the most. This complementary content makes Canva an even

more valuable brand (not just a valuable product) Becoming a brand people love

4) The more content you produce, the more you increase your chance of viralityOne particular article –

Benefits of Walking: Why the Greatest Minds take the Longest Walks, went viral with 90.5k shares on Facebook, 5.9k shares on Twitter and 2.4k shares on LinkedIn.

Key takeaway:  Make sure your content does at least one of: 
- Helps people get their desired job/task done better and faster
- Educates- Help build skills
- Helps people get more out of your product (maximize the value)

Strategy 2: Solution focused SEO

5) Canva uses a goal-related and solution focused keyword strategy for SEO. They focus on the goals of their users and connect it to a specific solution they’re looking for.

6) The keywords are based on jobs you can accomplish with the product – paving the way for high conversion rates. It places their product as a way for the user to accomplish their goals or find solutions – the components that go into any purchase decision.

7) They do this by creating slightly different landing pages (with slightly different search intent) for related jobs to be done. Ex: One person is searching to make a certificate, the other are looking for pre-made templates. Here’s my search for “how to make a certificate”

8) and here’s my search for “certificate templates”These search results were both first results after the paid adsSo all variations of search intents lead people to CanvaNow that’s well executed SEO!

9) Both scenarios people are trying to look for a solution like Canva, but would have had different searches based on specific needs. Other examples for variations of search intent include:-

• content for marketing-
• design-
• photography

The list goes on in many areas…

Key takeaway: SEO Strategy of canva
- Design various landing pages for similar keywords (for different stages of the buyers intent) 
- Have a place to add value for everyone no matter what stage of the buyers journey they are in (to naturally walk them through to becoming a customer)

Strategy 3: Social Sharing

10) Canva’s early adopters became their first powerful advertising engine by sharing their designs with friends.They grew rapidly from word of mouth and social proof from their first 150K users11) Canva allows you to directly post your design to facebook pages, groups, instagram, twitter, Pinterest, and etc.Users shared their graphics (and templates) on social media, in communities, and directly to friends

12) Templates are a key aspect of their marketing strategy because it enables anyone to get started asap.They make it easy to find the right templates and share with othersAnother benefit is it helps make their finished product look even better (making Canva look better)

Key takeaway: 
- Implement share-ability in your product.
- Allow users to share results in a way that benefits others (effectively building a product led growth loop)

13) On social media, they used hashtags. They encouraged users to share their graphics on social media through a contest using #canvalove. It boosted social sharing and built a community around the brand. It encouraged others to use the platform to be featured on their instagram

Key takeaway: 
- Find ways to encourage your users to share your product or products results created by users. 
- Contests, challenges are a great way to boost social sharing