Company Overview:
TestGorilla is a talent discovery platform that provides solutions for testing, comparing, and hiring perfect-fit candidates without bias. The TestGorilla library features more than 400 individual tests at the time of writing, and a host of useful features for assessing candidates and collaborating on hiring efforts.
Industry: HR, SaaS
Phase One: February – May 2023 → BoFu VS Pages
Services: Research, content writing, professional editing, account management
The challenge
We were initially engaged to create 75 high-quality, TestGorilla vs. [Competitor] blog articles to build out the bottom of TestGorilla’s content marketing funnel. This meant completing roughly 190,000 words of content in just three months.
Needless to say, we hit the ground running.
But the task at hand was particularly complex.
Not only did it require writers with real-world experience and expertise in HR, hiring, and business management, but those same topic-expert writers needed to become familiar with TestGorilla’s comprehensive offering in record time.
They also needed to have strong research and analytical skills to ensure the articles were accurate, fair, thorough, and valuable to readers.
How we did it
A team of industry experts
Eleven works exclusively with topic-expert writers who have real-world experience and authority in their domain.
Attracting, hiring, onboarding, managing, and training writers at this level and scale is no simple task for internal marketing departments, which is why so many companies turn to agencies.
The topic-expert team for TestGorilla was assembled over the course of a few short weeks. It includes management consultants, lawyers, human resource managers, and senior advisors from the likes of JP Morgan, the BBC, and Disney.
To arrive at this team, we evaluated a total of 419 candidates. The resulting team of 13 vetted writers, representing the top 3% of candidates, then set to work translating TestGorilla’s expertise, unique perspective, and industry leadership into high-quality, authoritative articles.
Throughout our collaboration, we have continued onboarding new, authoritative authors. This allows TestGorilla to scale its operations as needed and enjoy the best industry writers the market has to offer.
Intensive training
With the topic experts onboarded, our next hurdle was to get them up-to-speed on TestGorilla’s many features. We worked closely with TestGorilla, compiling internal sales, marketing, and product documents into workshops for the writers.
We also created a comprehensive yet flexible brief that allowed workers to move quickly through their assignments, while TestGorilla provided our writers with data on a number of its competitors, which we then fact-checked, updated, and expanded upon as necessary.
This allowed our team of writers to function as an extension of TestGorilla’s own content marketing team.
Dedicated account management
Finally, the entire project was overseen by a dedicated account manager, who worked with the writers and editors to ensure TestGorilla’s rigorous standards for quality, objectivity, and velocity were met.
Managing the entire team of 10+ freelancers and three professional editors allowed TestGorilla to focus its attention on strategy, analytics, and reporting.
Phase Two: May 2023 – May 2024 → Content Strategy & Content at Scale
Services: Keyword research, content planning, brief creation, content writing, reporting and analytics
As good results came in, our initial, short-term engagement quickly evolved into a long-term working collaboration with an expanded scope.
Our new goal was to research, ideate, produce, and deliver 50 full-length, high-quality articles per month, organised around a data-driven strategy according to TestGorilla’s marketing objectives.
Results
- 500 articles delivered over a 12-month period
- Estimated monthly organic traffic increased from 40,518 to 236,329 clicks (Ahrefs)
- 490% increase in organic traffic
- 140% increase in organic traffic value
How we did it
Research and ideation
Where research and ideation were concerned, we worked in close collaboration with TestGorilla’s own exceptionally talented content marketing team.
We took a three-pronged approach.
- First, we proposed a hub-and-spoke model that would allow TestGorilla to continue building topical authority around key concepts and pages at the bottom of the funnel.
For example, a main focus today is on creating content to support TestGorilla’s most popular talent assessment tests, including programming, personality, and culture fit tests.
Content from just one of these hubs secured 79 “Featured Snippets” and first positions on Google.com. In total, this 18-page MoFu hub ranks for 941 keywords on the first page and brings an estimated 11,422 clicks each month. - Second, we performed content gap analyses to identify opportunities for new topics with an eye to increasing topical authority.
Rather than take a top-down approach based solely on keyword research, we thought in terms of TestGorilla’s own industry, exploring different careers and roles where valuable content was lacking across the Internet. - Finally, we asked TestGorilla to provide us with a list of existing paid keywords and identified those which could easily be replaced with organic content.
This is one of the simplest and most powerful ways for organic content to start generating ROI right off the bat. (Check out our Connecteam Case Study for an even more powerful example of this.)
A strategic network of internal links
In addition to high-quality content, internal linking was an integral part of this strategy.
Writers were tasked with identifying existing articles that could link to these new pages and provide updated copy for relevant sections.
We ensured these efforts were informed by actual conversion figures, too, and made sure to link to high-converting blog articles whenever relevant.
Of course, each supporting “spoke” article also linked back to the main “hub” model, guiding readers from their current question or problem to TestGorilla as a viable, practical solution.
High-quality content at scale
To produce the more than 100,000 words of content required to meet TestGorilla’s objectives, we needed to expand our team. We onboarded an additional six topic-expert writers and a second professional editor.
We also took over the creation of briefs, ensuring writers had everything they needed to craft high-quality articles, taking into account TestGorilla’s specific objectives, its core audience, and the fundamental principles and values that drive its approach to talent assessment and hiring, including objectivity, inclusivity, diversity, and equity.
Conclusion
As of July 2024, our work with TestGorilla is ongoing.
Despite all the uncertainty that Google has caused with recent updates, TestGorilla continues to thrive and show exceptional growth.
Together, we continue to explore exciting new opportunities in content marketing, data analytics, attribution reporting, and automation.
And as the saying goes, we believe “the best is yet to come!”
