How MasterClass does SEO Over 10M Visits Mo!

All right, so today I want to talk about how MasterClass does SEO. So it's, uh, they've kind of done like a masterclass in doing SEO. And so for those that don't know, MasterClass is, let's just think, online courses from top performers or celebrities in the world. So we can see here on my screen, we got, we got a sports and gaming section. There's writing, science, and tech. You can see just on sports alone, you got people like Steph Curry, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Serena Williams. These are all kind of world-famous people. Tony Hawk, right? Simone Biles, who I actually have never heard of, but apparently she's very famous when it comes to gymnastics. And then on the business side, you have people like Sara Blakely, you have people like Marc Jacobs, you have people like Bob Iger from Disney. So a lot of amazing people here. And so, you know, when you think about MasterClass, a couple years ago, they were running a ton of ads And just running a ton of YouTube ads, a ton of Facebook ads, just showing off a lot of these people that are just teaching you these different courses, right? They charge $16 a month, which is billed annually, and then you can buy it for groups as well. I remember we bought it for our team, and, you know, people enjoy it. And I've enjoyed certainly watching Chris Voss's negotiation class, Bob Iger's class on business strategy and leadership. So there's a lot of good insights here, nuggets, and I think for $16 a month, I think it's a steal, right? So I think the thesis makes a lot of sense, but at the same time, it's like, they're spending so much on ads, like, how are they gonna make money? And so if you look over here on Crunchbase, they've raised over $236 million, which is a lot of money. They've done a series of multiple rounds of funding, Series E, right? And so it seems to be working now. What I kind of doubted, I was like, are they gonna make money or not? It seems to be working because the flywheel is cranking right now, especially from an organic traffic perspective. So SimilarWeb, which has gotten more accurate, I would say, with the tracking, you can see 10 million visits a month, which is a lot. Where's that traffic coming from? Mostly search here. And direct, which is 30%, is usually a good chunk of that is coming from search, right? So they're doing really well from an organic SEO standpoint. You know, and these are the types of keywords that they rank for, you know, in terms of traffic coming in. And so they are, you know, the number 9,000 or so ranked website in the world as scored by Ahrefs, which is one of my favorite SEO tools. And they have, they rank for 2.3 million keywords, right? So on Google, they're showing up for 2.3 million keywords. And if you were to buy the traffic that they're getting per month right now, you would be paying $2.3 million a month or $27 million, something like that per year. And so you can see their traffic has continued to compound over time, which is why I like SEO. You can see their top 1 to 3 positions are going up, top 4 to 10. They're just getting stronger and stronger. And their domain rating, which is scored on a scale of 1 to 100, is 81, which is really strong, which tends to mean if Google sees your website as a training website and, uh, well, they're going to give you credit for it. And whatever you tend to publish is going to rank really well, right? Because your authority is so strong and they've got, look, they've got 21,000 referring domains coming to their website. So their link profile is very strong. And, um, I want to look at what keywords that they're ranking for. So you can see their brand is strong because so many people are searching for MasterClass, 361. That's a lot of traffic just for one brand. So there's something to be said about running a ton of paid ads, building a lot of awareness, and now just a lot of people are searching for your brand. You know, brand has proven to, to work over time when it comes to SEO. That's one of the defensible moats that you can have. And so if you look at all the keywords that they're ranking for, maybe some of these you don't want to be ranking for. These are high-volume keywords. So you can see, okay, masterclass.com articles. What is a I don't know how to pronounce it. Shallot? Shallot? Beats me, right? But they rank for it. Like, they're freaking number 1 for this keyword that drives 123,000 visits a month. Haiku format, 55,000. They rank number 1 for it. Literally devices. So they're not just ranking for people's names, which you're not really seeing here, but they're ranking for a lot of these major keywords. And they're just creating a ton of articles in addition to all the courses that they have. And they're just gonna freaking rank for it, right? So, if we search for how to write an argumentative essay. So, if we take a look at that page itself, what's actually happening? Well, you can see who's the featured class for it, so it's Malcolm Gladwell. And then, you can see there's a— there's— it's like a— well, it's a relatively okay post. I'm trying to see how many words are on the page. And words aren't the end-all be-all, but, you know, There are times where I just want to get a sense of how many words there are. So, turns out I don't have that plugin turned on right now, but I'm going to assume this is about, give or take, 1,500 words or so. Okay. But the key thing they're doing here is that there's a lot of internal linking going on on all these article pages, right? So internal linking structure is very good and they keep tying it back to their other classes that they have. There's a lot of, hey, you might want to check this out. You might want to check this out. Oh, you can join over here. Right? So everything is tied to some type of call to action, which I think is great. And they're just cranking out a ton of content and it's just following kind of the format that they have. So their strategy, I think, is, you know, start out spending a ton of money on paid ads, building a lot of branding, getting the best celebrities in the world, creating all the courses, and then under that, creating all the articles because the domain authority is there already. We know that if our domain authority or domain rating is above like a 75 or 80 or so, whatever we tend to publish is going to do well because we are seen as a website that teaches people stuff, right? And so Google's like, oh, this might be like a university. It might be an online education program, right? So let's give them credit for whatever they're trying to teach. And you can see just all these keywords that they're ranking for over here. Spices, you know, sirloin steak, all this type of stuff. They're ranking number 1 for it. Again, it comes down to first they built the brand and then they got— they have a great product behind them, right? So the product creates a lot of word of mouth, which creates more brand, right? And now the domain authority has been established. They're getting all these links coming into the website too. It's like, oh my God, you got to check out this Daniel Negreanu course over here, this Phil Ivey course over here, Bob Iger over here. A lot of press going behind these people because a lot of these people are very influential as well. So influential people naturally get links, right? So again, start with the paid ads, okay? It's like, and then you add on the influential people. People are gonna be talking about this stuff all the time. And even me just saying, oh, I don't think MasterClass is going to make money, that's gonna get links as well, right? Um, so they built their link profile utilizing influencers, right? Using the power of ads as well, having a great product, and then afterwards layering on a bunch of articles on top because the authority has been established already. In today's day and age, when you think about SEO, it's the 2 things that matter the most are content and links, right? And you got to obviously create a good user experience, have a very fast website, which they've done, but they got also very smart with all the content that they're creating. It's like, let's make sure we're internal linking to all the other stuff and there's a call to action at each one. At the end of each one, or maybe even at the beginning, and that's how they do so well. That's how they're driving over ten million visits a month, right? So let me know what you think I missed in the comments in terms of how Masterclass does SEO. I think they've turned it around. They've raised a ton of money, but I think it's a let's go for the home run type of thing with this type of business, right? So let me know, and don't forget to like and hit the subscribe button because it helps us grow. And if you want more videos like this, and yeah, we'll catch you tomorrow.