What do you write after you’ve covered all your basic keywords? That's a good question.
We had this conversation with a client this week while reviewing our content roadmap. At some point, every commercial term you want to rank for has a page. Every “how much does it cost?” question has an answer. And the obvious topics are… done.
So what do you write next?
That’s where content strategy gets interesting.
In today's newsletter:
When a SaaS company starts doing content marketing, it picks a keyword it wants to own and builds a strategy around covering the basics.
You optimize your homepage for your core term. Then, you build commercial pages for bottom-of-funnel searches. Then, you cover the questions buyers in the consideration stage are asking, such as how much it costs, how to choose, who the best options are.
This is the work that needs to get done to become visible in search and cited by AI.
Then what?
Heard of 95-5 rule? Only about 5% of B2B buyers are in the market at any given moment. The other 95% will buy later, so you want them to remember you when they do.
HubSpot publishes lots of content. They write about UX design examples and AI impact on social media. They have tons of random informational stuff that targets…everyone. On the one hand, they go against marketing wisdom: talk about specific things for a specific audience – that's how you get the leads. On the other hand, their blog has 500K organic traffic and their product is hugely popular in B2B. So who's an idiot here? The one who's narrow and specific or the one who goes broad and generic?
There's a good reason to publish informational content. Big brands do it on purpose. When HubSpot writes the ten-thousandth article explaining a basic concept, they're building awareness. It's about getting their name in front of people who won't buy for two years but will remember HubSpot when they do.
The trouble starts when a far less popular SaaS company copies that playbook. HubSpot-style market-expansion game works when you've got the brand, the budget, and the patience to publish content that doesn't result in leads for years. Especially now, when growing search traffic is hard, no matter how good your SEO is. AI is answering all the questions and Google search is zero-click.
The default choice for tech companies (and anyone in general) is to copy what the best in the field are doing. Makes sense. They're best in the field for a reason, they must know something.
So I see many SaaS companies running the enlarge-the-market strategy on their blogs.
To me, it doesn't make sense.
When you go broad, you know what you're after. Tools like Ahrefs and Semrush give you monthly search volume for a keyword, so you have at least some idea of how many people might see it. But when you go more specific, you have no idea how many people will search for that topic (or whether anyone will search for it at all).
And AI search makes this even harder to measure. It’s a black box. We don’t know what people are asking, how often they’re asking it, or what prompts lead them to discover a company.
So how do you decide which topics are worth creating when search volume can no longer tell you? Very often, the topics that matter are the ones that the keyword tools cannot see.
These topics come from customer conversations and trends in your market. You can search for them among talks discussed at conferences, on LinkedIn (especially posts that get the most comments), and, of course, in your sales calls.
I've done this repeatedly. We positioned one company as a "SaaS design agency" when almost nobody was searching for it. In the learning industry, we wrote about cohort learning while it was still emerging. We covered the API economy while it was still forming.
Every time, the keyword tools showed close to zero volume, but then, in most cases, those terms took off.
Watching trends is about being relevant, not just being searchable. And that changes the question you ask when deciding what to write about.
Instead of asking, “How many people are searching for this?” ask, “Is this becoming important to the people we want to reach and do we want to be part of that conversation?”
Your landmark is your market.
What’s changing in your category? What are your customers starting to care about? What ideas are gaining momentum? And, importantly, what do you want your company to be known for?
That’s where content starts building a brand.
Back to the 95-5 rule. If 95% of your buyers aren't in the market right now, you need them to remember you when they are.
HubSpot's way of being remembered is to be everywhere. That's why they write blog posts for every query. If you do the same, if you explain basic concepts, nobody will remember who explained it to them. People remember who changed how they think. But Huspot…
Look at how HubSpot actually built its brand. Its founders coined "inbound marketing" and spent years arguing that outbound was dying. They wrote a book on it (Inbound Marketing, 2009), launched the INBOUND conference, and gave away free certifications that spread the idea. The broad content came later, once everyone already knew their name.
So instead of trying to rank for generic content, look at the brands you follow. I read a handful of newsletters and blogs regularly, and almost nothing they publish is something I would ever Google. I didn't find their best pieces through search. I found them because someone shared them, or because the headline argued with something I believed.
Opinions don't show up in keyword tools. Which brings me to the uncomfortable part.
It might not work at all, because that's how a brand is built: you don't know which bet pays off until it does.
That's uncomfortable, because clients still expect rankings or something that shows a piece worked.
There are still signals to watch. Search Console will show impressions for long-tail queries no tool predicted. Branded search will grow. AI tools will start citing you. Prospects will mention an article on a sales call.
These results aren't quick.
Once the basics are covered, content stops being a traffic channel and becomes an investment. You judge it the way you judge any investment: over time.
This week, I prepared two angles for the next batch of content for the client.
The client chose the second one with zero doubt.
Kate
P.S. If you’ve covered your core search terms and need a strategy for what to create next, let's book a call.
P.P.S. If we aren't connected already, follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram. If you like this newsletter, please refer your friends.
"It’s important to argue logically because logic is an essential part of argumentation." Is this sentence logically sound? Not really. Logic can go wrong in many ways. And sometimes we don't even realize that the point we’re making isn’t that strong. Read this article to learn common mistakes in reasoning and how to avoid building bad arguments.
There is a big difference between content that simply accumulates information and content that's about something. A key message is a core idea that you want your audience to hear and remember. Let's learn how to develop it!
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